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

He grunted again.

But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his perfect rendering of the shells. “‘A ritualistic charm,’” Neva read from the display label the veteran had also sketched. “I wonder what it was used for?”

The veteran snapped his sketchbook shut and signaled to his porter—one of many colored university students who’d traveled to the Fair to earn 75 cents an hour pushing wheeled chairs—to move him to the next exhibit. The porter nodded, his low-set hat and voluminous beard wobbling in tandem.

“Sir,” Neva said as the veteran turned back to take a last look at the cowry necklace. “Please.” When he glanced at her again, she peeled off one of her gloves and showed him the sickle shapes beneath. “Mine appeared this morning after I was bitten by insects.”

The veteran stared at her rash for a moment before tucking his sketchbook away and clasping his hands together in a failed attempt to conceal his own marks. “Take me to the dock,” he said to the porter. “I want to catch the next ferry.” His voice sounded strained—was he quivering?

“You were bitten too.” Neva removed her other glove. “And it hurts.”

With a visible effort, the veteran pulled his hands apart. “It’s nothing.”

“Then why does it frighten you so?”

Now he glared at her. “I fought at Bull Run, girl—both times. Never afeard once. Even when I lost this to gangrene.” The veteran tapped his empty pant leg, then used his remaining foot to push off a display case and swivel his wheeled chair around. “And it weren’t to free your darkie mammy and pappy, I’ll tell you that much. Country needed saving, and I done it, and now I’m going home.” He motioned at the porter again. “The dock, boy.”

The porter’s eyes flashed, but he nodded and rolled the chair toward the nearest exit.

Neva caught up in two strides. “My ‘pappy’ fought same as you did. But that’s beside the point. Those marks mean you’re in danger.”

The veteran snorted. “From nagging Negresses, maybe.”

She bit off a retort. “Try to understand: five other people have had those rashes. They’re all dead.”

“Scut.” He shook his head. “Let me alone, girl. I’m not your concern.”

Neva slowed her pace. “I’m just trying to warn you.”

“I’m not listening,” the veteran crowed, but his hands were clasped tight again as the porter wheeled him outside.

Neva counted to twenty before following.

She didn’t have a plan when she emerged from the Anthropology Building. But she didn’t have much to show for her hours of searching the Fair, either. Aside from that cockroach in Augie’s bag, the veteran’s marks were the only thing she’d turned up that related to the morning’s events. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight. Not yet.

He was already beyond the Forestry Building and its columns of tree trunks left in their natural states. Its bark-thatched roof took on a bit of the sunset’s red glow, a pretty sight the veteran showed no signs of noticing as he made for the canal that connected the South Pond to the South Inlet. Moving briskly, he and the porter crossed onto the half-mile Pier, bypassing the majestic Casino to head for the Movable Sidewalk.

That was a mercy: Neva’s fatigue had quickly reasserted itself as she continued looking behind as much as ahead. Columbian Guards—in uniform or out—White Chapel Club members, crescent-marked insects: there was so much to avoid, so much to be aware of. But the Sidewalk consisted of two enormous, electrically driven belts. The first moved at two miles an hour and allowed passengers to stand or walk; the second supported rows and rows of benches and moved at four miles an hour. Either would let her rest.

Neva hung back as the veteran paid for a one-way-trip and directed the porter to move them onto the first belt. After they’d been carried a sufficient distance, she flashed her exhibitor’s pass and boarded behind them, safely obscured by a screen of other passengers.

It was a smooth ride today. The belts were said to be less reliable than those used at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris—a sore point for Director Burnham. But the sidewalk rolled forward without a hitch, ferrying its complacent cargo across the Pier and over Lake Michigan. At the end of the Pier waited the steamer the veteran would take to downtown Chicago. The trip along the shoreline was said to be enchanting.

Neva doubted the veteran would notice.

From what she could see, he was growing more and more agitated, berating the porter for some reason and jabbing at the steamer. Perhaps he wanted the porter to push the chair along the belt to increase their speed? But then why had they boarded the slower sidewalk? Was that why he was angry?

Neva looked back at the Fair. The white buildings of the Court of Honor had become a brilliant canvas splashed with the early-evening sky’s pinks and reds. The sight was almost enough to make her forget her circumstances.

Except she still wasn’t sure why she’d revealed her rashes to the veteran. Or why she was following him now. He wouldn’t lead her to Augie, wouldn’t deign to help her in any way. And—

A shout up ahead pulled Neva’s eyes back to her quarry, just in time to see the porter reach down, rip the veteran’s good leg off at the hip, and cast the jerking limb into Lake Michigan.

Chapter Six

A PERFECT, CRIMSON arc hung in the air for a moment before the nearest woman screamed. A second shrieked when the veteran fell out of his chair trying to stem the gushing of his new stump. Then the porter put his fingers to his lips, tasted the blood upon them, closed his eyes ...

And all was bedlam.

Those closest to him pulled back so violently that at least two men fell from the Pier. Passengers ahead of the porter ran pell-mell down the Movable Sidewalk toward the steamer; passengers behind him jumped aboard