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

that morning—and ignored her stomach’s sense of loss; in the part of her mind that was perpetually hungry these days, she’d already imagined biting into the jerky at least ten times. “Eat this.”

He did so with heartbreaking speed.

“I have to work again. Stay out of trouble until I get back.”

“Yes, Miss Neva.”

Such a good boy.

After leaving him, she went to complete her second task, at Machinery Hall. Almost no one squatted here anymore. The winter had wrought extensive damage to the roof, resulting in downpours onto the empty floor every time it rained, as it had a few days ago. And the few homeless who still shared the building with her were nowhere to be seen.

So Neva didn’t have to hide how she picked the lock to the storage room, bending and extending her finger inside the keyhole as she’d done so many times over the past nine months. And she didn’t have to worry that anyone would see the insects milling about inside, bugs of all shapes and sizes, more than should have been clustered in any one area—she’d have to sleep elsewhere tonight.

She still shut the door behind her, however. Best to be safe. No sense taking chances that someone would overcome their aversion to the pests and wander in, follow the winding corridor of crates, and come on the back area and its contents: a body.

A body clothed in a stained tweed jacket.

A body whose hands and feet were bound, and mouth gagged.

A body that twitched when Neva touched her fingers to its right wrist, nodded, and removed the cowry shell necklace from around its neck.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

EVEN THOUGH NEVA HAD seen the Transportation Building’s model of Pullman Town several times during the Fair—and despite the fact that she hated whistling now—a windy note escaped her lips when she exited the Illinois Central station and got her first look at the real thing. She hadn’t been treated to a view this impressive in months.

To the east, beyond the manmade Lake Vista, rose the Pullman factories, artful buildings that managed to suggest both efficiency and beauty—a far cry from the grubby chaos of the Union Stockyards. To the north were the spacious, freestanding houses of executives and managers. And while the tenements and rooming houses to the south were smaller, their construction evoked the same elegance, and trees lined their streets as they did everywhere else. The level of intent that had gone into the community’s design was plain.

Yet this was not a model town: no one worked. The factories were silent.

Neva fingered the white ribbon she’d pinned to her jacket. The strip of pale fabric was a gift from Brin and signified solidarity with the striking workers. The Irishwoman had also provided train fare to and from Pullman Town, a welcome charity.

Brin led the way off the platform and headed south. A few blocks of walking took them into the tenement-housing neighborhood, which, despite the recent strife, was remarkably clean—Pullman must be maintaining the town for appearance’s sake.

“Are there soldiers here?” asked Neva.

“A few. But most are at the rail stations, trying to get the trains moving.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Eugene’s hoping the soldiers will help us by ‘ensuring order and allowing us to continue boycotting peacefully.’”

Neva nodded. Eugene Debs was the leader of the American Railway Union and a bit of an optimist. “You don’t agree?”

“I think it’s fanciful. But he brought us this far.”

Neva was tempted to add Without blowing anything up. But the impulse made her think of Wiley, which made her fall silent.

“Lady Brin!” a man sang as they turned the corner onto what a sign proclaimed to be 114th Street. He was remarkably tall, towering over a wagon filled with sacks labeled “Rice” and “Grain.” A long line of women and children had queued up nearby in front of a makeshift table—two boards on two crates—off to one side.

Neva suppressed the urge to join them.

Brin just rolled her eyes. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Be that as it may,” the man said, “any girl who doubles the Cook County Board’s donation of free food is a lady to me.”

One woman close enough to hear curtsied to Brin. Another made a prayer sign with her hands and murmured, “God bless you.”

Neva eyed her obviously discomfited companion. Now that she looked close, the Irishwoman’s clothing was finer than she remembered—subtly so, but the threads were tighter, and the fabric higher quality. “Did you come into an inheritance?”

“Of sorts.” Brin gestured toward the other end of the street. “Are they still meeting in the repair shop?”

“Probably,” the tall man answered. “They were due to finish ten minutes ago, but I doubt everyone’s said their piece.”

“Thank you, Michael.”

“Milady,” he said with a grin, doffing his hat.

She wrinkled her nose and strode off.

Neva studied the line a bit longer before following. The children were better dressed than their tattered counterparts at the fairgrounds, but many were just as thin. “How bad is it here?”

“The winter was hard,” Brin said without turning around. “And while the boycott’s necessary, it’s made things harder still.”

“Bad enough that you’re buying grain for those that can’t afford it?”

Brin clucked her tongue and pointed to a large building on the corner. “They’ve been using the town repair shop for meetings. Derek should be there.”

He was—front and center.

“This is it,” he said as Neva and Brin came in through the back. He was standing on a workbench, gazing out over his audience of grim-faced white men and a few similarly dour white women. “Soldiers have entered Chicago, and even Pullman Town itself. This is the tipping point—the moment our boycott triumphs or fails.”

“He’s with the strikers?” whispered Neva.

“Since the beginning,” the Irishwoman whispered back.

Neva gave Derek a closer look. He seemed a touch careworn, but otherwise the same. And yet he’d turned against Pullman—the situation must be dire indeed to have affected such a shift in her brother.

“Everything we’ve worked for,” he continued, “everything we have is at stake now.