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

Not that it was very white anymore.

There was so much blood, blood she’d caused. And Wiley was ... Wiley was ... Oh, GOD.

The Fair had been shuttered for eight months, its closing ceremonies at the end of October marred by a somber remembrance for the mayor of Chicago, shot to death in his home a few days prior by a “crazed” anarchist—Roland. He’d been trying to make up for the failure on Chicago Day, when Pieter had been apprehended before he could light the fuse and Brin had disappeared entirely.

But Neva couldn’t rise, couldn’t move, couldn’t do ANYTHING but hold on to the feeling—the desperate, tiny hope—that something wasn’t right. Something about Wiley hadn’t been right.

His skin had curdled, and something about him hadn’t been ... him.

“Look,” Dob said, pointing at the soldiers. “They’re skipping!”

Neva followed the young white boy’s arm. A few of the men had splintered off from the main group, prancing northwards and laughing as they drove a confused hobo before them. Two of the soldiers began moving their hands in lazy circles, possibly miming the turning of the Wheel, which still stood to the west, partially dismantled but otherwise undamaged.

Not a bad state, compared to the rest of the Fair.

Fires had claimed several structures in January, including the Casino and the Peristyle. Arsonists might have started the blazes. But it was just as likely that one of the thousands of homeless squatting in the fairgrounds during the terrible winter had simply failed to contain a cooking fire. The remaining buildings were decaying, their staff-coated walls wearing fast now that no maintenance crews touched them up at night.

And perhaps worst of all, the White City had grayed. Chicago’s manufacturers were no longer obliged to throttle their smokestacks to preserve the Fair’s shining image, and its pristine gleam had been smudged to an ashy grime.

“Are they just here to play?” asked Dob as a soldier clambered atop the fraying (and dormant) Columbian Fountain.

Neva smiled slightly. “Maybe a little, but they’re mostly here because of the Pullman strike.”

“Because the workers stopped making trains?”

“Essentially.” The truth was more complicated: once the Fair closed, and demand for new Pullman cars declined precipitously, George Pullman had further slashed his employees’ wages while maintaining Pullman Town’s high rents. On May 11, after unsuccessfully appealing to their employer’s conscience, the workers had stopped working. And on June 26, the American Railway Union had refused to handle trains that included Pullman cars, a show of solidarity that disrupted mail delivery nationwide. President Cleveland was not amused—hence the third military occupation of Chicago in twenty years.

Much as Wiley had predicted.

Neva bit her lip, remembering how he’d argued with Derek on their way to visit Mrs. DeBell. Wiley had sounded so sure of himself. But the other anarchists hadn’t been willing to let events take their natural course. If they had, maybe ...

Maybe nothing. Roland and Pieter might have fared better, but Wiley’s fate would have been no different. That was her doing.

She needed to know why, needed to find out what had happened to him—and her.

Whatever it took to understand why she’d butchered a man she’d come to love.

“Do we need to hide?”

Neva dragged her focus back to Dob. The boy was small for his age. He claimed to be twelve, but she’d be surprised if he was eleven yet. And the rags that passed for his clothes made him appear even more waifish—in other words, impossible not to love. It had been such a relief to run into him at the end of winter, a balm for her aching soul.

Except that his reappearance at the Fair meant he was homeless.

“I think hiding’s unnecessary,” she said quietly. “But let’s get you back to your aunt all the same.”

“She’s out,” Dob objected. “Cleaning for someone.”

“Let’s go inside anyway.”

He stole a last glance at the soldiers before nodding reluctantly and following Neva off the promenade and into the desiccated shell of Manufactures and Liberal Arts.

She and the boy had a good view as they crossed the interior bridge to the only stairway in decent repair (the elevators having long since ceased to function). Below them, the acres of exhibits that had dazzled the world had been replaced with the detritus of men, women, and children with nowhere else to go. Ashes of cooking fires. Ragged blankets. Scavenged bits of left-behind displays ... Pinkertons had been hired to guard the transfer of the most valuable items from the Anthropology Building and the Palace of Fine Arts, but not everything had been claimed. Anything of value had already been pawned for food, however. And what remained looked like a child had filled a wheelbarrow with worthless sundries, upended it, and gleefully kicked the resulting pile in all directions.

Neva led Dob down to the section of the floor his aunt had marked out for him and his cousins near the former site of the Yerkes Telescope. The cavernous building was emptier than it had been during the winter. But people still sheltered here. And a particularly tattered man by the name of Kam stood close enough that Neva could hear him stage-whisper something about wanting to see her “chocolate hips” melting on his “white lap.”

Kam’s companions laughed, but she ignored them. She’d already heard worse three times today. “On second thought,” she said to Dob after failing to find any of his brothers, “let’s go to Machinery. You can stay there with me until the soldiers leave.”

“Sure,” he replied eagerly—she’d never let him come with her before. They couldn’t go to the storage room, of course, but she had another refuge.

“Chocolate Hips,” Kam repeated, but louder and more directly. “A word.”

“A no,” she said.

“Not with me—unless you want to.” His companions laughed again as he approached, leering a little more with each step. “The King wants to see you.”

“Why?”

Kam shrugged extravagantly. “He doesn’t tell the likes of us humble peasants.”

With good reason, no doubt. She