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

I don’t remember yesterday at all; I think I slept through it. Maybe I stopped breathing at one point, and they thought ... well, what anyone would think.”

“What I thought.” Neva glided her hand up to his other shoulder, squeezing it to make sure he was real, her hand brushing his neck in the process. “I still don’t believe it ... The others—have you told them?”

Wiley’s gaze grew even murkier. “The Guard?”

“No—Brin, and Roland, and Pieter, and Quill. Have you seen them? Did they ... Oh, not now.” She’d been wrong: her fever hadn’t been the ordinary sort. Fueled by the insects’ venom, the heat was rising in her again, enflaming her body and her mind. It was bad this time, almost as bad as that first night. But she’d been getting better ... hadn’t she?

“Neva?” asked Wiley.

“Inside,” she panted. “Help me inside.” She needed to contain the fever, needed to be contained. The storage room would do for both.

Neva tried to lean on Wiley’s proffered arm, but her leg chose that moment to give out again, and she fell against his injured side. She gasped louder than he did—with barely a wince, he bent and scooped her up in his arms.

A few sturdy strides saw them inside the storage room. “The back,” Neva murmured when Wiley seemed unsure where to set her. She was burning up now; it wouldn’t have surprised her to see the Boer’s clothing smoldering where it touched her skin. He even felt hot himself.

As he navigated the corridor of crates, she tried to summon the chill that normally signaled the fever’s abatement. She needed the cold, needed frost in her veins.

But as Wiley laid her atop the back area's blankets and folded his coat into a pillow, the warmth within her only increased, scalding the undersides of her skin. The cold wasn’t coming. She was going to roast from the inside out, a stopped-up geyser accumulating steam and pressure that couldn’t—but had to—be released. If she didn’t find a way to let the heat go, to channel it, she was, quite literally, going to burn to death.

So she kissed Wiley.

She hadn’t planned to, but he’d been leaning over her, trying to arrange the makeshift mattress into something more comfortable. And as his mouth parted to ask a question, she pressed her lips to his.

Yet this was no tentative peck.

Her flesh was aflame, and the kiss reflected that fire, her mouth opening and closing, tongue darting and caressing. Wiley was stunned into passivity for a moment. Yet it wasn’t long before he matched her heat, returning the kiss and running his hands up and down her near-naked body; she was wearing clean smallclothes, but that was it—that was all he had to remove while she unbuttoned his old-fashioned trousers.

Then he was inside her.

Their lovemaking was at once wild and tender. Wild, because Neva translated her fever into a passion Wiley eagerly returned. Tender, because even in the throes, they were careful to avoid each other’s injuries, he putting no weight on her thigh and she none on his torso.

Her bandage was spotted red when they finished, though; there had been too much motion, too much energy for it to be otherwise. But it was a fair trade. The fever was spent—just as they were—and Neva only slightly chilled. Nothing burrowing into Wiley’s arms couldn’t fix.

“Are you ... all right now?” he asked haltingly, as if he were having trouble believing what had just happened.

She folded herself further into his warmth, his chest hair surprisingly soft. “Yes. I’m better.”

“Your leg—did I hurt it? You’re bleeding again.”

“It’s fine. I probably just tugged the stitches a bit. And your side?”

“Right this second, I feel good as new.” He tightened his arm around her protectively.

They lay like that for some minutes: comfortable, happy, safe ... Until Neva remembered what Wiley’s fellow Boer had revealed before she’d blacked out two nights ago. “Pieter said there was a girl in South Africa: Anele. Did you—”

“What is this?” His healing embrace loosened, then deserted her as he wriggled free.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, craning her neck to look at him. But he didn’t appear hurt or angry that she’d overstepped. He was reaching for the basket Brin had left behind that morning—it smelled even more of apples when Wiley opened it. “Oh, that’s just breakfast ... Dinner now, I suppose. Help yourself.”

Yet he withdrew not an apple, or the cheese Neva could smell now too, but the cowry shell necklace.

“What is this?” he repeated, holding it by the leather cord, his eyes alight.

What was this indeed? Had the artifact called to Wiley? Sung out to him even though he had no ability Neva knew of? And no bite marks or rashes on his body—she could see all of it, and there were none.

“Wiley,” she said, shivering from more than just chills, “don’t.”

He put the necklace on anyway.

And as his skin spasmed and discolored, curdling like multicolored milk, the fever roared back in Neva, fanning the flames of her horror and compelling her to roll over, lower her head, and project her spine into Wiley’s throat, her vertebrae acting like barbs as she retracted the jagged bone spear and tore out his Adam’s apple.

Part II

Chicago: July 1894

Chapter Twenty-Six

WILEY COLLAPSED TO the floor, blood gushing from his throat and sluicing down Neva’s back. When her spine returned to its proper alignment, bits of windpipe spattered the floor.

She shook her head. Now wasn’t the time for flagellating herself with memories—not with federal soldiers marching into the Court of Honor. And yet ...

The cowry shells slid from Wiley’s limp grasp, and his skin calmed immediately. She tried to take his hand, but the strength drained out of her as suddenly as the fever.

She pulled back from the railing she’d been leaning against on Manufactures and Liberal Arts’ southern rooftop promenade. But the soldiers weren’t here for her: they broke cadence within a few strides, their precise motions devolving into the shambolic, uncoordinated steps