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

argument, but ... I like the music.” She shook her head as the performance ended and the rest of the crowd drifted away. “Never mind. The guards look bored.”

Several Columbian Guardsmen were still stationed around the village, presumably watching for signs of cannibalism—or whatever other “deviant” behaviors the press had sensationalized. Most of the sentries wore the same resigned expression, although one kept tapping his foot even though the music had stopped, and the eyes of another roved ceaselessly between the Fon women.

“Do they speak English?” asked Derek while Neva considered who in the village to approach and how to do so.

“Not much, but some of them know French.”

“Ah, right. I forgot they’re a colony now.”

“You were always better at languages—would you mind interpreting?”

He shrugged. “I’ll do my best.”

Most of the Fon dancers and musicians were retiring to the thatched houses. But the village’s artisans hadn’t stopped crafting: even at this late hour, the blacksmith pumped his goatskin bellows, and the carvers whittled intricate trinkets out of wood. Neva approached one of the latter workers, a lean fellow of about thirty who seemed to be minding the table of goods for sale.

“Hello,” she said after he’d acknowledged her with a grin.

“Hello,” he repeated with a delightful accent before spreading his arms to encompass the items on the table. “Everything one nickel.”

“Quick learners,” Derek remarked.

Neva ignored him, took a deep breath, and withdrew the necklace from her pocket. It fairly begged her to put it on, promising warmth and wellbeing and fluidness, but she managed to just hold it. “I was hoping you could tell me about this.”

The Fon’s face brightened when he saw the cowries. Holding up four fingers—one for each shell—he pointed at his goods again. “You take four.”

Derek shook his head. “He thinks you’re offering the shells as currency.”

“Understandable, I suppose.” Neva shook her head too, but at the Fon. “Can you ask in French?”

Derek obliged. The Fon listened, seemed to understand, looked at the necklace again ... and frowned. Turning in his seat, he called out in what must have been his native tongue. A short while later, a tall woman emerged from the nearest thatched house.

She cut a striking figure.

Her clothing was relatively modest. Earlier in the year, when the Fair had sweltered with Chicago’s summer heat, the Fon women had scandalized onlookers (and delighted the press) with their knee-length skirts and loose tunics. But now that the season had changed, the inhabitants of the Dahomey Village wore heavier garb. Still, this woman’s athletic build was readily apparent—the way she stalked towards them made Neva almost credit accounts of an Amazonian unit of female Fon warriors.

The table-minder pointed at the necklace. His countrywoman studied it for a moment, then reached out her hand. “May I hold it?” she asked in perfect French.

Neva forced herself to drop the shells into the tall woman’s palm. The ensuing sense of loss was both excruciating and welcome.

The tall woman raised the cowries to within an inch of her nose, adopted the same frown as the table-minder, and gave Neva a piercing look. “You should not have these.”

She tried not to betray any guilt about her sticky fingers in the Anthropology Building. “Why?”

Lowering the necklace to an empty spot on the table, the tall woman arranged the cowries so that two were on one side of the cord and two on the other. Then she pressed the bottom of the top shells to the top of the bottom shells, angling them so their score marks aligned. Finally, she touched the intersection of the first pair to the intersection of the second. The combined shape looked like a crudely rounded X. But when Neva focused on the apertures, their lines formed something more elegant.

And terrifying.

Derek nearly choked in surprise. “Good God, is that ...”

It was. Neva closed her eyes, but the symbol was still there when she opened them. The mark that had changed her life. The rash that had scarred her body up and down. The insects’ emblem.

Two adjoined crescents.

Chapter Nineteen

THE TALL WOMAN GAUGED Neva’s reaction correctly: “You’ve seen this mark before.”

She gripped the table’s edge. “Yes. What does it mean?”

The tall woman scooped up the shells as if breaking their pattern quickly was important. But she didn’t give them back. “Where did you get this?”

Hesitating, Neva glanced at Derek. “Can you tell her they’re a family heirloom?”

He did, and the tall woman replied faster than Neva could follow.

“She says, ‘Of all the things to save when your ancestors crossed the ocean,’” Derek translated after Neva tapped his arm, “‘why this? Why not an herb, or a bit of earth, to remind you of whence you came? Why not something gentler? Kinder? Safer?’”

“I’m not sure how to answer that. Just keep asking her what the crescents mean.”

Derek did so as other Fon gathered around the table, looking more curious than concerned. The tall woman shooed them away before responding.

“‘I’m not a thief,’” he translated again, “‘so I won’t take this from you. But you should destroy it—each shell in a different place.’”

The tall woman offered the necklace to Neva.

Would it have been wiser to recoil? To close her hand on the air and leave? Probably. Yet that didn’t stop her from grabbing the shells and stuffing them in her pocket. “Ask her why.”

“‘The cowry form the sign of a bad vodun, spirit guardian to a worse clan, dead now for many generations. You don’t want their ghosts interceding on your behalf.’”

“But why?”

The tall woman shook her head. “‘Disregard this, if you like. Pretend it’s merely the superstition of savages and ignore that your priests sound just as fanciful when they swear snakes can talk and men can change water into wine. But believe me when I tell you this clan was twisted and wrong, maddened by bad blood.’” She stepped away from the table. “‘That is all I will say. Go.’”

“And do what?”

“‘I’ve already told you: destroy the shells. Go.’” The tall woman turned and strode back into her