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

“HATTY?” ASKED DEREK stupidly as the old woman started to thrash against her bonds. He turned to Neva, bewilderment contorting his face. “What is this? Why is she here? Why is she tied?”

Neva knelt to slip off Hatty’s gag.

“Children!” she said in a relieved voice, blinking her eyes against the lantern’s light. “Oh, thank the Lord.” She strained against the ropes again. “Please take these off me. They’re so tight, and I’m so hungry.”

“We will,” Neva said, holding a hand up to Derek, who’d started to move to Hatty’s side. “In a moment. First, we need to know how you got here.”

“And so quickly,” Derek added, casting an accusatory look at Neva—no doubt he was wondering how the old woman had beaten them here with the trains down.

“I wish I knew,” Hatty said. “I’ve been wondering that since I woke up. But I can’t remember; can’t remember anything.” She held up her hands. “Please. They hurt so bad.”

“How long has it been since you woke?” asked Neva, motioning again for Derek to stay back.

“I don’t know, child—there are no windows in here. Several hours, I think.” Hatty extended her hands further. “Please? I’m the next thing to starving.”

“In a moment. Do you remember the last time you spoke with us?”

“Not as such, child. I expect it’s been months. Longer, in Derek’s case. Why does it matter?”

“We just need to understand why you’re here. What happened to your dress?”

“What dress, child?”

“Your yellow dress. You were wearing it the last time I saw you.” Neva glanced at Derek, who seemed to have finally registered that Hatty was garbed in a tweed jacket and matching trousers.

“I ... I don’t know. I expect it’s in my closet. Are you going to untie me now?”

“One more question.” Neva passed the lantern to Derek, whose brow was so furrowed it had taken on the texture of bark. The transfer caused the light in the room to wobble for a moment, to skitter across the (unmarked) backs of hundreds of insects. Hatty’s eyes passed over one of the shiniest patches without blinking.

“Do you recognize this?” asked Neva, withdrawing the cowry shell necklace from her pocket.

Hatty’s face didn’t just light up: it was like a firework went off behind her eyes. “What are those?”

“So you haven’t seen them before?”

“Never—I’d remember that. May I hold them?”

“Of course.” Neva let the cowry shells fall into the old woman’s hands. Then, while she marveled over the necklace, Neva circled behind her and caught Derek’s eyes. “Trust me?”

He glanced down at Hatty, who was spreading the necklace’s cord above her head and murmuring happily. Wincing, he returned his gaze to Neva and nodded.

She nodded too. And when Hatty donned the shells, and her skin curdled and discolored, Neva whipped out the knife she always carried on her belt now and slit the old woman’s throat.

“Neva!” cried Derek. “Shit! I didn’t mean for you to—”

“Wait!” She pulled a heavily stained rag off a hook and wiped the blood from her blade. “Just wait.”

Derek looked set to say more, but Hatty’s skin calmed as suddenly as it had boiled.

Then it flickered again.

Then it grayed.

Not all at once. It was as if she was a pool of dark ink, and someone was adding drop after drop of white, each one causing a ripple, a swirl, and—eventually—a lightening. When the transformation was over, Hatty had the look of a dull cloud, her features blurred to the point that she was barely recognizable.

Derek’s grip on the lantern had grown so light, Neva was afraid he would drop it and set the room ablaze. “What is this?” he whispered hoarsely.

“This,” she replied softly, sheathing her knife, “is a skinchanger.”

“IT’S THE SAME PATTERN every time,” Neva explained once she’d reclaimed the necklace and coaxed Derek into the front of the storage room. “The body essentially goes to wax. At first, it feels cool to the touch. But after a week or so—faster, if I leave the shells on it—warmth returns, and a fresh guise takes hold. A few days later, the guise solidifies, the eyes open ... and I’m talking to a new person. They don’t remember who I am, how they got here, or much of anything else. Sometimes not even their name. But if you saw them on the street, you wouldn’t blink an eye. They’d look absolutely, unremarkably normal.”

Derek watched as a herd of beetles disappeared into a hole in the wall.

“That happens too,” she added. “The insects disperse—for a while at least. Until the next person is about to wake up. It’s handy, actually; like a signal flare. When the bugs return, I know another guise is about to wake.”

Derek considered a chair several centipedes had just vacated. He stayed standing. “How long?”

Neva looked down at her hands. “Nine months. Since October.”

“The day you disappeared?”

“Yes.”

Derek gestured toward the back area. “How many?”

Neva pointed at the front wall, the center of which was marred by a set of tally marks scratched into its staff coating. “Sixteen now—seventeen, if you count Wiley.”

Her brother digested this for a moment, obviously not wanting to ask the logical question ... and obviously being unable to hold it in. “And why would you count Wiley?” he said eventually.

She told him (most of it).

His face stiffened.

She cried.

“That seems a bit of a delayed reaction,” Derek noted, offering her his handkerchief.

“I’m sorry.” Neva dabbed her eyes and passed the cloth back. “I’ve been sick, and this hasn’t been easy.”

“And yet, you’ve managed to slit sixteen throats ... Seventeen, if you count Wiley.”

“He was an accident, and so was the one after him; I hadn’t started binding the body yet when that guise woke. It was confused. Understandably, I suppose. She came at me so fast—I didn’t have a choice.”

“But after that?”

Neva sank into the chair her brother had been contemplating. “Yes, Derek, I had a choice every time after. Why do you think I chose as I did?”

He turned his hands over, as if inviting her to deposit the