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

inside the Ho-o-den. Instead, Neva went to the shore behind it, standing just shy of the water lapping against the flowered bank. “Augie,” she said eventually, after several false starts, “you were a scamp and a scoundrel, but you were always there for me. While we lived at the DeBells’, you made me laugh when I felt out of place. While we toured with the circus, you smoothed the way with the other performers and gained their acceptance. While we worked at this fair, you kept me from being overwhelmed.”

She paused, debating whether to utter the next words, then pushed them out. “And when that white man raped me and would have done worse, you were there to break his damn neck.”

Derek looked horrified, as well he might. But although the memory was fresh upon her—made raw again by the vivid dreams she’d had since being bitten—the assault had occurred five years ago, at Barnum & Bailey. There was nothing more to be done about it; Augie had made sure of that.

“You helped me find the strength to get back on stage,” she continued. “You were always there for me, a true brother: the only blood I thought I had in the world. But now you’re gone.

“Now you’re gone,” she repeated after a moment. “And I must make my own way. I don’t know how ... But I will try to follow the example you set, to remember your joy when I’m low and your courage when I’m afraid. I will remember all of you—I will always remember.

“Rest in peace, dear brother,” she finished after another aching pause. Taking the ashes from her pocket, she sprinkled a few flakes into the Lagoon, then tossed the rest high, a black-and-white handful that cut a sooty arc through the air before falling to the surface and muddying the blue water.

Derek bore witness with her as the ash dispersed. Before it was gone altogether, he unfolded Mr. DeBell’s letter—the full letter—stared at it for a second, and crumpled the message into a ball. “Rest in peace, father,” he said, throwing the wad of paper into the Lagoon, amidst the last tendrils of wet ash. “Fret no more.”

She took Derek’s hand and led him to a nearby bench. They stared at the water for several more minutes before he broke their reverie in a soft, anguished voice. “Three years ago, while you were at the circus, I got a girl with child.”

Neva looked at him in surprise but didn’t say anything.

“Or at least, she said it was mine. And I believed her, despite the shame. Although I’m sure Lucretia expected nothing more from her husband’s bastard ... Edward saw us married in a simple ceremony, and Catherine—that was her name—and I moved to Pullman Town; he’d helped secure me a position there as a draftsman. All was well until the baby came.”

Derek exhaled his next breath heavily; Neva held hers in.

“It was colored,” he finally said.

Neva clapped her hand over her mouth. “You didn’t think it was yours.”

His face contorted so violently she thought it might break. “Why would I?”

“Oh, Derek, I’m so sorry.”

He shook his hand in a way that suggested there was more to the story. “What could I do but divorce her?” he choked out. “I had grounds and no reason to think they weren’t just—because Edward didn’t tell me then. He should have told me then.”

Neva put her hand on Derek’s shoulder, but he shrugged her off.

“Dissolving the marriage wasn’t difficult. The baby’s skin tone was all the proof I needed. I even gave Catherine my savings, meager as they were, to help her start a new life. But she never stopped swearing that the child was mine, that she’d never been with anyone else, that I was her first and only.” He leaned over to pluck a twig from the ground, sat back up, snapped the thin wood, and discarded it. “I didn’t believe her.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“She wouldn’t leave it alone. Catherine said it wasn’t about the stain on her honor; she just wanted me to accept that the child was mine. But I couldn’t—presumed there was no reason to—and she grew distraught. Miserable. Frantic. And still, she wouldn’t leave me alone. So I changed her.”

It was Neva’s turn to exhale forcefully. Now she saw where this was going. “Oh, Derek ...”

“I took her head in my hands,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper but speeding up his cadence. “And for a moment, it made her pathetically happy: she thought I’d finally changed my mind. But I only held her because I needed to feel the flickers in her brain as fully as I could, the charge of her thoughts. I’d never tried to do that before, not to make a lasting adjustment. But I was desperate, and it made me reckless. Which made me arrogant. Which made me careless—she wasn’t the same after.

“Oh, it worked,” he murmured in answer to Neva’s unasked question. “She never insisted the baby was mine again. She never insisted the baby was anyone’s; she forgot all about it. Wandered Pullman Town in a daze, then disappeared ... She sent her mother a postcard from London that summer, but no one’s heard from her since.”

Neva wet her lips. “And the child?”

Derek sighed, and for a moment she feared the worst, but his reply wasn’t as horrific as she’d imagined. Just tragic. “I took her to an orphanage, one that accepted colored children.” He bent to gather the halves of the twig he’d snapped, but instead of doing them further injury, he merely rubbed them slowly against each other. “She’s no longer there—I checked after Edward sent me the letter ... But she’s gone. They lost the adoption records.”

Neva took her brother’s hand, and this time he didn’t pull back. “What was her name?”

“Melody.” He didn’t speak the word so much as it was pulled out of him, yanked forth like a knife that had been lodged in his gut—after grunting with