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

She needed to soften him first. “Why do you think I barricaded this room so no one would come in while the Fair was being dismantled? Why do you think I started binding the body as it regenerated? Regenerated, mind you, like some horrible lizard. Why do you think I watched over this thing for most of a year, alone in the shell of the White City, enduring hunger and cold, while taking a knife to each new guise to continue the cycle? Why, Derek? Because I enjoyed it? Do you really think me such a witch?”

“No, but ... Christ in Heaven, Neva, what am I supposed to think?”

The energy went out of her. “I’m sorry. I know this must look mad. I’m not sure it isn’t.” She gripped the front legs of her chair. “But I think the person in the back—the core person; not the guises—set everything in motion last summer. The insects, the brands, the deaths: it’s responsible for all of them.”

“And why are you so sure?”

“The insects, for one. That much seems clear. They haven’t tried to bite me again, or anyone else I know of. It’s almost like they’re ... waiting for direction.”

Derek scanned to either side—there was barely a bug to be seen now. “All right. Why else?”

“I recognized some of the guises. Not the first few, but the fifth was a trapeze artist from Barnum & Bailey’s.”

“The circus?”

“Yes. She—Nora—disappeared one day about two years ago, never to be seen again ... until last December, when she made an appearance in the back.” Neva gestured at the rear of the storeroom.

Derek mulled this over before nodding for her to continue. “Who else?”

“The eleventh guise, a Mr. Percy Coggins.” Neva paused to see if this registered with Derek. He gave her a blank look. “One of the victims from the Fair,” she elaborated. “I didn’t know him by sight, but his name was in the papers. And that guise knew who he was; I checked up on him after. Went to his house and managed to see a picture of him. It was a mirror image.”

“Eerie.”

“Very. Not all the guises are of the deceased, of course—you saw Hatty hale and whole just a few hours ago. And there was another guise that remembered himself enough to give me an address. When I went there, the living original answered the door.”

“Christ,” Derek murmured.

“Lastly, I think the skinchanger is responsible because of what happened with Wiley and Mr. DeBell.” Neva slumped after saying this—it was one of the worst pieces of the puzzle, almost as bad as Augie being the porter.

“And what did happen with Edward?”

“He died.”

“Yes, in the Administration Building—”

“No, in the Stockyards.”

Derek blinked. “Oh.”

“You see it now.”

He winced but spelled it out anyway. “The body the Pinkertons originally thought was Edward’s—that was him in truth?”

“Yes. Probably killed shortly after he mailed his letter to you.”

“God’s wounds ... And the Edward at the Administration Building—”

“Was the skinchanger, in Mr. DeBell’s guise.”

“I suppose that explains how the undertaker ‘lost’ Edward’s body.”

“Right. The skinchanger woke in Mr. DeBell’s coffin, but in Wiley’s guise, walked out ...”

“And came to see you.”

Neva imagined herself adopting an impassive expression, willing herself to do so. She’d explained how she’d killed Wiley’s guise, but not how she’d lain with it first. She wasn’t ready to speak of that.

“God’s wounds,” Derek repeated. “Is it the blood, then? Is that why he—it—kills his victims? Does he need to ... take some of their flesh in order to make it his own?”

“He doesn’t necessarily need to kill them. There’s Hatty, remember, and the fellow I met. But yes, I think the skinchanger has to have a reference point for each new guise. The newspapers seem to have been right about that much: the consumption of the victims is real.” She shuddered. “In the Administration Building, Wiley’s blood splashed everywhere. And I saw a fleck of his ribs fly into the gunshot wound in the chest of Mr. DeBell’s guise. That must be enough.”

Derek began to pace. “The insects, though, and the brands. And the fever—what of them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the bugs had a trace of the skinchanger’s madness in their bite? Perhaps that’s why it made me so crazed ... so bloodthirsty. Brin said it was the same with her. It would explain why Augie did what he did.”

Their brother’s name provoked a long silence as Derek completed a second circuit of the room and Neva tried not to think about Augie’s terrible last moments.

“All right,” Derek said as he started his third lap. “All right. If this is true—and I’ll confess I find myself believing more of it than I would have thought possible—then why are you still here? Why are you doing this?” He made a cutting motion with his hand, miming the slice of her knife. “Why not burn the skinchanger and be done with it? If burning would even end matters ...”

“I’m not sure it would,” she said quietly. “But as for me, I’ll ask you again: why do you think I chose as I did?”

Derek stopped pacing and gazed at the back of the storage room. “You want to see Augie again.”

“And Mr. DeBell. And Wiley. Maybe Kezzie, too, for Brin; they’re all in there somewhere. Waiting to be brought out.” Neva cocked her head to regard her brother—her living brother—from a different angle. “Wouldn’t you like to see Mr. DeBell once more? Talk to him one last time, now that you know the truth?”

“But it wouldn’t really be him.”

“No, it would be a guise. Of course. But what if the guise remembered enough to tell you what you want to know?”

“It’s random, this process? You can’t predetermine which guise will appear?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Then what if, in trying to wake a certain guise, you rouse the core aspect—the skinchanger itself?”

Neva’s eyes narrowed. “Then we could have justice.”

“Is that what you’re waiting for?”

She considered telling him the rest of it: that she thought she knew who the