Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1) by Nick Wisseman (popular books to read .TXT) 📗

She made it up several rungs before she felt Wiley jump on below—the ladder shook with the force of his climbing. They both sustained a breakneck pace, but the porter had the advantage by several stories, and he reached the upper platform well ahead of them. After glancing down, he opened the lone door and vanished through it.

Neva pulled herself onto the platform a half-minute later and vaulted through the doorway. She landed on the roof in a crouch, raising her hands in case she needed to bend their bones into shields.

But the porter had vanished. And she smelled smoke.

The siren atop the Machinery Hall blared as Wiley emerged behind her. “It’s the tower,” he growled, gesturing above them. Cold Storage actually had three towers, but he was jabbing at the closest, which had been erected on the building’s west side to conceal the boilers’ unsightly smokestack. “There’s a gap between the top of the stack and the cupola, just above the third landing. It’s like ending the chimney in the attic instead of above the roof. Bastards were supposed to fix it after the flare-up in June.”

Whatever they’d done hadn’t worked: smoke issued out of the west tower from every window.

Neva raced to the roof’s edge, scanning for the porter as she went. “A fire engine’s on its way,” she said, motioning to the Court of Honor, where one of the Fair’s horse-drawn wagons labored to navigate the still-disorderly crowd. “And I see the Fire Boat in the Lagoon.”

“It’s too far for the Boat’s hoses.” Wiley moved cautiously to her side; he seemed less than comfortable standing on the building’s precipice. “They’ll have to lug them to the roof and scale the tower to the second landing—that’s what they did this summer. Come on. We need to get down.”

“Not yet. Where’s the porter?”

“Getting to safety, if he has any sense. As we should be. The staircase in the north tower should be clear. I’ll see you down and then come back up to help. Now, if you please ...”

Neva took Wiley’s arm and raised it to point at the west tower again. “There: on the second landing. You see him?”

The porter was traversing a narrow ledge, smoke and flame billowing from the windows above and below him.

Chapter Seven

“FLAMING HELL,” WILEY said, without irony, and took a step toward the burning tower. “Why on Earth did he climb that? It must have already been smoking.”

Neva watched the porter scramble around a corner. “He’s panicked.”

“Because he’s a fool.” Wiley took off his coat and held it out to her. “Wear this on the stairs—it’ll keep the soot off.”

She shook her head. “We need to get him down.”

“I will get him down. You need to meet the other guards and tell them what’s happening.” He waggled the coat. “Please.”

Neva observed the porter for another moment and nodded. “Keep your coat—you’ll need the protection more than me.” After nudging Wiley towards the west tower, she sprinted to its northern counterpart and raced down to the fifth floor, where she nearly ran into several Columbian Guards hauling up immense coils of rope.

“The killer from the Pier is trapped on the west tower,” Neva said as the breathless guards indicated she should make way for them. “Wiley went up after him.”

“Noble idiot,” one of the guards muttered.

“Get clear!” another barked before pounding past her.

She descended a few more steps—just enough to be convincing—before doubling back and trailing the guards onto the roof. The men ran to the west tower and set the coils of rope at its base. Then they broke into teams. The first stayed on the main roof and threw one end of each rope to the fire-wagons mustering below; the second team took the ropes’ other ends, fastened them about their waists, and began climbing the lowest of the three wooden ladders attached to the tower’s exterior.

“Wiley!” yelled one of the climbers. “Get your rusty guts back here!”

Wiley waved from the second landing. Then he pointed at the third and swung onto the ladder that led to it. Hopefully he knew where the porter had gone—their quarry had vanished.

Judging that everyone else on the roof was occupied, Neva abandoned the concealment of a small vent stack and dashed for the west tower. Several guards were still on the first ladder, but she didn’t need it. And scaling the north side should hide her from Wiley and his brethren.

Latching onto the tower’s decorative carvings, she adjusted the fit of her hands to each hold by imagining a cat extending and retracting its claws. The bending hurt worse than usual: she was moving fast enough that her finger bones often had to bear her weight before they’d finished reforming. She couldn’t let the porter die, though. Not without learning what he knew about the blue-trimmed handkerchief—and Augie.

Bending her toes would help. But as she kicked off her shoes, someone below called out about a “Negress on the tower!” Neva glanced down. An enormous crowd had gathered to watch the firefighting efforts.

Thousands of fairgoers gawked at the Cold Storage Building, the panic in the Court of Honor replaced by morbid curiosity. Some balanced awkwardly on skates—the ice rink must have been evacuated with no time to change. Other onlookers held bits of food, likely carried out from nearby restaurants.

The crowd cheered when the first hose—attached to one of the ropes the guards had thrown down—began to rise, hauled up by the team on the main roof. Neva continued her own ascent as quickly as she could without seeming unnatural. Her progress still drew plenty of commentary, however, and one of the guards who’d reached the first landing tried to grab her as she passed. She dodged by sliding around the tower’s far corner and onto the side with a sheer drop to the grounds. The crowd gasped, its collective inhalation audible even at such a height.

The crowd repeated the sound when the porter appeared on the third landing. Backed by