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

She managed to raise her right arm. Could she throw something at Augie? Divert his attention from whatever else he planned to do with Brin’s knife? Except there was nothing in reach. And after another moment of consideration, Augie let the blade drop anyway, its fall cushioned by the carpet of upturned insects.

He wasn’t done with Derek, however.

Augie’s gaze remained fixed on his comatose brother, fingers spasming to produce a ... glove of sparks. Electricity. Had he acquired Derek’s talent at some point during their childhood? He certainly seemed to have mastered whatever intricacies were involved. With a twisted smile, he walked to Derek, crouched, and trailed the sparks over his face.

At first, the flecks of energy only made Derek’s hair stand on end. But the flecks grew bigger, making him twitch harder. Then they coalesced into an enormous bolt that shot into his mouth, ringing his teeth with blue lightning before flashing through his body and causing him to arc his back once, twice ... and go still.

“No!” screamed Neva.

But Augie was already rising and swiveling on his heel to take the few, crunchy steps necessary to cross to her.

She spat at him. “You bastard!”

“It’s true—I am a bastard. And so are you.” He gestured behind him at Derek’s motionless form. “And so was he.”

“Fuck you,” she whispered. She couldn’t hear him through the bone plugs she’d fashioned in her ears, but she was reasonably adept at reading lips.

Augie gave the crates atop her a quick appraisal. “I doubt you’ll have any difficulty twisting out from that. Once you do, be safe, sister. But don’t be curious—don’t look for me. You wouldn’t find me anyway.”

With that, he strode past her, heading down the corridor of crates and out of her limited view.

Two frantic minutes later, Brin began to stir and Neva was finally able to contort her way free of the crates and scramble to Derek.

He still hadn’t moved.

“Derek,” she pleaded, gripping his forearm. “Please ...”

At her touch, the nascent sickles on the backs of his hands wobbled and pulsed, his fingers clenched—

And he gasped.

“Oh, thank God,” Neva breathed, even as she readied herself for Derek to lunge at her in a venom-fueled rage.

But he only shivered, beset by the chills that had wracked her so terribly when her own fever first waxed and waned nine months ago, in this very room.

Brin covered him with a stray tarp. “Jaysus. He’s got it bad.”

Neva unstopped her hearing; it seemed clear Augie wouldn’t be coming back. Ignoring the beads of blood forming on her earlobes, as if she’d pierced them afresh, she examined Derek. From what she could see, he had red crescent shapes in all the spots she’d developed them—on his hands, his stomach, his back—and more besides. His forearms looked like those of a sailor, inked up and down, except with only one design and color. And then there were the bite marks themselves, pocking his skin so thoroughly it looked like he’d been gored by an avalanche of needles.

There was little to be done for him in the storage room, though. And not all the insects were dead. Some—like Brin, Neva, and her brothers—had only been stunned. In all areas of the room, little crescent-marked creatures were righting themselves and scrambling over their fallen brethren. They didn’t have the look of a swarm yet, but she didn’t want to wait for one to reform. “Let’s get him out of here.”

Brin took Derek’s feet again, and Neva his arms. Once they were through the door and into the Machinery Hall proper, the sounds of exterior conflict—which they’d heard increasing instances of while in the storage room—became more prominent. Shouts, curses, gunshots, crashes: plainly, the city’s fighting had come to the Fair.

“Set him there,” Neva grunted, gesturing with her head to a sidewall that had once displayed a cross-section of a steamship engine. They laid him down.

“Heavy bloke,” Brin panted. “Even underfed as he is.”

More gunshots, more shouts—the Court of Honor must be a mess.

Brin pointed away from the main entrance. “Shall we go out the rear?”

“Probably.” Neva considered returning to the storage room for her lamp, but the winter had opened enough holes in Machinery’s roof to let in a fair amount of predawn light, and she didn’t want to crunch back over dead insects again.

“What about Augie?”

“He could be anywhere, anyone, by now ...”

“Oh, I know, and he could have killed us. Easily.”

Neva bit her lip. In Derek’s case, Augie had certainly tried.

“But you heard what he said. About all those people, and your father ... and Kezzie.” The Irishwoman’s gaze was too intense to match for long; after a few seconds, Neva looked away.

Augie hadn’t touched her, even when she’d been helpless after Derek’s wild, indiscriminate shock. Did that mean anything? When weighed against all the rest? Perhaps not, but she wasn’t ready to abandon her other brother just yet. Not when they still had things to discuss.

Like how the necklace had reacted to him, as if springing a trap after dazzling him into taking the bait. While they’d carried Derek out, her ankle had rubbed against one of the shells—it had been half-resting on, half-buried by a mound of (mostly still) insects. The brief contact had made her feel ... nothing. No loosening in her body, no amplification of her ability; just the exoskeleton of a long-dead snail. Nothing remained of the force that had nearly ended Augie.

The shell in her pocket still called to her, however, the one that had broken from the necklace when Derek used it to put down Kam. She withdrew the cowry and held it up to the light.

“Did you make them do that?” asked Brin. “Tightening on him?”

“No.” Neva turned the shell over in her hand. It hadn’t been part of the assault on Augie. Was that why it hadn’t spent its power? “I think we misunderstood the necklace’s purpose. It’s a talisman against bad vodun.