Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1), Nick Wisseman [best novels for students .TXT] 📗

seventy-five feet in diameter—hanging from the two-hundred-fifty-foot-tall ceiling ... Well, the structure certainly seemed large enough to house a horde or two.

At ground level, Manufactures and Liberal Arts looked like an indoor city filled with gilded domes and glittering minarets. A fifty-foot-wide avenue ran down the center, with (slightly) smaller paths branching off at regular intervals to thousands of displays chronicling “the progress of mankind” in terms of science, art, industry, and intellectual development. Twelve elevators carried visitors to upper galleries that added eight acres of exhibit space, as well as an interior bridge that spanned the width of the main floor and led to an exterior promenade offering gorgeous views of the Fair and Lake Michigan.

Taken all together, it was one of the most amazing things Neva had ever seen—and the most overwhelming. She never knew where to start.

Derek looked similarly affected. He’d succeeded in getting a table at the French restaurant, one of twelve dining options in the building, but he had a dazed air about him. “They say that spyglass is sixty-five feet long,” he said by way of greeting when Neva approached.

“You mean the Yerkes telescope?” Its jet-black tube was mounted on a stand that would have felt immense in any other setting.

“Apparently it weighs seventy tons. And that clock tower in the center? One-hundred-and-twenty feet tall, yet self-winding. Incredible. I also heard someone say the frame for the building consumed enough steel to make two Brooklyn Bridges ... Two.”

Neva took a seat and eyed the food Derek had ordered—cheese, croissants, and some sort of stew.

“Help yourself,” he said graciously.

“Thanks.” She picked up a croissant, took a nibble, and put it back.

He sobered. “So what did the Pinkerton want?”

“The man I fought in the Levee—he died.”

“Oh.” Derek blinked, blinked again, and shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault. You said so yourself: it’s those rashes. I’m sure Augie didn’t want to do what he did either.”

“I know, but ... I should have controlled it.”

“The man in the Levee didn’t.”

“That’s not the point.” She looked away to brush the tears from her eyes. “Dob’s mother is dead too.”

“What? Oh, Neva, I’m—”

“There’s something else,” she said, turning back to find Derek in the middle of standing; had he been coming to hug her? She waved him down. “The necklace from the Anthropology Building is stranger than I thought.” She explained what had happened—and nearly happened—when she’d donned the cowry shells.

He mulled his reply for a moment. “Do you want me to look at it?”

“Later, perhaps, but not here. If it augments your abilities as it did mine ... Better we find that out in a more private place.”

Derek nodded.

“While we’re on the subject ...”

He winced but nodded again.

“Sorry, I’m not used to speaking about it either.” All very true, but she still felt intrusive. “I can’t help being curious, though: what exactly did you do to Wherrit on the Wheel? The way you held his head in your hands ... It was more than just ‘pressure points,’ wasn’t it?”

Derek stared at the Yerkes telescope awhile longer, then glanced up at the nearest chandelier. “I’m not Zeus. I can’t hurl lightning bolts; I’ve never cast more than a few sparks. But you’d be surprised how much electricity there is around us. And in us. More than even the leading electrophysiologists know ... Especially in the head—there are always little flares firing there. Thousands of them at once.”

“You can see them?”

He tapped his temples. “Sense them. Not always well. And I don’t like to tamper with them—it’s a crude process. But sometimes it’s the only way ... Or at least it seems like it.”

Neva couldn’t stop herself from whistling. “So you can change someone’s mind?”

He shook his head. “Usually just their mood.”

“And that’s what you were doing to Wherrit? Calming him?”

“Trying to. It’s not always a sure thing. Your dress worked far better.”

“Still ... Can you read thoughts?”

“No, thankfully. Just emotions. That’s more than enough.”

“Do you need to touch someone for it to work?”

“It makes things easier, but it’s not necessary. Being close is sufficient.”

Neva could see how uncomfortable Derek was becoming, so she held back her other questions. (Does it make you feel like a warlock, blasphemous and damned? Does it hurt? Have you ever changed my mood?) There’d be time for them later. Especially if she was as open as he’d just been. “That must be strange—to be able to affect someone else. I can’t alter other people’s bones, but it’s hard to remember a time I couldn’t reshape my own ... I suppose my real muscles must be pliable as well, and my skin to a degree, but I can’t manipulate them the same way.”

“And Augie?”

“Mimicry.” She described his talent for imitating and projecting voices.

Derek considered this, then smiled ruefully. “That explains a few odd incidents from our childhood.”

“Oh, you got the least of it. He liked using Mrs. DeBell’s voice to yell through the windows at Jasper and Abiah and make them forfeit their allowance to Hatty or donate their sweets to Caleb—the other servants never knew how well they did by Augie.”

Derek chuckled. “It’s good to know someone was setting Jasper and Abiah straight.”

Neva remembered a morning when Abiah had shoved her down so Jasper could splash her with a cup of black paint and a handful of pillow feathers. And how that same afternoon, Augie had used Mrs. DeBell’s voice to compel Jasper to cut a switch and discipline Abiah for looking frightfully ugly, after which she was instructed to lash him in turn for slouching like a gin-soaked gibbon. “He did what he could. Always a prankster—more than anyone suspected.”

“Except you ... I wish we’d known about all this sooner.”

“Me too. And I wish Augie were here to help sort this all out. He was always better at puzzles.”

Neither of them said anything until the waiter came by to leave the check. After the man moved on, Derek pointed at Neva’s gloved hands. “What do you want to do about those?”

“The rashes?”

“Yes.”

She laced