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

Evil spirits,” she clarified when Brin cocked her head. “In their true form, and not some unknowing guise. That must be why it didn’t act before ... We heard the necklace tore a Dahomey clan apart, but maybe they made it to save themselves. Crazy as that sounds.”

“Not that crazy.” Brin pointed at the shell. “Can just the one still do anything?”

“Maybe.” The cowry’s compulsion to be worn—to be borne, to be used—still tugged at Neva, but with significantly less force than the whole necklace had exerted. “If I help you carry Derek out the back, maybe to the Logger’s Cabin, will you watch over him?”

“While you search for Augie?”

She nodded.

Brin wrinkled her nose. “Not likely. Let’s do the reverse. Give me the—”

“I can walk,” Derek protested, startling them both. “And I’m going with you.”

He was afire with fever again; Neva could sense it radiating off him. But his eyes were clear, albeit strained from the effort of repressing urges she remembered all too well.

“No,” she said. “You’re in no condition to help, and the fever isn’t easy to control. I see you fighting it. If you lose that battle, even for a second ...”

“I won’t.” He reached an arm out to brace himself against the wall and struggled to a stand. “Not again.”

She grit her teeth. “Augie tried to kill you while you were out. Nearly did.”

A violent shudder almost unbalanced Derek, but he suppressed the next tremor and squared his jaw. “He’s still my brother.”

There was no arguing with that. Not without hitting Derek over the head or running back to fetch the ropes in the storage room. Try as she might, Neva couldn’t think of a viable alternative. And he was right: this was a family matter.

She offered her shoulder to him. He stiffened when he put his arm around her but didn’t further betray himself. He had the fever in check now, despite their proximity. He’d always been so disciplined. “You don’t have to come,” she said to Brin.

The Irishwoman snorted and moved beneath Derek’s other arm. “Let’s go.”

After stuffing their ears against future whistling—Brin and Derek used bits of his handkerchief; Neva restored her bone plugs—the three exited Machinery via the northeast door, a small entrance that let them peek around the building’s corner before setting foot in the Court of Honor.

It was a wise decision: the heart of the White City, celebrated near and far as a heavenly vision of the future, had become the Devil’s hell-inflected canvas.

Chapter Thirty-Four

THE MINES, ELECTRICITY, and Agriculture Buildings had all sprouted flames, their orange and red tendrils contrasting fiendishly with the white walls and roofs they consumed. Bodies dotted the grounds and waters like litter—crumpled in the open, blown against the bandstands, floating in the Basin. On the west side, a unit of soldiers sheltered in the Railway Station, crouching behind the ticketing counter and shooting through the windows every few seconds. On the east side, men who might have been strikers, rioters, or looters used Administration for cover and returned fire with rocks, scrap, and the odd pistol. Smoke and ash were everywhere. The air stank of burning staff.

“Augie?” mouthed Brin.

Neva shook her head. She recognized some of the combatants, however. Between Administration and Machinery, Wherrit brandished a giant sheet of wood like a shield as he advanced in the direction of a wounded man—one of the refugees who’d wintered in the Fair. Behind Mines, Miles Copeland wheeled on a horse, probably organizing a charge of Pinkertons. In front of Manufactures and Liberal Arts, two women she’d once played cards with crawled on their bellies towards the remains of the Music Hall.

But no Augie—not in any guise Neva knew, at least. And he could be anywhere in the Fair by now. Or have left it entirely. Yet she had a feeling he’d stayed close. The White City had descended into the darkest possible version of itself, but it was still a spectacle, a morbid devolution he wouldn’t be able to resist. And the best place to view such a scene was from on high.

“Let’s try the Midway,” Neva said.

Derek tapped his improvised earplugs.

“The Midway,” she repeated, but more slowly, giving him time to read her lips.

He and Brin nodded. Then they all ran.

Their pace was labored, closer to a trot than a sprint. Partly because Brin and Neva still had to support Derek, obliging them to maneuver as a single entity with six legs. But also because there were guns or flames (or both) to avoid at every turn, even though they took pains to circle around the Court of Honor.

The first such obstacle arose as they headed south along Machinery. At the end of the Canal, several strikers huddled behind the Obelisk, occasionally darting out to shoot or throw something at four soldiers who’d taken up sniping positions in the arched doors of the tunnels beneath the Colonnade.

“This way,” Neva mouthed, steering Brin and Derek away from the fire zone and into Machinery via the southeast entrance, then through the rear of the building. A skirmish in the Annex forced them to slip into the adjoining Machine Shop and Boiler House. They were safe there for the space of twenty yards or so—until a bullet whizzed by Brin’s face and another ricocheted through Derek’s legs.

Neva ducked behind a half-dismantled boiler, its remaining components dull with dust. Peering out, she caught sight of a soldier guarding the west exit, rifle aimed their way and lips shouting something that might have been “God-damned strikers!” He must have seen the white ribbons they still wore on their chests.

Derek and Brin knelt beside her.

“Back?” the Irishwoman asked, gesturing the way they’d come.

Neva grimaced. They’d be exposed as soon as they moved away from the boiler. And the fight in the Annex had been bad: ten or so soldiers and upwards of twenty strikers. Returning there would be no safer.

“I’ll distract him,” she said, deliberately enough for Brin and Derek to make out. “You get clear.”

Derek started to object,