First published in the USA in 2015 by Disney•Hyperion,

an imprint of Disney Book Group

First published in Great Britain 2016

by Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Copyright © 2015 Robert Beatty

The moral rights of the author and illustrators have been asserted

First e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978 1 4052 8378 6

eISBN 978 1 7803 1750 2

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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To my wife, Jennifer, who helped shape

this story from the beginning,

and to our girls

– Camille, Genevieve, and Elizabeth –

who will always be our first and

most important audience

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

Acknowledgements

Biltmore Estate

Asheville, North Carolina

1899

Serafina opened her eyes and scanned the darkened workshop, looking for any rats stupid enough to come into her territory while she slept. She knew they were out there, just beyond her nightly range, crawling in the cracks and shadows of the great house’s sprawling basement, keen to steal whatever they could from the kitchens and storerooms. She had spent most of the day napping in her favourite out-of-the-way places, but it was here, curled up on the old mattress behind the rusty boiler in the protection of the workshop, that she felt most at home. Hammers, wrenches and gears hung down from the rough-hewn beams, and the familiar smell of machinery oil filled the air. Her first thought as she looked around her and listened out into the reaching darkness was that it felt like a good night for hunting.

Her pa, who had worked on the construction of Biltmore Estate years before and had lived in the basement without permission ever since, lay sleeping on the cot he’d secretly built behind the supply racks. Embers glowed in the old metal barrel over which he had cooked their dinner of chicken and grits a few hours before. They had huddled around the cook fire for warmth as they ate. As usual, she had eaten the chicken but left the grits.

‘Eat your supper,’ her pa had grumbled.

‘Did,’ she had answered, setting down her half-empty tin plate.

‘Your whole supper,’ he said, pushing the plate towards her, ‘or you’re never gonna get any bigger than a little shoat.’

Her pa likened her to a skinny baby pig when he wanted to get a rise out of her, figuring she’d get so furious with him that she’d wolf those nasty grits down her throat despite herself.

‘I’m not gonna eat the grits, Pa,’ she said, smiling a little, ‘no matter how many times you put ’em in front of me.’

‘They ain’t nothin’ but ground-up corn, girl,’ he said, poking at the fire with a stick to arrange the other sticks the way he wanted them. ‘Everybody and his uncle likes corn ’cept you.’

‘You know I can’t stomach anything green or yellow or disgusting like that, Pa, so quit hollering at me.’

‘If I was a-hollerin’, you’d know it,’ he said, shoving his poker stick into the fire.

By and by, they soon forgot about the grits and went on to talk about something else.

It made Serafina smile to think about her dinner with her father. She couldn’t imagine much else in the world – except maybe sleeping in the warmth of one of the basement’s small sunlit windows – that was finer than a bit of banter with her pa.

Careful not to wake him, she slunk off her mattress, padded across the workshop’s gritty stone floor and snuck out into the winding passageway. While still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and stretching out her arms and legs, she couldn’t help but feel a trace of excitement. The tantalising sensation of starting a brand-new night tingled through her body. She felt her muscles and her senses coming alive, as if she were an owl stirring its wings and flexing its talons before it flies off for its ghostly hunt.

She moved quietly through the darkness, past the laundry rooms, pantries and kitchens. The basement had been bustling with servants all day, but the rooms were empty now, and dark, just the way she liked them. She knew that the Vanderbilts and their many guests were sleeping on the second and third floors above her, but here it was quiet. She loved to prowl through the endless corridors and shadowed storage rooms. She knew the touch and feel, the glint and gloom, of every nook and cranny. This was her domain at night, and hers alone.

She heard a faint slithering just ahead. The night was beginning quickly.

She stopped. She listened.

Two doors down, the scrabbling of tiny feet on bare floor.

She crept forward along the wall.

When the sound stopped, she stopped as well. When the sound resumed, she crept forward once more. It was a technique she’d taught herself by the age of seven: move when they’re moving; stay still when they’re still.

Now she could hear the creatures breathing, the scratching of their toenails on the stone and the dragging of their tails. She felt the familiar trembling in her fingers and the tightness in her legs.

She slipped through the half-open door into the storeroom and saw them in the darkness: two huge rats covered in greasy brown fur had slithered one by one up through the drainpipe in the floor. The intruders were obviously newcomers, foolishly scrounging for cockroaches when they could’ve been slurping custard off the fresh-baked pastries just down the hall.

Without making a sound or even disturbing the air, she stalked slowly towards the rats. Her eyes focused on them. Her ears picked up every sound they made. She could even smell their foul sewer stench. All the while, they went about their rotten, ratty business and had no idea she was there.

She stopped just a few feet behind them, hidden in the blackness of a shadow, poised for the leap. This was the moment she loved, the moment just before she lunged. Her body swayed slightly back and forth, tuning her angle of attack. Then she pounced. In one quick, explosive movement, she grabbed the squealing, writhing rats with her bare hands.

‘Gotcha, ya nasty varmints!’ she hissed.

The smaller rat squirmed in terror, desperate to get away, but the larger one twisted round and bit her hand.

‘There’ll be none of that!’ she snarled, clamping the rat’s neck firmly between her finger and thumb.

The rats wriggled wildly, but she kept a good, hard hold on them and wouldn’t let them go. It had taken her a while to learn that lesson when she was younger, that once you had them, you had to squeeze hard and hold on, no matter what, even if their little claws scratched you and their scaly tails curled round your hand like some sort of nasty grey snake.

Finally, after several seconds of vicious struggling, the exhausted rats realised they couldn’t escape her. They went still and stared suspiciously at her with their beady black eyes. Their snivelling little noses and wickedly long whiskers vibrated with fear. The rat who’d bitten her slowly slithered his long, scaly tail round her wrist, wrapping it two times, searching for new advantage to prise himself free.

‘Don’t even try it,’ she warned him. Still bleeding from his bite, she was in no mood for his ratty schemes. She’d been bitten before, but she never did like it much.

Carrying the grisly beasts in her clenched fists, she took them down the passageway. It felt good to get two rats before midnight, and they were particularly ugly characters, the kind that would chew straight through a burlap sack to get at the grain inside, or knock eggs off the shelf so they could lick the mess from the floor.

She climbed the old stone stairs that led outside, then walked across the moonlit grounds of the estate all the way to the edge of the forest. There she hurled the rats into the leaves. ‘Now get on outta here, and don’t come back!’ she shouted at them. ‘I won’t be so nice next time!’

The rats tumbled across the forest floor with the force of her fierce throw, then came to a trembling stop, expecting a killing blow. When it didn’t come, they turned and looked up at her in astonishment.

‘Get goin’ before I change my mind,’ she said.

Hesitating no longer, the rats scurried into the underbrush.

There had been a time when the rats she caught weren’t so lucky, when she’d leave their bodies next to her pa’s bed to show him her night’s work, but she hadn’t done that in a coon’s age.

Ever since she was a young’un, she’d studied the men and women who worked in the basement, so she knew that each one had a particular job. It was her father’s responsibility to fix the elevators, dumbwaiters, window gears, steam heating systems and all the other mechanical contraptions on which the two-hundred-and-fifty-room mansion depended. He even made sure the pipe organ in the Grand Banquet Hall worked properly for Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt’s fancy balls. Besides her pa, there were cooks, kitchen maids, coal shovellers, chimney sweeps, laundry women, pastry makers, housemaids, footmen and countless others.

When she was ten years old, she had asked, ‘Do I have a job like everyone else, Pa?’

‘Of course ya do,’ he said, but she suspected that it wasn’t true. He just didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

‘What is it? What’s my job?’ she pressed him.

‘It’s actually an extremely important position around here, and there ain’t no one who does it better than you, Sera.’

‘Tell me, Pa. What is it?’

‘I reckon you’re Biltmore Estate’s C.R.C.’

‘What’s that mean?’ she asked in excitement.

‘You’re the Chief Rat Catcher,’ he said.

However the words were intended, they emblazoned themselves in her mind. She remembered even now, two years later, how her little chest had swelled and how she had smiled with pride when he’d said those words: Chief Rat Catcher. She had liked the sound of that. Everyone knew that rodents were a big problem in a place like Biltmore, with all its sheds and shelves and barns and whatnot. And it was true that she had shown a natural-born talent for snatching the cunning, food-stealing, dropping-leaving, disease-infected four-legged vermin that so eluded the adult folk with their crude traps and poisons. Mice, which were timid and prone to panic-induced mistakes at key moments, were no trouble at all for her to catch. It was the rats that gave her the scamper each night, and it was on the rats that she had honed her skills. She was twelve years old now. And that was who she was: Serafina, C.R.C.

But as she watched the two rats run into the forest, a strange and powerful feeling took hold of her. She wanted to follow them. She wanted to see what they saw beneath leaf and twig, to explore the rocks and dells, the streams and wonders. But her pa had forbidden her.

‘Never go into the forest,’ he had told her many times. ‘There are dark forces there that no one understands, things that ain’t natural and can do ya wicked harm.’

She stood at the edge of the forest and looked as far as she could into the trees. For years, she’d heard stories of people who got lost in the forest and never returned. She wondered what dangers lurked there. Was it black magic, demons or some sort of heinous beasts? What was her pa so afraid of ?

She might bandy back and forth with her pa about all sorts of things just for the jump of it – like refusing her grits, sleeping all day and hunting all night, and spying on the Vanderbilts and their guests – but she never argued about this. She knew when he said those words he was as serious as her dead momma. For all the spiny talk and all the sneak-about, sometimes you just stayed quiet and did what you were told because you sensed it was a good way to keep breathing.

Feeling strangely lonesome, she turned away from the forest and gazed back at the estate. The moon rose above the steeply pitched slate roofs of the house and reflected in the panes of glass that domed the Winter Garden. The stars sparkled above the mountains. The grass and trees and flowers of the beautiful manicured grounds glowed in the midnight light. She could see every detail, every toad and snail and all the other creatures of the night. A lone mockingbird sang its evening song from a magnolia tree, and the baby hummingbirds, tucked into their tiny nest among the climbing wisteria, rustled in their sleep.

It lifted her chin a bit to think that her pa had helped build all this. He’d been one of the hundreds of stonemasons, woodcarvers and other craftsmen who had come to Asheville from the surrounding mountains to construct Biltmore Estate years before. He had stayed on to maintain the machinery. But when all the other basement workers went home to their families each night, he and Serafina hid among the steaming pipes and metal tools in the workshop like stowaways in the engine room of a great ship. The truth was they had no place else to go, no kin to go home to. Whenever she asked about her momma, her father refused to talk about her. So, there wasn’t anyone else besides her and her pa, and they’d made the basement their home for as long as she could remember.

‘How come we don’t live in the servants’ quarters or in town like the other workers, Pa?’ she had asked many times.

‘Never ya mind about that,’ he would grumble in reply.

Over the years, her pa had taught her how to read and write pretty well, and told her plenty of stories about the world, but he was never too keen on talking about what she wanted to talk about, which was what was going on deep down in his heart, and what had happened to her momma, and why she didn’t have any brothers and sisters, and why she and her pa didn’t have any friends who came round to call. Sometimes, she wanted to reach down inside him and shake him up to see what would happen, but most of the time her pa just slept all night and worked all day, and cooked their dinner in the evening, and told her stories, and they had a pretty good life, the two of them, and she didn’t shake him because she knew he didn’t want to be shook, so she just let him be.

At night, when everyone else in the house went to sleep, she crept upstairs and snatched books to read in the moonlight. She’d overheard the butler boast to a visiting writer that Mr Vanderbilt had collected twenty-two thousand books, only half of which fitted in the Library Room. The others were stored on tables and shelves throughout the house, and to Serafina these were like Juneberries ripe for the picking, too tempting to resist. No one seemed to notice when a book went missing and was back in its place a few days later.

She had read about the great battles between the states with tattered flags flying and she had read of the steaming iron beasts that hurtled people hither and yon. She wanted to sneak into the graveyard at night with Tom and Huck and be shipwrecked with the Swiss Family Robinson. Some nights, she longed to be one of the four sisters with their loving mother in Little Women. Other nights, she imagined meeting the ghosts of Sleepy Hollow or tapping, tapping, tapping with Poe’s black raven. She liked to tell her pa about the books she read, and she often made up stories of her own, filled with imaginary friends and strange families and ghosts in the night, but he was never interested in her tales of fancy and fright. He was far too sensible a man for all that and didn’t like to believe in anything but bricks and bolts and solid things.

More and more she wondered what it would be like to have some sort of secret friend whom her pa didn’t know about, someone she could talk to about things, but she didn’t tend to meet too many children her age skulking through the basement in the dead of night.

A few of the low-level kitchen scullions and boiler tenders who worked in the basement and went home each night had seen her darting here or there and knew vaguely who she was, but the maids and manservants who worked on the main floors did not. And certainly the master and mistress of the house didn’t know she existed.

‘The Vanderbilts are a good kind of folk, Sera,’ her pa had told her, ‘but they ain’t our kind of folk. You keep yourself scarce when they come about. Don’t let anyone get a good look at you. And, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone your name or who you are. You hear?’

Serafina did hear. She heard very well. She could hear a mouse change his mind. Yet she didn’t know exactly why she and her pa lived the way they did. She didn’t know why her father hid her away from the world, why he was ashamed of her, but she knew one thing for sure: that she loved him with all her heart, and the last thing she ever wanted to do was to cause him trouble.

So she had become an expert at moving undetected, not just to catch the rats, but to avoid the people too. When she was feeling particularly brave or lonely, she darted upstairs into the comings and goings of the sparkling folk. She snuck and crept and hid. She was small for her age and light of foot. The shadows were her friends. She spied on the fancy-dressed guests as they arrived in their splendid horse-drawn carriages. No one upstairs ever saw her hiding beneath the bed or behind the door. No one noticed her in the back of the closet when they put their coats inside. When the ladies and gentlemen went on their walks around the grounds, she slunk up right next to them without them knowing and listened to everything they were saying. She loved seeing the young girls in their blue and yellow dresses with ribbons fluttering in their hair, and she ran along with them when they frolicked through the garden. When the children played hide-and-seek, they never realised there was another player. Sometimes she’d even see Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt walking arm in arm, or she’d see their twelve-year-old nephew riding his horse across the grounds, with his sleek black dog running alongside.

She had watched them all, but none of them ever saw her – not even the dog. Lately she’d been wondering just what would happen if they did. What if the boy glimpsed her? What would she do? What if his dog chased her? Could she get up a tree in time? Sometimes she liked to imagine what she would say if she met Mrs Vanderbilt face to face. Hello, Mrs V. I catch your rats for you. Would you like them killed or just chucked out? Sometimes she dreamed of wearing fancy dresses and ribbons in her hair and shiny shoes on her feet. And sometimes, just sometimes, she longed not just to listen secretly to the people around her, but to talk to them. Not just to see them, but to be seen.

As she walked through the moonlight across the open grass and back to the main house, she wondered what would happen if one of the guests, or perhaps the young master in his bedroom on the second floor, happened to wake and look out the window and see a mysterious girl walking alone in the night.

Her pa never spoke of it, but she knew she wasn’t exactly normal-looking. She had a skinny little body, nothing but muscle, bone and sinew.

She didn’t own a dress, so she wore one of her pa’s old work shirts, which she cinched round her narrow waist with a length of fibrous twine she’d scavenged from the workshop. He didn’t buy her any clothes because he didn’t want people in town to ask questions and start meddling; meddling was something he could never brook.

Her long hair wasn’t a single color like normal people had, but varying shades of gold and light brown. Her face had a peculiar angularity in the cheeks. And she had large, steady amber eyes. She could see at night as well as she could during the day. Even her soundless hunting skills weren’t exactly normal. Every person she’d ever encountered, especially her pa, made so much noise when they walked that it was like they were one of the big Belgian draft horses that pulled the farm equipment in Mr Vanderbilt’s fields.

And it all made her wonder, looking up at the windows of the great house. What did the people sleeping in those rooms dream of, with their one-coloured hair, and their long, pointy noses and their big bodies lying in their soft beds all through the glorious darkness of the night? What did they long for? What made them laugh or jump? What did they feel inside? When they had dinner at night, did the children eat the grits or just the chicken?

As she glided down the stairs and back into the basement, she heard something in a distant corridor. She stopped and listened, but she couldn’t quite make it out. It wasn’t a rat. That much was certain. Something much larger. But what was it?

Curious, she moved towards the sound.

She went past her pa’s workshop, the kitchens and the other rooms she knew well, and into the deeper areas where she hunted less often. She heard doors closing, then the fall of footsteps and muffled noises. Her heart began to thump lightly in her chest. Someone was walking through the corridors of the basement. Her basement.

She moved closer.

It wasn’t the servant who collected the garbage each night, or one of the footmen fetching a late-night snack for a guest – she knew the sound of their footsteps well. Sometimes the butler’s assistant, who was eleven, would stop in the corridor and gobble down a few of the cookies from the silver tray that the butler had sent him to retrieve. She’d stand just round the corner from him in the darkness and pretend that they were friends just talking and enjoying each other’s company for a while. Then the boy would wipe the powdered sugar off his lips, and off he’d go, hurrying up the stairs to catch up on the time he’d lost. But this wasn’t him.

Whoever it was, he wore what sounded like hard-soled shoes – expensive shoes. But a gentleman proper had no business coming down into this area of the house. Why was he wandering through the dark passages in the middle of the night?

Increasingly curious, she followed the stranger, careful to avoid being seen. Whenever she snuck up close enough to almost see him, all she could make out was the shadow of a tall black shape carrying a dimly lit lantern. And there was another shadow there too, someone or something with him, but she didn’t dare creep close enough to see who or what it was.

It was a vast basement with many different rooms, corridors and levels, which had been built into the slope of the earth beneath the house. Some areas, like the kitchens and the laundry, had smooth plaster walls and windows. The rooms there were plainly finished, but clean and dry, and well-suited to the daily work of the servants. The more distant reaches of the understructure delved deep into the damp and earthen burrows of the house’s massive foundation. Here the dark, hardened mortar oozed out from between the roughly hewn stone blocks that formed the walls and ceiling, and she seldom went there because it was cold, dirty and dank.

Suddenly, the footsteps changed direction. They came towards her. Five screeching rats came running down the corridor ahead of the footfalls, more terrified than any rodents she had ever seen. Spiders crawled out of the cracks in the walls. Cockroaches and centipedes erupted from the earthen floor. Astounded by what she was seeing, she caught her breath and pressed herself to the wall, frozen in fear like a little rabbit kit trembling beneath the shadow of a passing hawk.

As the man walked towards her, she heard another sound too. It was a shuffling agitation like a small person – slippered feet, perhaps a child – but there was something wrong. The child’s feet were scraping on the stone, sometimes sliding . . . the child was crippled . . . no . . . the child was being dragged.

‘No, sir! Please! No!’ the girl whimpered, her voice trembling with despair. ‘We’re not supposed to be down here.’ The girl spoke like someone who had been raised in a well-heeled family and attended a fancy school.

‘Don’t worry. We’re going right in here . . .’ the man said, stopping at the door just round the corner from Serafina. Now she could hear his breathing, the movement of his hands, and the rustle of his clothing. Flashes of heat scorched through her. She wanted to run, to flee, but she couldn’t get her legs to move.

‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, child,’ he said to the girl. ‘I’m not going to hurt you . . .’

The way he said these words caused the hairs on the back of Serafina’s neck to rise. Don’t go with him, she thought. Don’t go!

The girl sounded like she was just a little younger than her, and Serafina wanted to help her, but she couldn’t find the courage. She pressed herself against the wall, certain that she would be heard or seen. Her legs trembled, feeling as if they would crumble beneath her. She couldn’t see what happened next, but suddenly the girl let out a bloodcurdling scream. The piercing sound caused Serafina to jump, and she had to stifle her own scream. Then she heard a struggle as the girl tore away from the man and fled down the corridor.

Run, girl! Run! Serafina thought.

The man’s steps faded into the distance as he went after her. Serafina could tell that he wasn’t running full-out but moving steadily, relentlessly, like he knew the girl couldn’t escape him. Serafina’s pa had told her that’s how the red wolves chase down and kill deer in the mountains – with dogged stamina rather than bursts of speed.

Serafina didn’t know what to do. Should she hide in a dark corner and hope he didn’t find her? Should she flee with the terror-stricken rats and spiders while she had the chance? She wanted to run back to her father, but what about the child? The girl was so helpless, so slow and weak and frightened, and, more than anything, she needed a friend to help her fight. Serafina wanted to be that friend; she wanted to help her, but she couldn’t bring herself to move in that direction.

Then she heard the girl scream again. That dirty, rotten rat’s gonna kill her, Serafina thought. He’s gonna kill her.

With a burst of anger and courage, she raced towards the sound. Her legs felt like explosions of speed. Her mind blazed with fear and exhilaration. She turned corner after corner. But when she came to the mossy stone stairway that led down into the deepest bowels of the sub-basement, she stopped, gasping for breath, and shook her head. It was a cold, wet, slimy, horrible place that she had always done her best to avoid – especially in the winter. She’d heard stories that they stored dead bodies in the sub-basement in the winter, when the ground was too frozen to dig a grave. Why in the world had the girl gone down there ?

Serafina made her way haltingly down the wet, sticky stairs, lifting and shaking off her foot after each slimy step she took. When at last she reached the bottom, she followed a long, slanting corridor where the ceiling dripped with brown sludge. The whole dank, disgusting place gave her the jitters something fierce, but she kept going.

You’ve got to help her, she told herself again. You can’t turn back.

She wound her way through a labyrinth of twisting tunnels. She turned right, then left, then left, then right until she lost track of how far she’d gone. Then she heard the sound of fighting and shouting just round the corner ahead of her. She was very close.

She hesitated, frightened, her heart pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst. Her body shook all over. She didn’t want to go another step, but friends had to help friends. She didn’t know much about life, but she did know that, knew that for sure, and she wasn’t going to run away like a scared-out-of-her-wits squirrel just when somebody needed her most. Trembling all over, she steadied herself the best she could, sucked in a deep breath and pushed herself round the corner.

A broken lantern lay tipped on the stone floor, its glass shattered but the flame still burning. In its halo of faltering light, a girl in a yellow dress struggled for her life. A tall man in a black cloak and hood, his hands stained with blood, grabbed the girl by the wrists.

The girl tried to pull away. ‘No! Let me go!’ she screamed.

‘Quiet down,’ the man told her, his voice seething in a dark, unworldly tone. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, child . . .’ he said for the second time.

The girl had curly blonde hair and pale white skin. She fought to escape, but the man in the black cloak pulled her towards him. He tangled her in his arms. She flailed and struck him in the face with her tiny fists.

‘Just stay still, and it will all be over,’ he said, pulling her towards him.

Serafina suddenly realised that she’d made a dreadful mistake. This was far more than she could handle. She knew that she should help the girl, but she was so scared that her feet stuck to the floor. She couldn’t even breathe, let alone fight.

Help her! Serafina’s mind screamed at her. Help her! Attack the rat! Attack the rat!

She finally plucked up her courage and charged forward, but just at that moment, the man’s black satin cloak floated upward as if possessed by a smoky spirit. The girl screamed. The folds of the cloak slithered around her like the tentacles of a hungry serpent. The cloak seemed to move of its own accord, wrapping, twisting, accompanied by a disturbing rattling noise, like the hissing threats of a hundred rattlesnakes. Serafina saw the girl’s horrified face looking at her from within the folds of the enveloping cloak, the girl’s pleading blue eyes wide with fear. Help me! Help me! Then the folds closed over her, the scream went silent and the girl disappeared, leaving nothing but the blackness of the cloak.

Serafina gasped in shock. One moment the girl was struggling to get free, and the next she had vanished into thin air. The cloak had consumed her. Overwhelmed with confusion, grief and fear, Serafina just stood there in stunned bewilderment.

For several seconds, the man seemed to vibrate violently, and a ghoulish aura glowed around him in a dark, shimmering haze. A horribly foul smell of rotting guts invaded Serafina’s nostrils, forcing her head to jerk back. She wrinkled her nose and squinched her mouth and tried not to breathe it in.

She must have made some sort of involuntary gagging noise, for the man in the black cloak suddenly turned and looked at her, seeing her for the first time. It felt like a giant claw gripped her around her chest. The folds of the man’s hood shrouded his face, but she could see that his eyes blazed with an unnatural light.

She stood frozen, utterly terrified.

The man whispered in a raspy voice. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, child . . .’

Hearing those eerie words jolted Serafina into action. She had just seen what those words led to.

Not this time, rat!

With a burst of new energy, she turned and ran.

She tore through the labyrinth of criss-crossing tunnels, running and running, certain that she was leaving him far in the distance. But, when she glanced over her shoulder, the hooded man was flying through the air right behind her, levitated by the power of the billowing black cloak, his bloody hands reaching towards her.

Serafina tried to run faster, but just as she came to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the main level of the basement, the man in the black cloak grabbed her. One hand clamped her shoulder. The other locked on to her neck. She turned and hissed like a snared animal. She whirled and clawed in a wild circle and broke herself free.

She bounded up the stairs three at a time, but he followed right behind her. He reached out and yanked her head back by her hair. She screamed in pain.

‘Time to give up now, little child,’ he said calmly, even as the tightening of his fist slowly tore strands of her hair from her head.

‘I ain’t never!’ she snarled, and bit his arm. She fought as hard as she could, scratching and clawing with her fingernails, but it didn’t matter. The man in the black cloak was far too strong. He pulled her into his chest, entangling her in his arms.

The folds of the black cloak rose up around her, pulsing with grey smoke. The awful rotting odour made her gag. All she could hear was that loathsome rattling noise as the cloak slithered and twisted its way around her body. She felt like she was being crushed in the coil of a boa constrictor.

‘I’m not going to hurt you, child . . .’ came the hideous rasping voice again, as if the man wasn’t of his own mind but possessed by a demented, ravenous demon.

The folds of the cloak cast a wretched pall over her, drenching her in a dripping, suffocating sickness. She felt her soul slipping away from her – not just slipping, but being yanked, being extracted. Death was so near that she could see its blackness with her own eyes and she could hear the screams of the children who had gone before her.

‘No! No! No!’ she screamed in defiance. She didn’t want to go. Hissing wildly, she reached up and clutched his face, clawing at his eyes. She kicked his chest with her feet. She bit him repeatedly, snapping like a snarling, rabid beast, and she tasted his blood in her mouth. The girl in the yellow dress had fought, but nothing like this. Finally, Serafina twisted out of his grip and spun to the ground. She landed on her feet and leapt away.

She wanted to get back to her pa, but she couldn’t make it that far. She fled down the corridor and dashed into the main kitchen. There were a dozen places to hide. Should she slip behind the black cast-iron ovens? Or crawl up among the copper pots hanging from the ceiling rack? No. She knew she had to find a better place.

She was back in her territory now, and she knew it well. She knew the darkness and she knew the light. She knew the left and the right. She had killed rats in every corner of this place, and there was no way she was going to let herself become one of those rats. She was the C.R.C. No trap or weapon or evil man was going to catch her. Like a wild creature, she ran and jumped and crawled.

When she reached the linen storage room, with all its wooden shelves and stacks of folded white sheets and blankets, she scampered into a crumbling break in the wall, in the back corner beneath the lowest shelf. Even if the man did notice the hole, it would seem impossibly small for anyone to fit through. But she knew it provided a shortcut into the back of the laundry.

She came out in the room where they hung and dried the fancy folks’ bedsheets. The moon had risen outside, and its light shone through the basement windows. Hundreds of flowing white sheets hung from the ceiling like ghosts, the silver moonlight casting them into an eerie glow. She slipped slowly between the hanging sheets, wondering if they would provide her the concealment she needed. But she thought better of it and kept going.

For good or ill, she had an idea. She knew that Mr Vanderbilt prided himself on installing the most advanced equipment at Biltmore. Her pa had constructed special drying racks that rolled on metal ceiling tracks that tucked into narrow chambers where the sheets and clothes were dried with the radiant heat of well-sealed steam pipes. Determined to find the best possible hiding place, she made herself small and pressed herself through the narrow slot of one of the machines.

When Serafina was born, there had been a number of things physically different about her. She had four toes on each foot rather than five, and although it was not noticeable just by looking at her, her collarbones were malformed such that they didn’t connect properly to her other bones. This allowed her to fit into some pretty tight spots. The opening in the machine was no more than a few inches wide, but as long as she could fit her head into something, she could push her whole body through. She wedged herself inside, into a dark little spot where she hoped the man in the black cloak wouldn’t find her.

She tried to be quiet, she tried to be still, but she panted like a little animal. She was exhausted, breathless and frightened beyond her wits. She’d seen the girl in the yellow dress consumed by the shadow-filled folds and knew the man in the black cloak was coming for her next. Her only hope was that he couldn’t hear the deafening pound of her heartbeat.

She heard him walking slowly down the hallway outside the kitchen. He’d lost her in the darkness, but he moved methodically from room to room, looking for her.

She heard him in the main kitchen, opening the doors of the cast-iron ovens. If I’d hidden there, she thought, I’d be dead now.

Then she heard him clanging through the copper pots, looking for her in the ceiling rack. If I’d hidden there, she thought, I’d be dead again.

‘There’s nothing to be frightened of,’ he whispered, trying to coax her out.

She listened and waited, trembling like a field mouse.

Finally, the man in the black cloak made his way into the laundry room.

Mice are timid and prone to panic-induced mistakes at key moments.

She heard the man moving from place to place, rummaging beneath the sinks, opening and closing the cabinets.

Just stay still, little mouse. Just stay still, she told herself. She wanted to break cover and flee so badly, but she knew that the dead mice were the dumb mice that panicked and ran. She told herself over and over again, Don’t be a dumb mouse. Don’t be a dumb mouse.

Then he came into the drying area where she was and moved slowly through the room, running his hands over the ghostly sheets.

If I’d hidden there . . .

He was just a few feet away from her now, looking around the room. Even though he couldn’t see her, he seemed to sense that she was there.

Serafina held her breath and stayed perfectly, perfectly, perfectly still.

Serafina slowly opened her eyes.

She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep or even where she was. She found herself crammed into a tight, dark space, her face pressed up against metal.

She heard the sound of footsteps approaching. She stayed quiet and listened.

It was a man in work boots, tools jangling. Feeling a burst of happiness, she wriggled her way out of the machine and into the morning sunlight pouring through the laundry windows.

‘Here I am, Pa!’ she cried, her voice parched and weak.

‘I’ve been gnawin’ on leather lookin’ for you,’ her pa scolded. ‘You weren’t in your bed this mornin’.’

She ran forward and hugged him, pressing herself into his chest. He was a large and hardened man with thick arms and rough, calloused hands. His tools hung from his leather apron, and he smelled faintly of metal, oil and the leather straps that drove the workshop’s machines.

In the distance, she heard the sounds of the staff arriving for the morning, the clanking of pots in the kitchen and the conversations of the workers. It was a glorious sound to her ears. The danger of the night was gone. She had survived!

Wrapped in her father’s arms, she felt safe and at home. He was more accustomed to mallets and rivets than a kind word, but he’d always taken care of her, always loved and protected her. She couldn’t hold back the tears of relief stinging her eyes.

‘Where’ve ya been, Sera?’ her father asked.

‘He tried to get me, Pa! He tried to kill me!’

‘What are you goin’ on about, girl?’ her pa said suspiciously, holding her by the shoulders with his huge hands. He looked intently into her face. ‘Is this another one of your wild stories?’

‘No, Pa,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘I ain’t in any kinda mood for stories.’

‘A man in a black cloak took a little girl, and then he came after me. I fought him, Pa! I bit him a good one! I spun round and clawed him, and I ran and ran and I got away and I hid. I crawled into your machine, Pa. That’s how I got away. It saved me!’

‘Whatcha mean, he took a girl?’ her pa said, narrowing his eyes. ‘What girl?’

‘He . . . he made her . . . She was right in front of me, and then she vanished before my eyes!’

‘Come on now, Sera,’ he said doubtfully. ‘You sound like you don’t know whether you’re washin’ the clothes or hangin’ ’em out.’

‘I swear, Pa,’ she said. ‘Just listen to me.’ She took a good, hard swallow and started at the beginning. As the story poured out of her, she realised how brave she’d actually been.

But her pa just shook his head. ‘You’ve had a bad dream is all. Been readin’ too many of them ghost stories. I told ya to stay away from Mr Poe. Now look at ya. You’re all scruffed up like a cornered possum.’

Her heart sank. She was telling him the God’s honest truth, and he didn’t believe a word of it. She tried to keep from crying, but it was hard. She was going on thirteen and he was still treating her like a child.

‘I wasn’t dreamin’, Pa,’ she said, wiping a sniffle from her nose.

‘Just calm yourself down,’ he grumbled. He hated it when she cried. She’d known since she was little that he’d rather wrangle with a good piece of sheet metal than deal with a weepy girl.

‘I’ve gotta go to work,’ he said gruffly as he separated from her. ‘The dynamo busted somethin’ bad last night. Now get on back to the workshop, and get some proper sleep in ya.’

Hot frustration flashed through her and she clenched her fists in anger, but she could hear the seriousness in his voice and knew there was no point in arguing with him. The Edison dynamo was an iron machine with copper coils and spinning wheels that generated a new thing called ‘electricity’. She knew from the books she’d read that most homes in America didn’t have running water, indoor toilets, refrigeration or even heating. But Biltmore had all these things. It was one of the few homes in America that had electric lighting in some of the rooms. But if her pa couldn’t get the dynamo working by nightfall the Vanderbilts and their guests would be plunged into darkness. She knew he had a lot of things on his mind, and she wasn’t one of them.

A wave of resentment swept through her. She’d tried to save a girl from an evil black-cloaked demon-thing and almost got herself killed in the process, but her pa didn’t care. All he cared about was his stupid machines. He never believed her about anything. To him, she was just a little girl, nothing important, nothing worth listening to, nothing anyone could count on for anything.

As she walked glumly back to the workshop, she fully intended to follow her pa’s instructions, but when she passed the stairway that led up to Biltmore Estate’s main floor she stopped and looked up the stairs.

She knew she shouldn’t do it.

She shouldn’t even think about doing it.

But she couldn’t help it.

Her pa had been telling her for years that she shouldn’t go upstairs, and lately she’d been trying to follow his rules at least some of the time, but today she was furious that he hadn’t believed her.

It’d serve him right if I didn’t listen to him.

She thought about the girl in the yellow dress. She tried to make sense of what she’d seen: the horrible black cloak and the wide-eyed fear in the girl’s face as she disappeared. Where had the girl gone? Was she dead or somehow still alive? Was there still a chance she could be saved?

Snippets of conversation drifted down the stairs. There was some sort of commotion. Had they found a body? Were they all crying in despair? Were they searching for a murderer?

She didn’t know if she was brave or stupid, but she had to tell someone what she’d seen. She had to figure out what had happened. Most of all, she had to help the girl in the yellow dress.

She began to climb the stairs.

Staying as small and quiet as she could, she crept up the steps one by one. A cacophony of sounds floated down to her: the echo of people talking, the rustling of clothing, dozens of different footsteps – it was a crowd of many people. Something was definitely happening up there. We’ve got to keep to ourselves, you and I. Her pa’s warning played in her mind as she climbed. There ain’t no sense in people seein’ you and askin’ questions.

She slunk to the top of the stairway, then ducked into an alcove on the main floor that looked onto a huge room full of fancy-dressed people who seemed to be gathering for some type of grand social event.

Massive, ornately crafted wrought-iron-and-glass doors led into the Entrance Hall, with its polished marble floor and vaulted ceiling of hand-carved oak beams. Soaring limestone arches led from this central room to the various wings of the mansion. The ceiling was so high she had the urge to climb up there and peer down. She’d been here before, but she had always loved the room and couldn’t help marvelling at it again, especially in the daylight. She’d never seen so many glistening, beautiful things, so many soft surfaces to sit on and so many interesting places to hide. Spotting an upholstered chair, she felt an overwhelming desire to run her fingernails over the plush fabric. All the room’s colours were so bright, and the surfaces were so clean and shiny. She didn’t see any mud or grease or dirt anywhere. There were brightly coloured vases filled with flowers – to think! Flowers, actually inside the house. Sunlight flooded in from the sparkling, leaded-glass windows of the spiralling, four-story-high Grand Staircase and the glass-domed Winter Garden, with its spraying fountain and tropical plants. She squinted her eyes against the brightness.

The Entrance Hall teemed with dozens of beautifully attired ladies and gentlemen along with manservants in black-and-white uniforms helping them to prepare for a morning of horseback riding. Serafina stared at a lady who wore a riding dress made of white-piped green velvet and cranberry-red damask. Another woman wore a lovely mauve habit with dark purple accents and a matching hat. There were even a few children there, clothed as finely as their parents. Her eyes darted around the room as she tried to take it all in.

Serafina looked at the face of the lady in the green dress, and then she looked at the face of the lady in the mauve hat. She knew her momma was long dead, or at the very least long gone, but all her life, whenever she saw a woman, she checked to see if the woman looked like her. She studied the faces of the children too, wondering if there was a chance that any of them could be her brothers and sisters. When she was little, she used to tell herself a story that maybe she had come home one day to the house, muddy from her hunting, and her mother had taken her downstairs and stuck her in the belt-driven washing machine, and then gone back upstairs and accidentally forgot about her, just spinning and spinning away down there. But when Serafina looked around at the women and the children in the Entrance Hall and saw their blond hair and their blue eyes, their black hair and their brown eyes, she knew that none of them were her kin. Her pa never talked about what her momma looked like, but Serafina searched for her in every face she saw.

Serafina had come upstairs with a purpose, but now that she was here, the thought of actually trying to talk to any of these fancy people put a rock in her stomach. She swallowed and inched forward a little, but the lump in her throat was so huge she wasn’t even sure she could get a word out. She wanted to tell them what she’d seen, but it suddenly seemed so foolish. They were all happy and carefree, like so many larks on a sunny day. She didn’t understand. The girl was obviously one of these people, so why weren’t they looking for her? It was like it had never happened, like she had imagined the whole thing. What was she going to say to them? Excuse me, everyone . . . I’m pretty sure I saw a horrible black-cloaked man make a little girl vanish into thin air. Has anyone seen her? They’d lock her up like a cuckoo bird.

As a tall gentleman in a black suit coat walked by, she realised that one of these men might actually be the Man in the Black Cloak. With his shadowed face and glowing eyes, there was no doubt that the attacker had been some sort of spectre, but she had sunk her teeth into him and tasted real blood, and he needed a lantern to see just like all the other people she’d followed over the years, which meant he was of this world too. She scanned the men in the crowd, keeping her breathing as steady as she could. Was it possible that he was here at this very moment?

Mrs Edith Vanderbilt, the mistress of the house, walked into the room wearing a striking velvet dress and a wide-brimmed hat. Serafina couldn’t take her eyes off the mesmerising movement of the hat’s feathers. A refined and attractive woman, Mrs Vanderbilt had a pale complexion and a full head of dark hair, and she seemed at ease in her role as hostess as she moved through the room.

‘While we wait for the servants to bring up our horses,’ she said happily to her guests, ‘I would like to invite everyone to join me in the Tapestry Gallery for a little bit of musical entertainment.’

A pleasant murmur passed through the crowd. Delighted by the idea of a diversion, the ladies and gentlemen streamed into the gallery, an elegantly decorated room with its exquisitely hand-painted ceiling, intricate musical instruments and delicate antique wall tapestries. Serafina loved to climb the tapestries at night and run her fingernails down through the soft fabric.

‘I’m sure that most of you already know Mr Montgomery Thorne,’ Mrs Vanderbilt said with a gentle sweep of her arm towards a gentleman. ‘He has graciously offered to play for us today.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Vanderbilt,’ Mr Thorne said as he stepped forward with a smile. ‘This whole outing is such a wonderful idea, and I must say you’re a most radiant hostess on this lovely morning.’

‘You’re too kind, sir,’ Mrs Vanderbilt said with a smile.

To Serafina, who’d been listening to Biltmore’s visitors her entire life, he didn’t sound like he came from the mountains of North Carolina, or from New York like the Vanderbilts. He spoke with the accent of a Southern gentleman, maybe from Georgia or South Carolina. She crept forward to get a better look at him. He wore a white satin cravat round his neck, a brocade waistcoat and pale grey gloves, all of which she thought went nicely with his silvery-black hair and perfectly trimmed sideburns.

He picked up a finely made violin and its bow from the table where it had been lying.

‘Since when do you play the violin, Thorne?’ called one of the gentlemen from New York in a friendly tone.

‘Oh, I’ve been practising here and there, Mr Bendel,’ said Mr Thorne as he lifted the instrument to his chin.

‘When? On the carriage ride here?’ Mr Bendel retorted, and everyone laughed.

Serafina almost felt sorry for Mr Thorne. It was clear from their playful banter that Mr Bendel and Mr Thorne were companions, but it was equally clear that Mr Bendel had serious doubts as to whether his friend could actually play.

Serafina watched in nervous silence as Mr Thorne prepared himself. Perhaps it was a new instrument to him and this was his first performance. She couldn’t even imagine playing such a thing herself. At long last, he set the bow gently across the strings, paused for a moment to collect himself, and then began to play.

Suddenly, the vaulted rooms of the great house filled with the loveliest music she had ever heard, elegant and flowing, like a river of sound. He was wonderful. Spellbound by the beauty of his playing, the ladies and gentlemen and even the servants stood quietly and listened with rapt attention, and they let their hearts soak in every measure of the music he made.

Serafina enjoyed the sound of his playing, but she also watched his dexterous fingers. They moved so fast over the strings that they reminded her of little running mice, and she wanted to pounce on them.

When Mr Thorne was done, everyone applauded and congratulated him, especially Mr Bendel, who laughed in disbelief. ‘You never cease to amaze me, Thorne. You shoot like a marksman, you speak fluent Russian and now you play the violin like Vivaldi! Tell us, man, is there anything you’re not good at?’

‘Well, I’m certainly not as skilled a horseback rider as you are, Mr Bendel,’ Mr Thorne said as he set his violin aside. ‘And I must say it has always been most vexing to me.’

‘Well, stop the presses!’ Mr Bendel called. ‘The man has a chink in his armour after all!’ Then he looked at Mrs Vanderbilt with a smile. ‘So, when exactly are we going horseback riding?’

The other guests laughed at the two gentlemen as they quipped back and forth, and Serafina smiled. She enjoyed watching the camaraderie of these people. She envied the way they spoke to one another and touched each other and shared their lives. It was so different from her own world of shadow and solitude. She watched a young woman tilt her head and smile as she reached out and put her hand on the arm of a young gentleman. Serafina tried imitating the gesture herself.

‘Are you lost?’ someone said behind her.

Startled, Serafina whirled round and started to hiss, but then she stopped herself short. A young boy stood in front of her. A large black Dobermann with sharply pointed ears sat at his side, staring intently at her.

The boy wore a fine tweed riding jacket, a buttoned vest, woollen jodhpurs and knee-high leather boots. He was a little sickly-looking, a little frail even, but he had watchful, sensitive brown eyes and a rather fetching tussle of wavy brown hair. He stood quietly, staring at her.

It took every ounce of her courage not to run. She didn’t know what to do. Did he think she was a vagrant who had wandered in? Or perhaps she looked like a dazed servant – maybe a chimney sweep or window-washing girl. Either way, she knew she was stuck. He’d caught her dead to rights exactly where she wasn’t supposed to be.

‘Are you lost?’ the boy asked again, but this time she heard what sounded strangely like kindness in his voice. ‘May I help you find your way?’ He wasn’t timid or shy, but he wasn’t overconfident or arrogant, either. And it surprised her that he didn’t seem angry at her for being there. There was a trace of curiosity in his tone.

‘I-I-I’m not lost,’ she stammered. ‘I was just –’

‘It’s all right,’ he said as he stepped towards her. ‘I still get lost sometimes, and I’ve lived here for two years.’

Serafina sucked in a breath. Suddenly, she realised that she was speaking face to face with the young master, Mr Vanderbilt’s nephew. She’d seen him many times before, standing at his bedroom window looking out at the mountains, or galloping his horse across the grounds or walking alone on the footpaths with his dog – she’d watched him for years, but she’d never been this close to him.

Most of what she knew about him she’d overheard from the gossiping servants, and when it came to the young master, they sure did prattle on. When he was ten years old, his family had died in a fire and he became an orphan. His uncle took him in. He became like a son to the Vanderbilts.

He was known as a loner. Some of the less charitable folks whispered that the young master preferred the company of his dog and his horse to most people. She’d overheard the men in the stables saying that he’d won many blue ribbons at equestrian events and was considered one of the most talented horseback riders around. The cooks, who prided themselves on preparing the most exquisite gourmet meals, complained that he always shared the food on his plate with his dog.

‘I’ve explored pretty much every room on the first, second and third floors,’ the young master said to her, ‘and the stables, of course, but the other parts of the house are like foreign lands to me.’

As the boy spoke, she could tell he was trying to be polite, but his eyes kept studying her. It was nerve-racking. After all those years she’d been hiding, it felt so strange to have someone actually looking at her. It made her stomach twist, but at the same time her skin tingled all over. She knew she must look completely ridiculous standing before him in the remnants of her pa’s old work shirt, and he must have noticed her hands were dirty and there were smudges all over her face. Her hair was as wild as a banshee’s, and there was no hiding its streaked colour. How could he help but stare?

She reckoned he knew most of the guests and servants, and she could see him trying to figure out who she was. How out of place she must seem to him! She had two arms and legs like everyone else, but with her sharp cheekbones and her golden eyes she knew she didn’t look like a normal girl. No matter how much she ate, she couldn’t put any weight on the feral leanness of her body. She wasn’t sure if she looked more like a skinny little shoat to the Vanderbilt boy or like a savage little weasel, but neither of those animals belonged in the house.

There was a part of her – maybe the smart part – that wanted to turn tail and run, but she thought that maybe the young master might be the perfect person to tell about the girl in the yellow dress. The silky-laced adults with all their high-falutin airs wouldn’t pay a smudge-faced girl any mind. But maybe he would.

‘I’m Braeden,’ he said.

‘I’m Serafina,’ she blurted out before she could help herself. You fool! Why did you give him your name? It was bad enough that she’d allowed herself to be seen, but now he had a name to go with her face. Her father was going to kill her!

‘It’s good to meet you, Serafina,’ he said, bowing, as if she deserved the same respect as a proper lady. ‘This is my friend Gidean,’ he said, introducing her to his dog, who continued to sit and study her malevolently with steady black eyes.

‘Hello,’ she managed to say, but she didn’t appreciate the way the dog stared at her like it was only his master’s command that kept him from chomping on her with his gleaming white teeth.

Gathering her courage, she looked at Braeden Vanderbilt nervously. ‘Master Braeden, I came up here to tell you something that I saw . . .’

‘Really? What’d you see?’ he asked, full of curiosity.

‘There was a girl, a pretty blonde girl in a yellow dress, down in the basement last night, and I saw a man in a –’

As the coterie of ladies and gentlemen began to flow out of the Tapestry Gallery and move towards the main doors, the handsome Mr Thorne broke away and approached Braeden, interrupting her.

‘Are you coming, young master Vanderbilt?’ he asked encouragingly in his Southern accent. ‘Our horses are ready, and I’m anxious to see your latest riding skills. Perhaps we can ride together.’

Braeden’s face lit up with a smile. ‘Yes, sir, Mr Thorne,’ he called. ‘I’d like that very much.’

As soon as Mr Thorne rejoined the others, the young master’s eyes immediately returned to Serafina. ‘Excuse me, you were telling me what you saw . . .’

At that moment, Mr Boseman, the estate superintendent and her pa’s boss, came stomping up the stairs. He’d always been a scowling-faced curmudgeon, and today was no exception. ‘You there, who are you?’ he demanded, clutching Serafina’s arm so hard that she winced. ‘What’s your name, girl?’

Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, a sudden commotion rose up in the main hall. A dishevelled, overweight, middle-aged woman still wearing her nightclothes came rushing down the Grand Staircase from the third floor. She crashed into the crowd in a flurry of hysterical panic.

‘It’s Mrs Brahms,’ Mr Boseman said, turning towards the disturbance.

‘Has anyone seen my Clara?’ Mrs Brahms cried frantically, reaching out and grabbing the people around her. ‘Please help me – she’s gone missing! I can’t find her anywhere!’

Mrs Vanderbilt moved forward and took the woman’s hands in an attempt to calm her. ‘It’s a very large house, Mrs Brahms. I’m sure Clara is just off exploring.’

Worried discussion spread through the crowd. All the ladies and gentlemen of the riding party began talking to one another in confusion, wondering what was happening.

Miss Clara Brahms, Serafina thought. That’s the girl in the yellow dress.

The whole time, Mr Boseman kept his hand clamped on her arm.

She wanted to leap forward and tell everyone what she’d seen, but then what would happen? Where did you come from? they’d demand. What were you doing in the basement in the middle of the night? There’d be all sorts of questions she couldn’t answer.

All of a sudden, Mr George Vanderbilt, the master of the house, walked into the centre of the crowd and raised his hands. ‘Everyone, may I please have your attention,’ he said. All the guests and servants immediately stopped talking and listened. ‘I’m sure you all agree that we need to delay our ride and search for Miss Brahms. Once we find her, we’ll resume the activities of the day.’

George Vanderbilt was a slender, dark-haired, intelligent-looking gentleman in his thirties with a thick black moustache and keen, dark, penetrating eyes. He was well known for his love of reading, but he was a fit and healthy-looking man too, who seemed far younger than his years. And Serafina wasn’t the only one who thought so. She had heard the servants in the kitchen joke that their master must have secretly discovered the Fountain of Youth. Mr Vanderbilt was a meticulous dresser, and as she admired his commanding presence, she couldn’t help but notice his clothes too. In particular, his shoes. Like the other gentlemen present, he wore a gentleman’s riding jacket, but instead of riding boots he wore expensive black patent-leather shoes. As he strode across the hard surface of the marble floor, his shoes made a familiar clicking sound . . . the same sound that she’d heard in the corridors of the basement the night before.

She looked at the other men’s shoes. Braeden, Mr Thorne, and Mr Bendel wore riding boots in preparation for their outing, but Mr Vanderbilt was wearing his dress shoes.

He approached the lost girl’s mother and consoled her. ‘We’re going to search this place from top to bottom, Mrs Brahms, and we’ll keep looking until we find her.’ He turned to the ladies and gentlemen and waved over the footmen and maidservants as well. ‘We’ll break up into five separate search parties,’ he explained. ‘We’ll search the entire house, all four floors and also the basement. If anyone finds anything suspicious, report it immediately.’

Mr Vanderbilt’s words struck fear into Serafina’s heart. They were going to search the basement! The basement! That meant the workshop! With a mighty twist of her body, she yanked herself out of Mr Boseman’s grip and darted away before he could stop her. She bounded headlong down the stairs into the basement. She had to warn her pa. The leftovers from last night’s dinner, the mattress she slept on . . . they had to hide it all.

Serafina rushed up to her father in the workshop and grabbed his arm. Trying to talk and catch her breath at the same time, she gasped, ‘Pa, there’s a girl missing just like I said, and Mr Vanderbilt’s searching the whole house!’ Her words tumbled out with a mixture of urgency and pride. As she hurriedly reminded him of what she’d seen the night before, she was sure that he’d see now that she wasn’t dreaming or making up stories.

‘They’re searchin’ the house?’ he asked, ignoring everything else. He turned and quickly gathered his cooking supplies and razor from the bench, then dragged her mattress into the hidden area he’d constructed behind the tool rack. There could be no evidence of their living there when the search party came through.

‘What about the girl I saw disappear?’ she asked in confusion. She couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t more interested in what she was telling him.

‘Children don’t just disappear, Sera,’ he said as he continued his efforts.

Her heart sank. He still didn’t believe her.

Her pa looked around the room one last time to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, and then he looked at her. For a moment, she thought he was finally going to listen to what she was saying, but then he pointed at her hairbrush and snapped, ‘For God’s sake, girl, pick up your things!’

‘But what about the Man in the Black Cloak?’ she argued.

‘I don’t want you thinking about anything like that,’ he barked. ‘It was nothing but a nightmare. Now hush up.’

She flinched from the words. She couldn’t understand why he was being so mean. But she could hear the worry in his voice along with the anger, and in the distance she could hear the search party coming down the stairs. She knew it wasn’t just the threat of discovery that scared him. He hated any talk of the supernatural or any sort of dark and fiendish forces out in the world that he couldn’t fix with his wrenches, hammers and screwdrivers.

‘But it’s real!’ she demanded. ‘The girl’s actually gone, Pa. I’m telling the truth!’

‘A little girl’s got herself lost, that’s it, and they’re lookin’ for her, so they’ll find her, wherever she is. Get your wits about you. People don’t just vanish. She’s gotta be someplace.’

She stood in the centre of the room. ‘I think we should both go out there right now and tell them everything I saw,’ she declared boldly.

‘No, Sera,’ he said. ‘They’ll spit nails if they find me livin’ down here. They’ll fire me. Do you understand that? And God knows what they’ll make of you. They don’t even know you’re alive, and we’re gonna keep it that way. I’m talkin’ to you dead straight now, girl. You hear me?’

The sound of the search party could be heard down the corridor, and it was coming their way.

Clenching her teeth, she shook her head in frustration and stood before him. ‘Why, Pa? Why? Why can’t people see me?’ She didn’t have the courage to tell him that at least one Vanderbilt already had, and that he knew her name. ‘Just tell me, Pa, whatever it is. I’m twelve years old. I’m grown up. I deserve to know.’

‘Look, Sera,’ he said, ‘last night, somebody sabotaged the dynamo, did it some real damage that I’m not sure I can mend. If I don’t get it fixed by nightfall, there’s gonna be hell to pay from the boss, and rightly so. The lights, the elevators, the servant-call system – this whole place depends on the Edison machine.’

She tried to imagine someone sneaking into the electrical room and damaging the equipment. ‘But why would someone do that, Pa?’

The search party was making its way through the kitchens and would arrive in the workshop at any moment.

‘I ain’t got time to think about it,’ he said, moving towards her with his huge body. ‘I just gotta get it workin’, that’s all. Now do what I tell ya!’

He charged around the room and hid things with such roughness and loudness and violence that it frightened her. She crept behind the boiler and watched him. She knew that when he was like this she couldn’t get anywhere with him. He just wanted to be left alone to do his job and work on his machines. But it was gnawing at her, and the more she thought about it, the madder she got. She knew it wasn’t the right time to talk to him about everything she’d been thinking and feeling, but she didn’t care. She just blurted it out.

‘I’m sorry, Pa,’ she said. ‘I know you’re busy, but please just tell me why you don’t want anyone to see me.’ She stepped out from behind the boiler and faced him, her voice getting louder now. ‘Why have you been hiding me all these years?’ she demanded. ‘Just tell me what’s wrong with me. I want to know. Why are you ashamed of me?’

By the time she was done, she was practically screaming at him. Her voice was so loud and shrill that it actually echoed.

Her pa stopped dead in his tracks and looked at her. She knew she had finally reached down inside him and grabbed that armoured heart of his. She’d finally stirred him up. She felt a sudden impulse to take it all back and dart behind the boiler again to hide, but she didn’t. She stood before him and looked at him as steadily as she could, her eyes watering.

He stood very still over by the bench, his huge hands balled into fists. A visible wave of pain and despair seemed to pass through him all at once, and for a moment he couldn’t speak.

‘I’m not ashamed of you,’ he said gruffly, his voice strangely hoarse. The searchers were now only one room away.

‘You are,’ she shot back. She was trembling in fear, but she wasn’t going to give up this time. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to shake him to the core. ‘You’re ashamed of me,’ she said again.

He turned away from her so that she couldn’t see his face, just the back of his head and huge, bulky body. Several seconds of silence went by. Then he shook his head like he was arguing with himself, or furious with her, or both – she wasn’t sure.

‘Just keep your mouth shut and follow me,’ he said as he turned and walked out of the room.

Scurrying after him, she caught up with him in the corridor. Her body felt queasy all over. She didn’t know where he was taking her or what was going to happen. She could barely suck in breaths as he led her down the narrow stone stairs to the sub-basement and into the electrical room with the iron dynamo and thick black wires that spidered up the walls. They had left the search party behind them, at least for a little while.

‘We’ll hole up in here,’ he said as he pulled the door shut with a heavy thud and locked them in. As he lit a lantern against the darkness, she’d never seen him look so serious, so grave and pale, and it frightened her.

‘What’s happening, Pa?’ she asked, her voice shaking.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Ya ain’t gonna like what I got to tell ya, but it might help ya understand.’

Serafina swallowed, sat on an old wooden spool of copper wire and prepared herself to listen. Her pa sat on the floor facing her, with his back against the wall. Staring down at the floor and deep in thought, he began to talk.

‘Years ago, I was workin’ as a mechanic in the train yard in Asheville,’ he said. ‘The foreman and his wife had just had their third baby boy and their home was full of joy, but while everyone else celebrated, I sat alone in a kind of self-made misery. I ain’t proud of it, the way I was soppin’ around that night, but things just weren’t workin’ out for me the way they were supposed to in a man’s life. I wanted to meet a good woman, build a house in town and have children of my own, but years had gone by and it hadn’t happened. I was a big man and not much to look at. I sweated all day on the engines, and those few times I encountered any womenfolk I could never find my words. I could talk about nuts and bolts till the mornin’ come, but not much else.’

She opened her mouth to ask a question, but she didn’t want to disrupt the story that was finally pouring out of her pa.

‘That night, while everyone was tipping the jug,’ he continued, ‘I was feelin’ pretty poor, and I headed out. I went for a long walk, just walkin’ like ya do when you got too much on your mind to do naught else. I went deep into the forest, up through River’s Gap and into the mountains. When night came, I just kept walkin’.’

It was hard for her to picture her father travelling through the forest. All those times he had warned her had led her to believe that he would never set foot in the forest. He hated the forest. At least he did now.

‘Were you scared, Pa?’

‘Naw, I weren’t,’ he said, shaking his head and still looking at the floor. ‘But I shoulda been.’

‘Why? What happened?’ She couldn’t even imagine what it was. The flicker of the lantern cast an eerie shadow on his face. She had always loved his stories, but this one felt closer to his heart than any story he had ever told.

‘As I was walkin’ through the woods, I heard a queer howlin’ noise, like an animal in terrible, writhing pain. The bushes were movin’ somethin’ fierce, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was.’

‘Was it somethin’ dyin’, Pa?’ She leaned toward him.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘The ruckus in the bushes went on for a spell, then the noise stopped all sudden-like. I thought it was over, but then a pair of amber-yellow eyes peered at me from the darkness. Whatever sort of man or beast it was, it circled slowly round me, taking one position and then another, studying me real careful, like it was trying to make a decision about me, whether I was worth eatin’ or just lettin’ be. I sensed a real power behind those eyes. But then the eyes disappeared. The beast was gone. And I heard a strange mewling, crying sound.’

She straightened her back and looked at him. ‘Crying?’ she asked in confusion. That definitely wasn’t what she was expecting.

‘I searched through the bushes. Blood covered the ground, and in the blood lay a pile of small creatures. Three of ’em were dead, but one remained just barely alive.’

She got off the wooden spool and crouched down beside her pa. She stared at him, totally absorbed in his story. In her mind, she could see the bloody creatures on the ground.

‘But what kind of creatures were they?’ she asked in amazement.

He shook his head. ‘Like everyone else who lives in these mountains, I’d heard the stories of black magic, but I never gave them much credit until that night. I studied the one that was still alive the best I could in the darkness, but I still couldn’t figure what kind of thing it was. Or more like my mind just couldn’t believe it. But when I finally took up the creature in my bare hands and held it I realised that it was actually a tiny human baby curled into a little ball.’

Serafina’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘What? Wait. I don’t understand. What happened? How did a baby get there?’

‘The same question was runnin’ through my own mind, believe me, but one thing I knew for certain: regardless of how she came into the world, I had to get this baby some help. I bundled her up in my jacket, hiked back down the hill and carried her out of the woods. I took her to the midwives at the convent and begged them to help, but they gasped at the sight of her, muttering that she was the devil’s work. They said she was malformed, near to death and that there was nothing they could do to help her.’

‘But why?’ Serafina cried in outrage. ‘That’s terrible! That’s so mean!’ Just because something looked different didn’t mean you just threw it away. She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of world it was out there. The attitude of the midwives almost bothered her more than the idea of a yellow-eyed beast lurking in the night. But she felt a renewed glimmer of admiration for her pa as she imagined his huge, warm hands wrapped around that tiny little baby’s body, giving it heat, keeping it alive.

Her father took a long, deep, troubled breath as he remembered that night, and then he continued his story. ‘You have to understand the poor little thing had been born with her eyes closed, Sera, and the nuns said that she would never see. She’d been born deaf, and they said she would never hear. And it was plain enough to see that she had four toes on each foot instead of five, but that was the least of it. Her collarbones were malformed, and she had an unnaturally long, curving spine – all twisted-like – and she did not look like she could survive.’

The shock hit her like a blow. She looked up at her father in astonishment. ‘I’m the baby!’ she shouted, leaping to her feet. This wasn’t just a story, this was her story. She’d been born in the forest. That meant her pa had found her and taken her in. She was like a baby fox who’d been raised by a coyote. She stood in front of her pa. ‘I’m the baby!’ she said again.

Her father looked at her, and she saw the truth of it flickering in his eyes, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He didn’t say yes and didn’t say no. It was like he couldn’t reconcile his memory of that dark night with the daughter he had now, and he had to tell the story the only way he could: as if it wasn’t her at all.

‘The bones of the baby’s back weren’t connected to each other the way they should have been,’ he continued. ‘The nuns were half scared out of their wits at the idea of caring for this child, like it was some sort of demon spawn, but to me she was a little baby, a little chitlan, and you didn’t abandon such a thing. Who cares how many toes she had!’

Serafina kneeled on the floor in front of him, trying to understand it all. She was beginning to see the kind of man her father was and maybe where she got some of her own stick-to-it-iveness. But it was all so confusing. How could she get anything from him if she wasn’t even his?

‘I took that baby away, fearin’ them nuns would drown her,’ he said.

‘I hate them nuns,’ she spat. ‘They’re terrible!’

He shook his head, not in disagreement, but more like the nuns didn’t mean anything at all because they were the least of his problems.

‘I didn’t have any proper food,’ he said, ‘so I crept into a farmer’s barn and milked his goat – stole a bottle too. Felt ashamed doin’ these things, but I needed to get some food into her, and I couldn’t see a better road. That night, I fed the little chitlan her first meal, and as bad off as she was, and with her eyes still closed, she drank it down real good, and I remember praying that somehow it’d help. The more I held her and watched her suck down that milk, the more I wanted her to live.’

‘Then what happened?’ She slid closer to him. She knew that outside the locked door of the electrical room, somewhere above them, the lawful inhabitants of Biltmore Estate were searching from room to room, but she didn’t care. ‘Keep goin’, Pa,’ she nudged.

‘I looked for a woman who could mother the baby proper, but none of them would do it. They was sure she was gonna die. But two weeks later, while I was fixin’ an engine with one hand and bottle-feedin’ the chitlan with the other, somethin’ happened. She opened her eyes for the first time and stared straight at me. All I could do was stare right back at her. She had these big, beautiful yellow eyes that just didn’t stop. I knew then and there that I was hers, and she was mine, that we were kin now, and there was no denyin’ it.’

Serafina was so mesmerised by his story that she barely blinked. The yellow eyes that her father spoke of were still looking at him, and they had been for twelve years.

He rubbed his mouth slowly with his hand, looked over at the dynamo, and then continued the story. ‘In the time that followed, I fed the little chitlan every morning and every night. I slept with her tucked under my arm. I nestled her in an open toolbox beside me when I worked. When she started growing up a little, I taught her how to crawl and run about. I was tryin’ my best to take good care of her – she was mine now, you see – but people started askin’ questions and government types started comin’ around. Men with badges and guns. One night when I was out workin’ in the train yard, three of ’em waited until she wandered off a bit, and then they cornered her, trapped her in real tight. They was gonna take her away and put her someplace, God knows where, or maybe worse. I hit the first officer so hard that he went down bleedin’ and he didn’t get up, then I struck the second one and grabbed for the third, but he skedaddled on outta there. The little chitlan was all right, thank God, but I knew we were in trouble. They’d be comin’ back with more men next time, chains for me, and a cage for the chitlan. I knew then that we had to go. We had to escape the pryin’ eyes and yammerin’ mouths in the city, so I quit the train yard and found a new job way up in the mountains, workin’ the construction of a great house.’

She gasped as she realised that he hadn’t just been hiding her; he’d been hiding them. That’s why we’re in the basement, she thought as a wave of relief passed through her. He was protecting her.

‘I took care of her through good times and bad,’ her pa continued, ‘just doin’ everything I could, and over the years the strange little creature that I found in the forest grew up into a fine little girl, and I did my best to forget how she came into the world or how I got her.’

And here, finally, her father paused and looked at her in earnest. ‘And that’s you now, Sera,’ he said. ‘That’s you. It’s plain to see that you’re not like other girls, but you’re not misshapen or hideous like them nuns said you’d be. You’re remarkably graceful in your movements – fast and agile like I’ve never seen. You’re not deaf and blind like they said, but real sharp in your senses. I’ve been protecting you every day for the last twelve years, and the God’s truth: they’ve been the best twelve years of my life. You mean the world to me, girl. There’s no shame here, none at all, just a strong desire to keep us both alive.’

When he stopped and looked at her with his steady dark eyes, she realised that she’d been sobbing, and quickly wiped the tears off her face before he got mad at her for crying. In some ways, she had never felt closer to her pa than at that moment, for his story had snagged her heart, but there was something else roiling up inside her too: her father wasn’t her father. He’d found her in the woods and taken her. He’d been lying to her and everyone else for her entire life. All these years he’d refused to talk about her mother, just let her wonder on and on, and now here it was. The truth. Tears kept streaming down her face. She felt so stupid imagining fancy ladies and her mother forgetting her in a washing machine and all that stuff she used to think about when she was little. She’d spent countless hours wondering where she came from and he had known all this the whole time.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked him.

He didn’t answer her.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Pa?’ she asked again.

Staring at the ground, he shook his head slowly back and forth.

‘Pa . . .’

Finally, he said, ‘Because I didn’t want it to be true.’

She stopped and looked at him in shock. ‘But it is true, Pa. You can’t just wish things aren’t true when they are true!’

‘I’m sorry, Sera,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to be my little girl.’

She was angry, very angry, but she felt a lump in her throat. He had finally reached deep down into his heart and told her what he was thinking, what he was feeling, what he was frightened of, and what he dreamed of.

And what he dreamed of was her.

She clenched her teeth and breathed through her nose and looked at him.

She was angry and confused and amazed and excited and frightened all at the same time. She finally knew the truth. At least some of it.

Now she knew that she didn’t just feel different, she was different.

The thought of it terrified her: she was a creature of the night.

She came from the very forest that her pa had taught her to fear all her life and had forbidden her to enter. The thought of coming from that place repulsed her, scared her, but at the same time there was a strange confirmation in it, almost a relief. It made a twisted kind of sense to her.

She looked at her father, sitting with his back against the wall. Now that he had finally told her the story, he seemed exhausted, like a man who had shared a great burden.

He picked himself up off the floor, brushed off his hands and walked slowly to the other side of the room, deep in thought.

‘I’m sorry, Sera,’ he said. ‘I reckon it ain’t gonna do ya no good on the inside knowin’ all that, but you’re right, you’re growin’ up now, and ya deserved to know.’ He came over to her and squatted down and held her so that he could look into her face. ‘But whatever you do with it, I want you to remember this one thing: there’s nothin’ wrong with you, Sera, nothin’ at all, you hear?’

‘Yeah, I hear, Pa,’ she said, nodding and wiping the tears from her eyes. There was turmoil in her heart, but one thing she knew for sure: her father believed in her. But, even as she stood there looking at him, thoughts and questions started weaving through her mind.

Would she have to stay hidden forever? Could she ever fit in with the people of Biltmore? Could she ever make any friends? She was a creature of the night, but what did that mean she could do? She looked down at her hand. If she grew out her fingernails, would they become claws?

In the distance she could hear the sound of the search party moving through the basement, and she tried to block it out. She looked over at her father again. After a long pause, she quietly asked the question that had been forming in her mind.

‘What about my mother?’

Her pa shut his eyes for a second as he took a good, long breath, and then he opened his eyes, looked at her and spoke to her with unusual softness. ‘I’m sorry, Sera. The truth is I don’t rightly know. But when I see her in my mind I think she must have been beautiful, both lovely and strong. She fought hard to bring you into the world, Sera, and she wanted to stay with you, but she knew she couldn’t. I don’t know why she couldn’t. But she gave you to me to love and take care of, and for that I’m much obliged.’

‘So maybe she’s still out there someplace . . .’ Her voice trembled, uncertain. Her pa’s story had made it feel like there was a tornado twisting inside her, but the thought of her momma felt like the bursting of the sun.

‘Maybe she is,’ he relented, gently.

She looked at him. ‘Pa, do you . . . do you think that . . . do you know if she was human or –’

‘I don’t want to hear any talk ’bout that,’ he interrupted her, shaking his head. She could see in the tightness of his mouth how upset her question made him. ‘You’re my little girl,’ he said. ‘That’s what I believe.’

‘But in the forest –’ she began.

‘No,’ he cut her off, ‘I don’t want you to think about that. You live here. With me. This is your home. I’ve told ya before, and I’ll tell ya again, Sera: our world is filled with many mysteries, things we don’t understand. Never go into the deep parts of the forest, for there are many dangers there, both dark and bright, and they will ensnare your soul.’

She stared at her pa for a long time, trying to comprehend his words. She could see the seriousness in his eyes, and she felt it too, deep down in her heart. Her pa was the only person she’d ever had in the world.

She heard men coming down the corridor outside the door. They were searching the rooms of the sub-basement. The hair on her arms tingled, telling her to run.

She looked at her pa. After all he’d done for her by telling her this story, she didn’t want to bring it up again, didn’t want to make him angry, but she had to ask one last question.

‘What about the man who took the girl in the yellow dress? What kind of demon is he, Pa? Does he come out of the forest, or do you think he’s one of the fancy-dressed swells from upstairs?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been prayin’ to God in heaven that it was a figment of your imagination.’

‘It wasn’t, Pa,’ she said softly.

He didn’t want to argue with her any more, but he looked straight at her. ‘Don’t get it in your head you’re gonna go out there, Sera,’ he said. ‘It’s just too dangerous for us. You see why now. I know you’re hankering to help her, and that does ya credit, but don’t worry about the girl. She’s their kin, not ours. They don’t need our help. They’ll find her. You stay out of it.’

At that moment, someone pounded on the heavy wooden door to the electrical room.

‘We’re searching the house!’ a man shouted.

Serafina glanced around even though she already knew there was no way out of the room.

‘Open this door!’ shouted another man. ‘Open up!’

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