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

It was only a trinket to him.

“Do you have a favorite?” she asked as levelly as she could, just to be certain.

“Probably this sword,” he said, pointing at a wooden blade embedded with shark teeth on either side. “I’m not sure how effective it would be, but it looks fearsome.”

Neva wanted to spit. “Indeed,” she said instead. If Derek wasn’t drawn to the necklace ... then maybe he wasn’t blessed (cursed?) with any abilities other than the mundane gifts God gave everyone. Unless you had to be bitten to hear the call—but why would that matter?

Regardless, the necklace called to her stronger than ever.

“Stand behind me,” she whispered tersely, pulling out her exhibitor’s pass and hanging it by its cord from her neck. If someone should happen into the room, and Derek didn’t block their view, the pass might make her look vaguely official. Maybe. She wouldn’t need long, though.

Derek did as she’d asked, but not without question: “What exactly am I abetting?”

“My affinity,” she said recklessly, picturing how easily Brin had gained access to the White Chapel Club. The Irishwoman wasn’t the only one who could play at that game.

With a deep breath, Neva removed her right glove, elongated her index finger to a grotesque thinness, and slipped it in the case’s lock. Blood trickled out as she further deformed her finger—her version of the trick wasn’t as clean—but in short order, she matched the keyhole’s inner shape. From there, it was only a matter of rotating her finger until the lock clicked, gritting her teeth against the pain, and opening the case.

Then the necklace was hers.

Touching it was heavenly, a simultaneous surge of euphoria and adrenaline. But she knew she couldn’t wear it yet. Not here. Not in the Anthropology Building, the scene of her crime. No, the necklace had to go in her jacket pocket for now, never mind how reluctant her fingers were to leave the shells.

All that was left was to gauge Derek’s reaction.

As she turned, Neva braced herself. What had possessed her to take such a risk, to reveal her otherness when she’d failed to confirm anything but his normality? Brother he might be, but there was no telling how he’d respond to what must look like—and probably was—magic. In Salem, many of the condemned had been accused by family. Had she just doomed herself to a fatal stoning? Burning at the stake? Both at once? Would Derek—

Crack a crooked smile and cause a tiny, jaunty spark of electricity to dance over and under his fingertips?

Yes. Yes he would.

Because he was her brother.

“I knew it,” Neva murmured as she hurled herself at him and hugged him close, ignoring the small shock the spark imparted before Derek extinguished it. “I knew it.”

Chapter Seventeen

WILEY FOUND THEM IN the Transportation Building.

Derek had wanted to see both the structure itself, already famed for the immense golden arch that served as the main entryway, and the Pullman Company’s “Ideal of Industry” exhibit, which featured a scale model of Pullman Town. Neva couldn’t help smiling at his enthusiasm—and determination.

“I’m not leaving,” he’d said when she’d finished telling him (almost) everything she’d left out before: about the insect’s predilections, and Brin, and the little man in the Levee.

“You’d be safer away from all this,” Neva had tried.

“So would you.”

“But if the insects come for you ...”

“I’m not leaving.”

She’d left it there. What else was there to say? Especially once she’d realized that, more than anyone else left in the world, she could trust him.

If only she were as clear about what to do with the necklace.

It felt like it was burning a hole in her pocket. Not to fall out, but to be next to her, to touch her skin, to impart that glorious feeling of wellbeing again. Or maybe that was her skin trying to burn a hole to the necklace. Either way, the thought of wearing the shells consumed her mind in ways that could only be unhealthy, even when she tried to turn her thoughts back to everything she’d just learned about Derek—and herself.

“It’s an incredibly self-sufficient design,” he said as he circled the model Pullman Town again. “The boilers of the factory on the North end are powered by shavings from the carpentry shops. Exhaust water from the boilers fills the town’s lake. Sewage from the plant and the town’s homes is pumped to a farm as fertilizer ... Intelligence was mixed with mortar here, from every foundation to every roof.”

“Too bad it’s a plantation,” Wiley interjected. He’d come up behind them unnoticed—Derek had been preoccupied with the model; Neva with everything else.

Derek regarded him with displeasure. “I beg your pardon?”

“Not in the usual sense,” Wiley allowed. “There aren’t any Negroes there: the Duke likes them better as porters on his railcars. But Pullman Town only takes fair-haired Northern Europeans and buckwheats from rural America—absolutely no Irish. After all, you can’t have dirty Micks in an industrial Eden.”

Derek glanced at Neva, but she was listening with interest. He turned back to the Boer. “Wiley, was it?”

He flashed an overly casual smile. “It was.”

“Have you been to Pullman Town?”

“No, thankfully.”

“Then you haven’t seen how it answers the pressing questions of our time. Every house is brick-built and comes standard with gas, water, indoor plumbing, and waste removal. The streets are paved, as are the sidewalks. You won’t find anything comparable in the working neighborhoods of Chicago. Pullman Town doesn’t even have a policeman—because it doesn’t need one. It’s a better way, proof that blight, poverty, and social disorder aren’t the inevitable consequences of industry.”

Wiley shook his head. “You don’t have a policeman because George Pullman makes every decision—what the Duke says goes. He wants clean, orderly workers, and that’s what he’s trying to create. Anyone who doesn’t fit that mold is evicted on ten-days’ notice.”

Derek shook his head harder, with uncharacteristic passion. “Pullman Town is everything Chicago should be and isn’t. We have clean air; the Black City has