First published in the USA in 2016 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 © 2016 Robert Beatty

The moral rights of the author and illustrators have been asserted

First e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978 1 4052 8415 8

eISBN 978 1 7803 1755 7

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.

Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties.

Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

This book is dedicated to you, the readers who helped spread the word about Serafina and the Black Cloak, and in so doing, made this second book possible.

And to Jennifer, Camille, Genevieve, and Elizabeth:

My co-conspirators, co-creators, and the loves of my life.

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

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

An Invitation to Biltmore

Acknowledgements

Back series promotional page

Biltmore Estate

Asheville, North Carolina

1899

Three weeks after defeating

the Man in the Black Cloak

Serafina stalked through the underbrush of the moonlit forest, slinking low to the ground, her eyes fixed on her prey. Just a few feet in front of her, a large wood rat gnawed on a beetle he’d dug up. Her heart beat strong and steady in her chest, marking her slow and quiet creep towards the rat. Her muscles buzzed, ready to pounce. But she did not rush. Swivelling her shoulders back and forth to fine-tune the angle of her attack, she waited for just the right moment. When the rat bent down to pick up another beetle, she leapt.

The rat caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye just as she sprang. It was beyond her ken why so many animals of the forest froze in terror when she pounced. If death by tooth and claw came leaping at her out of the darkness, she’d fight. Or she’d run. She’d do something. Little woodland creatures like rats and rabbits and chipmunks weren’t known for their boldness of heart, but what was freezing in sheer terror going to do?

As she dropped onto the rat, she snatched him up quicker than a whiskerblink, and clutched him in her hand. And now that it was well past too late, he started squirming, biting and scratching, his furry little body becoming a wriggling snake, his tiny heart racing at a terrific pace.

There it is, she thought, feeling the thumpty-thumpty of his heartbeat in her bare hand. There’s the fight. It quickened her pulse and stirred her senses. Suddenly, she could detect everything in the forest around her – the sound of a tree frog moving on a branch thirty feet behind her, the reedy buzz of a lonely timberdoodle in the distance, and the glimpse of a bat swishing through the starlit sky above the broken canopy of the trees.

It was all for practice, of course, the prowling and the pouncing, the stalking of prey and the snatching hold. She didn’t kill the wild things she hunted, didn’t need to, but they didn’t know that, darn it! She was terror! She was death! So why at the last moment of her attack did they freeze? Why didn’t they flee?

Serafina sat down on the forest floor with her back against an old, gnarled, lichen-covered oak tree and held the rat in a clenched fist on her lap.

Then she slowly opened her hand.

The rat darted away as fast as he could, but she snatched him up and brought him back to her lap again.

She held him tight for several seconds and then opened her hand once more.

This time, the rat did not run. He sat on her hand, trembling and panting, too confused and exhausted to move.

She lifted the terrified rodent a little closer, tilted her head and studied him. The wood rat didn’t look like the nasty grey sewer varmints she was used to catching in the basement of Biltmore Estate. This particular rat had a scarred tear in his left ear. He’d encountered some trouble before. And with his dark little eyes and the tremulous whiskers of his long, pointy nose, he seemed more like a cute, chubby brown mouse than the proper vermin on which she had earned her title. She could almost imagine a little hat on his head and a buttoned vest. She felt a pang of guilt that she’d caught him, but she also knew that if he tried to run again her hand would snatch him up before she even thought about it. It wasn’t a decision. It was a reflex.

As the little rat tried to catch his breath, his eyes darted to and fro for a way out. But he didn’t dare. He knew that as soon as he tried to run, she’d grab him again; that it was the nature of her kind: to play with him, to paw him, to claw him, until he was finally dead.

But she looked at the rat and then set him on the forest floor. ‘Sorry, little fellow – just practising my skills.’

The rat gazed up at her in confusion.

‘Go ahead,’ she said gently.

The rat glanced towards the thistle thicket.

‘There ain’t no trick in it,’ she said.

The rat didn’t seem to believe her.

‘You go on home, now,’ she told him. ‘Just move slowly away at first, not too fast – that’s the way of it. And keep your eyes and ears open next time, even if you got a beetle to chew on, you hear? There are far meaner things in these woods than me.’

Astonished, the torn-eared wood rat rubbed his little paws over his face repeatedly and bobbed his head, almost as if he were bowing. She snorted a little laugh through her nose, which finally startled the rat into action. He quickly got his wits about him and scampered into the thicket.

‘Have a good evenin’, now,’ she said. She reckoned he’d bolster his memory of his courage the further he got away from her and have a good story to tell his wife and little ones by the time he got home for supper. She smiled as she imagined him telling a great and twisty tale with his family gathered around – how he was in the forest just minding his own business, gnawing on a beetle, when a vicious predator pounced upon him and he’d had to fight for his every breath. She wondered if she’d be a beast of ferocious power in the story. Or just a girl.

At that moment, she heard a sound from above like an autumn breeze flowing through the tops of the trees. But there wasn’t a breeze. The midnight air was chilled and quiet and perfectly still, like God was holding his breath.

She heard a delicate, almost gossamer, whisper-like murmur. She looked up, but all she could see were the branches of the trees. Rising to her feet, she brushed off the simple green work dress that Mrs Vanderbilt had given her the day before and walked through the forest, listening for the sound. She tried to determine the direction it was coming from. She tilted her head left and then right, but the sound seemed to have no position. She made her way over to a rocky outcropping, where the ground fell steeply away into a forested valley. From here she could see a great distance, miles yonder across the mist to the silhouettes of the Blue Ridge Mountains on the other side. A thin layer of silvery-white clouds glowing with light passed slowly in front of the moon. The brightness of the moon cast a wide-arcing halo in the feathery clouds, shone through them, and threw a long, jagged shadow onto the ground behind her.

She stood on the rocky ledge and scanned the valley in front of her. In the distance, the pointed towers and slate-covered rooftops of the grand Biltmore Estate rose from the darkness of the surrounding forest. The pale grey limestone walls were adorned with gargoyles of mythical beasts and fine sculptures of the warriors of old. The stars reflected in the slanting windowpanes, and the mansion’s gold-and copper-trimmed roofline glinted in the moonlight. There in the great house, Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt slept on the second floor, along with their nephew, her friend, Braeden Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilts’ guests – family members from out of town, businessmen, dignitaries, famous artists – slept on the third floor, each in their own luxuriously appointed room.

Serafina’s pa maintained the steam heating system, the electric dynamo, the laundry machines powered by spinning leather straps, and all the other newfangled devices on the estate. She and her pa lived in the workshop in the basement down the corridor from the kitchens, laundry rooms and storerooms. But while all the people she knew and loved slept through the night, Serafina did not. She napped on and off during the day, curled up in a window or hidden in some dark nook in the basement. At night she prowled the corridors of Biltmore, both upstairs and down, a silent, unseen watcher. She explored the winding paths of the estate’s vast gardens and the darkened dells of the surrounding forest, and she hunted.

She was a twelve-year-old girl, but she had never lived what anyone other than herself would call a normal life. She had spent her time creeping through the estate’s vast basement catching rats. Her pa, half joking when he’d said it, had dubbed her the C.R.C.: the Chief Rat Catcher. But she’d taken on the title with pride.

Her pa had always loved her and did the best he could to raise her, in his own rough-hewn way. She certainly hadn’t been unhappy eating supper with her pa each evening and sneaking through the darkness at night ridding the great house of rodents. Who would be? But deep down she’d been a fair bit lonely and mighty confused. She had never been able to square why most folk carried a lantern in the dark, or why they made so much noise when they walked, or what compelled them to sleep through the night just when all manner of things were at their most beautiful. She’d spied on the estate’s children from a distance enough to know she wasn’t one of them. When she gazed into a mirror, she saw a girl with large amber eyes, deeply angled cheekbones, and a shaggy mane of streaked brown hair. No, she wasn’t a normal, everyday child. She wasn’t an any day child. She was a creature of the night.

As she stood at the edge of the valley, she heard again the sound that had brought her there, a gentle fluttering, like a river of whispers travelling on the currents of wind that flowed high above her. The stars and planets hung in the blackened sky, scintillating as if they were alive with the spirits of ten thousand souls, but they offered no answers to the mystery.

A small, dark shape crossed in front of the moon and disappeared. Her heart skipped a beat. What was it?

She watched. Another shape passed the moon, and then another. At first, she thought they must be bats, but bats didn’t fly in straight lines like these.

She frowned, confused and fascinated.

Tiny shape after tiny shape crossed in front of the moon. She looked up high into the sky and saw the stars disappearing. Her eyes widened in alarm. But then the realisation of what she was seeing slowly crept upon her. Squinting her eyes just right, she could see great flocks of songbirds flying over the valley. Not just one or two, or a dozen, but long, seemingly endless streams of them – clouds of them. The birds filled the sky. The sound she was hearing was the soft murmur of thousands of tiny wings of sparrows, wrens, and waxwings making their autumn journey. They were like jewels, green and gold, yellow and black, striped and spotted, thousands upon thousands of them. It seemed far too late in the year for them to be migrating, but here they were. They hurried across the sky, their little wings fluttering, heading southward for the winter, travelling secretly at night to avoid the hawks that hunted the day, using the ridges of the mountains below and the alignment of the glinting stars above to find their way.

The flighty, twitching movement of birds had always tantalised Serafina, had always quickened her pulse, but this was different. Tonight the boldness and beauty of these little birds’ trek down the mountainous spine of the continent flowed through her heart. It felt as if she was seeing a once-in-a-lifetime event, but then she realised that the birds were following the path that their parents and grandparents had taught them, that they’d been flying this path for millions of years. The only thing ‘once in a lifetime’ about this was her, that she was here, that she was seeing it. And it amazed her.

Seeing the birds made her think of Braeden. He loved birds and other animals of all kinds.

‘I wish you could see this,’ she whispered, as if he was lying awake in his bed and could hear her across the miles of distance between them. She longed to share the moment with her friend. She wished he was standing beside her, gazing up at the stars and the birds and the silver-edged clouds and the shining moon in all its glory. She knew she’d tell him all about it the next time she saw him. But daytime words could never capture the beauty of the night.

A few weeks before, she and Braeden had defeated the Man in the Black Cloak and had torn the Black Cloak asunder. She and Braeden had been allies, and good friends, but it sank in once again, this time even deeper than before, that she hadn’t seen him in several nights. With every passing night, she expected a visit at the workshop. But each morning she went to bed disappointed, and it left her with biting doubts. What was he doing? Was something keeping him from her? Was he purposefully avoiding her? She’d been so happy to finally have a friend to talk to. It made her burn inside to think that maybe she was just a novelty to him that had worn off, and now she was left to return to her lonely nights of prowling on her own. They were friends. She was sure of it. But she worried that she didn’t fit in upstairs in the daylight, that she didn’t belong there. Could he have forgotten about her so quickly?

As the birds thinned out and the moment passed, she looked across the valley and wondered. After defeating the Man in the Black Cloak, she reckoned herself one of the Guardians, the marble lions that stood on either side of Biltmore’s front doors, protecting the house from demons and evil spirits. She imagined herself the C.R.C. of not just the small, four-legged vermin, but of intruders of all kinds. Her pa had always warned her about the world, of the dangers that could ensnare her soul, and after everything that had happened she was sure there were more demons out there.

For weeks now, she’d been watching and waiting, like a guard on a watchtower, but she had no idea when or in what shape the demons would come. Her darkest worry, deep down, when she faced it true, was whether she’d be strong enough, smart enough – whether she’d end up the predator or the prey. Maybe the little animals like the wood rat and the chipmunk knew that death was just a pounce away. Did they think of themselves as prey? Maybe they were almost expecting to die, ready to die. But she sure wasn’t. She had things to do.

Her friendship with Braeden had just begun, and she wasn’t going to give up on it just because they’d hit a snag. And she had only just started to understand her connection to the forest, to figure out who and what she was. And now that she’d met the Vanderbilts face to face, her pa had been pressuring her to start acting like a proper daytime girl.

Mrs V. was taking her in, always talking to her with a gentle word. Now she had the basement and the forest and the upstairs – she’d gone from having too few kin to having too many, getting pulled in three directions at once. But after years of living without any family besides her pa it felt good to be getting started with her new life.

All that was fine and good. When danger came, she wanted to fight, she wanted to live. Who didn’t? But what if the danger came so fast she never saw it coming? What if, like an owl attacking a mouse, the claws dropped from the sky and killed her before she even knew they were there? What if the real danger wasn’t just whether she could fight whatever threat that came, but whether she even recognised it before it was too late?

The more she thought about the flocks of birds she’d seen, the more it rankled her peace of mind. It was plenty warm, but she couldn’t stop thinking that December seemed far too late in the year for birds to be coming and going. She frowned and searched the sky for the North Star. When she found it, she realised that the birds hadn’t even been flying in the right direction. She wasn’t even sure they were the kinds of birds that flew south for the winter.

As she stood on the rocky edge of the high ground, the dark ooze of dread seeped into her bones.

She looked up at where the birds had been flying, and then she looked in the direction they came from. She gazed out across the top of the darkened forest. Her mind tried to work it through. And then she realised what was happening.

The birds weren’t migrating.

They were fleeing.

She pulled in a long, deep breath as her body readied itself. Her heart began to pound. The muscles of her arms and legs tightened.

Whatever it was, it was coming.

And it was coming now.

A moment later, a sound in the distance tickled Serafina’s ear. It wasn’t sparrow wings, like she’d heard before, but something earthbound. She tilted her head and listened for it again. It seemed to be coming from down in the valley.

She stood, faced the sound, and cupped her hands round the back of her ears, a trick she’d learned from mimicking a bat.

She heard the faint jangle of harnesses and the clip-clop of hooves. Her stomach tightened. It was a strange sound to encounter in the middle of the night. A team of horses pulling a carriage was making its way up the three-mile-long winding road towards the house. In the daytime, there would be nothing unusual about that. But no one ever came to Biltmore at night. Something was wrong. Was it a messenger bearing bad news? Had someone died? Was the North going to war with the South again? What calamity had befallen the world?

Pulling back from the rocky ledge, she hurried down into the valley and made her way through the forest to one of the arched brick bridges where the road crossed over the stream. She watched from the concealing leaves of the mountain laurel as an old, road-beaten carriage passed by. Most carriages had one or two horses, but this was pulled by four dark brown stallions with powerful, bulging muscles, their hides glistening with sweat in the moonlight and their nostrils flaring.

She swallowed hard. That isn’t a messenger.

Braeden had told her that stallions were wild and notoriously difficult – they kicked their handlers and bit people, and especially hated other stallions – but here were four of them pulling a carriage in unison.

When she looked at who was driving the carriage, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The carriage bench was empty. The horses were all cantering together in a forceful rhythm, as if by the rein of a master, but there was no driver to be seen.

Serafina clenched her teeth. This was all wrong. She could feel it in her core. The carriage was heading straight for Biltmore, where everyone was fast asleep and had no idea it was coming.

As the carriage rounded a bend and went out of sight, Serafina broke into a run and followed.

She ran through the forest, tracking the carriage as it travelled down the winding road. The cotton dress Mrs Vanderbilt had given her wasn’t too long, so it was easy to run in, but keeping pace with the horses was surprisingly difficult. She tore through the forest, leaping over fallen logs and bounding over ferns. She jumped gullies and climbed hills. She took shortcuts, taking advantage of the road’s meandering path. Her chest began to heave as she pulled in great gulps of air. Despite the trepidation she had felt moments before, the challenge of keeping up with the horses made her smile and then made her laugh, which made it all the more difficult to breathe when she was trying to run. Leaping and darting, she loved the thrill of the chase.

Then, all of a sudden, the horses slowed.

Serafina pulled herself short and hunkered down.

The horses came to a stop.

She ducked behind a clump of rhododendrons a stone’s throw from the carriage and concealed herself as she tried to catch her breath.

Why is the carriage stopping?

The horses anxiously shifted their hooves, and steam poured from their nostrils.

Her heart pounded as she watched the carriage.

The handle of the carriage door turned.

She crouched low to the ground.

The carriage door swung slowly open.

She thought she could see two figures inside, but then there was a roil of darkness like she’d never seen before – a shadow so black and fleeting that it was impossible for even her eyes to make it out.

A tall and sinewy man in a wide-brimmed leather hat and a dark, weather-beaten coat emerged from the carriage. He had long, knotty grey hair and a grey moustache and beard that reminded her of moss hanging from a craggy tree. As he climbed down from the carriage and stood on the road, he held a gnarled walking stick and gazed out into the forest.

Behind him, a vicious-looking wolfhound slunk down from the carriage onto the ground. Then another followed. The hounds had large, lanky bodies, massive heads with black eyes, and ratty, thick blackish-grey fur. Five dogs in all came forth from the carriage and stood together, scanning the forest for something to kill.

Afraid to make even the slightest sound, Serafina took in a slow, ragged breath as carefully and quietly as she possibly could. The beat of her heart pounded in her chest. She wanted to run. Just stay still, she ordered herself. Stay very still. She was sure that as long as she didn’t break cover, they wouldn’t see her.

She wasn’t certain what it was – maybe his long, frayed coat and the worn state of his carriage – but the man seemed as if he’d travelled a long distance. It surprised her when he shut the carriage door, stepped away and looked at the horses. The stallions immediately broke into a run like they had been whipped. The carriage soon disappeared down the road, taking whoever remained inside onward towards Biltmore but leaving the bearded man and his dogs behind in the forest. The man did not appear to be dismayed or upset by this, but acted as though this forest was exactly where he wanted to be.

Saying words Serafina could not understand, he gathered his pack of dogs around him. They were foul beasts with massive paws and thick claws. They didn’t seem like normal dogs that sniffed the ground and explored the forest. They all looked up at their master, as if waiting for his instructions.

The man’s face was shrouded by the bent brim of his hat. But when he tilted his head upward towards the moon Serafina sucked in a breath. The man’s silvery eyes, peering out from his weathered, craggy face, glinted with power. His mouth opened slowly as if he were trying to suck in the moonlight. Just when she thought he was going to utter words, he let out the most terrifying hissing scream she had ever heard. It was a long, raspy screech. And right at that moment a ghostly white barn owl appeared, flying overhead out of the trees, the beat of its wings utterly silent. It answered the man’s call with a bloodcurdling shriek. The sound sent a terrible burst of shivers down Serafina’s spine. And as the owl flew by, its eerie, flat-faced head pivoted towards her, as if searching, hunting. She ducked to the ground like a frightened mouse.

When the owl had disappeared into the midnight gloom, Serafina peeked back towards the road. Her heart stopped cold. The bearded man and his five hounds were now looking out into the forest in her direction, the man’s eyes still gleaming with an unnatural light despite the fact that he had turned away from the moon. She tried to convince herself that it was impossible for the man and his dogs to see her concealed in the leaves, but she couldn’t shake the horrible fear that they knew exactly where she was. The ground beneath her seemed to become slippery with some unknown dampness. The ivy on the forest floor seemed to be moving. She heard a tick-tick-ticking sound, followed by a long, raspy hiss. Suddenly, she felt the touch of the man’s breath on the back of her neck, and she spun round, cringing violently, but there was nothing there but blackness.

The man reached into his pocket with one of his knobbly, leathery-skinned hands and took out what appeared to be a scrap of torn, dark-coloured cloth.

‘Breathe it in,’ he ordered his dogs, his voice low and sinister. There was something about the stranger’s rugged face and beard, his rustic clothing and the way he said his words that made her think he was an Appalachian man, born and raised in the rocky ravines and thorny coves of these very mountains.

The first wolfhound pushed its muzzle into the folds of the dark cloth. When it drew its nose out again, its mouth gaped open. Its teeth were bared and chattering, dripping with saliva. The dog began to growl. Then the second dog and the third nosed the dark cloth, until all five had taken the scent. The wicked, snarling malevolence of the hounds stabbed her stomach with fear. Her only hope was that the trail of the cloth’s scent would take them in the opposite direction.

The man looked down at his pack of hounds. ‘Our quarry is near,’ he told them, his voice filled with menacing command. ‘Follow the scent! Find the Black One!’

Suddenly, the dogs howled, savage like wolves. All five of them burst from their haunches and lunged into the forest. Serafina jumped despite herself. Her legs wanted to run so bad that she could barely keep herself still. But she had to stay hidden. It was her only chance of survival. But to her horror, the hounds were running straight towards her.

She couldn’t understand it. Should she keep hiding? Should she fight? Should she run? The dogs were going to tear her to pieces.

Just when she knew she had to run, she realised it was too late. She didn’t have a chance. Her chest seized. Her legs locked. She froze in terror.

No! No! No! Don’t do it! You’re not a rat! You’re not a chipmunk! You’ve got to move!

Faced with certain death, she did what any sensible creature of the forest would do: she leapt ten feet straight up into a tree. She landed on a branch, then scurried along its length and hurled herself like a flying squirrel in a desperate leap to the next tree. From there, she bounded to the ground and ran like the dickens.

With howls of outrage, the hounds gave chase, running and snapping at her. They coursed her like a pack of wolves on a deer. But they were wolfhounds, so they weren’t born and bred to chase down and kill anything as small as a deer. They were born and bred to chase down and kill wolves.

As she ran, Serafina glanced back over her shoulder towards the road. The craggy-faced man looked up at the owl as the haunting creature came circling back round. Then, to Serafina’s astonishment, he threw his walking stick up into the sky. It tumbled end over end towards the owl. But it did not strike the bird. It seemed to blur and then disappear into the darkness, just as the owl flew into the cover of the trees. Serafina had no idea who the man was or what she had seen, but it didn’t matter now. She had to run for her life.

Fighting off a single jumping, biting, snapping, snarling wolfhound was bad enough, but fighting five was impossible. She sprinted through the forest as fast as she could, her muscles punched with the power of fear. She wasn’t going to let these growling beasts defeat her. The cold forest air shot into her pumping lungs, every sense in her body exploding with a lightning bolt of panic. Coming up behind her, the first hound reached out its ragged neck, opened its toothy maw and bit the back of her leg. She spun and struck the dog, screaming in anger and searing pain as the dog’s fangs punctured her flesh. The smell of the blood excited the other hounds into even more of a frenzy. The second dog leapt upon her and bit her shoulder, tearing into her with growling determination as she slammed her fist into its face. The third clamped its teeth onto her wrist as she tried to pull it away. The three of them pulled her down and dragged her across the ground. Then the other two dogs came in for the kill, their fangs bared as they lunged straight for her throat.

As the wolfhound charged in, Serafina threw her arm across her neck. Instead of tearing through her throat, the dog’s fangs chomped down on her forearm, shooting spikes of pain through her bone as she screamed. The second dog pressed in for the killing bite, but a fist-sized stone slammed into its head, knocking it back. Then another stone hit one of the other dogs, and it whirled to defend itself.

‘Haaaa!’ came a violent shout out of the darkness as a boy with long, wild hair leapt into the fray, striking and punching and clawing, flailing his arms in a spinning, growling attack.

Fierce with pain, Serafina slammed the heel of her hand into the nose of the dog clamped onto her arm, pushing the dog away.

‘Get up! Stay bold! Run!’ the boy shouted at her as he attacked two of the dogs and cleared the way for her.

Serafina scrambled up onto her feet, ready to flee. But just when she thought she and the boy were gaining the advantage and might actually be able to escape, one of the dogs came leaping out of darkness, slammed into the boy’s chest and knocked him off his feet. The boy and the dog rolled to the ground in a somersault of snarling, biting ferocity.

The next dog lunged at Serafina. She dodged it, but another dog came at her from the other side.

‘You can’t outrun these things for long,’ the boy shouted. ‘You’ve got to get to cover!’

She dodged a lunging bite, and then a second and a third, but the snapping mouths kept coming at her. She slammed a dog in the head and punched one in the shoulder, but the dogs just kept biting, biting, biting.

She ran backwards, defending herself from the incoming bites, but then she crashed into a face of sheer rock wall, and could retreat no further. She crouched into an attack position, hissing like an animal caught in a trap.

Just as a dog leapt at her, the boy tackled it to the ground.

‘Now!’ he shouted. ‘Climb!’

Serafina turned and tried to scramble up the craggy rock face, but the rock was dripping with water and too slippery to climb. Emboldened by her attempt to escape, two of the dogs immediately charged. She kicked their heads away repeatedly with her feet. She swatted and punched with her fists.

‘Don’t fight, you fool! Climb!’ the boy shouted. ‘You’ve got to run!’

Just as she turned to climb, another dog lunged at her, but the boy leapt onto its back, biting and scratching like a wild animal. The hound howled in vicious indignation and twisted around, snapping furiously at the boy. They went tumbling onto the ground in a fierce ball of battle. Two more dogs dived fang-first into the melee.

Seeing her chance, she jumped up and grabbed the branch of a rhododendron, then hoisted herself up the face of the rock. She quickly found a foothold and another branch. Using the rhododendron bushes as a ladder, she climbed as fast as she could up the cliff. Try that, you handless mutts!

When she had climbed out of reach of the dogs, she looked back. Two of them ran back and forth at the base of the cliff, growling as they tried to find a way up. The braver and stupider of the two tried repeatedly to run up the sheer wall, only to fall back down again.

‘Go on back to your master, you nasty dogs!’ she spat at them, remembering the dark and shadowy figure.

But as she looked out across the woods it wasn’t their master she was looking for. She couldn’t see the other three dogs or the boy. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been consumed in a terrible battle. She hadn’t been able to tell who was winning and who was losing, but it seemed impossible that he could fight off all three of them at once.

She waited and listened out into the forest, but there was nothing. The two dogs that had been on her had disappeared. They were running along the base of the cliff. Those mongrels are looking for another way up, she thought.

She had to keep moving before it was too late. She climbed another fifteen feet until she reached the top edge of the cliff.

Panting and exhausted, and bleeding from her head, arms and calves, she crumpled to the ground. She scanned the trees below her, searching for the boy.

She looked and looked, but there was nothing moving out there, nothing making a sound. How had they moved away from her so quickly? Was the boy all right? Did he get away? Or was he hurt?

She’d never laid eyes on the boy before, never seen anything like him, the way he moved and fought. He had brownish skin, a lithe, muscled body, and long, shaggy, dark brown hair, but it was his speed and his ferocity that had struck her most. She reckoned he must be one of the local mountain folk, like her pa, who were well known for being tough as nails and twice as sharp, but the boy had fought as hard as a rabid bobcat. There was something almost feral about him, like he’d lived in these woods all his life.

She stood and scanned the terrain behind her – flat, rocky ground and a thicket of shrub-like vegetation leading down into a larger ravine. She was pretty sure she knew where she was and how to get home, but she turned and looked out over the cliff again. The feral boy had saved her life. How could she just leave him?

The pain of the bites and scratches she’d suffered in the battle burned something fierce, like sharp, twisting barbed wire puncturing her flesh. Blood dripped down into her eyes from the wound to her head. She needed to get home.

She stared out across the tops of the trees in the direction she had last seen the boy. She waited and listened, thinking she’d hear signs of battle or maybe see him looking up at her. Or, God forbid, she would see his bloody, torn body lying lifeless on the ground.

Don’t fight, you fool! Climb! His words came ringing in her ears like he was still there. Run! he’d shouted.

Should she flee like he’d told her to, or should she look for him like she wanted to?

She hated making noise, making herself known to whatever lurked in the forest around her, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do: she cupped her hands round her mouth and whispered, ‘Hello! Can you hear me?’ over the tops of the trees.

And then she waited.

There was nothing but the crickets and frogs and the other sounds of the night forest.

She could feel the battle-pound of her heart slowing down, her breaths getting weaker, and her arms and legs getting heavier. If she was going to make it home, she had to go soon.

She didn’t want to just leave him out there fighting on his own. She wasn’t the leaving kind – or the forgetting kind, either.

She wanted to talk to him, find out his name and where he lived, or at least know he was safe. Who was he? Why was he in the forest in the middle of the night? And why was he willing to leap into a pack of vicious dogs to defend her?

She whispered once more into the trees, ‘Are you out there?’

Serafina knew she’d waited for the feral boy too long when she heard the two wolfhounds coming towards her from the north. They had found a way up to the high ground.

She looked around her. She glanced up at a tree, wondering if she could climb high enough. Then she thought about scaling back down the cliff again to confuse them, but she knew she couldn’t survive here all night on her own. Get out of here! the feral boy had told her.

Finally, she gathered herself up.

Whoever the boy was, she hoped he’d be all right. Stay strong, my friend.

She ducked into a dense boscage of spruce and fir, the evergreens packed so tightly together that it was like swimming in an ocean of green foliage. As she pushed her way through the thicket, she found her strength giving way to confusion. Her knees kept buckling beneath her, and she couldn’t focus on the terrain in front of her. She raised her hand to her head and realised that she was bleeding badly from a tear in her scalp. The blood was dripping down her forehead and into her eyes.

She stumbled through the sea of trees, knowing there was no way to elude the dogs now. Spasms of pain radiated from the puncture wounds in her arms and legs. She had to wipe the blood out of her eyes to see where she was going. The needled branches of the trees were so thick and high that she could no longer see the moon and stars. Her racing feet cracked sticks on the ground, making noise that she wouldn’t normally make, but it didn’t matter now. She had to run like she’d never run before. But even as she ducked and darted between the trees, she kept hearing the feral boy’s voice: You can’t outrun these things for long! She wanted to turn and fight them, but if they caught her here in the thicket of trees it’d be impossible to see their attacks. They’d kill her for sure. She had to keep running.

Suddenly, the trees opened up and she nearly fell headlong over a cliff edge into a rocky crash of whitewater rapids below. She pulled herself back from the edge with a gasp and grabbed onto the branches of a tree.

Looking over the edge of the cliff, she could see there was no way to cross the river here. The cliff was too high, the rapids too dangerous.

There ain’t nothin’ but bad choices, she thought. She knew she had to get to cover, but right now the cover she needed was to conceal her scent.

Pushing herself on, she ran along the cliff as it led down towards the river.

When she came to the stretch below the rapids, she tried to wade quickly across what looked like the safest and shallowest point. She’d never been in deep water before and didn’t know how to swim. She pushed hard through the drag of the rushing, knee-deep water, desperate to reach the other side and escape the wolfhounds. The mountain river was so cold that her legs ached. The current ran swift and strong. As she placed each step against the tearing force of the water, she felt the round, algae-covered rocks turning and slipping beneath her searching feet.

She reached the centre of the river. The water ripped round her thighs, making it more and more difficult to push against it. She was making headway. But just when she thought she was going to make it across, she felt the current lifting her body away from the rocks beneath her feet. She lost her balance and crashed down into the icy-cold water. She flailed wildly, desperately kicking her legs in search of footing, but the bottom of the river disappeared as the current swept her into deep water. Coughing and spitting, she thrashed and leapt and gasped frantically for air as the river carried her downstream towards the next set of rapids.

The current sucked her into a rifling chute between two giant boulders, then shot her out the other side, tumbling end over end underwater through a dark green pool. As her head broke the surface, she managed to steal another gasp of air before the river grabbed hold of her again, heaving her and yanking her through a spiral of rushing water. She found herself spinning, submerged in a whirlpool so deep that she said goodbye to her pa. But then her body hit a jagged rock. She tried to cling to it, but the rushing flow immediately pulled her away again. She’d always thought she was strong, but compared to the force of the river she was nothing more than a kitten tossed into the water. When the rapids finally spat her out into the calm water downstream, she crawled from the river, wet and bedraggled, and collapsed onto the rocky shore, exhausted.

She had made it across.

Serafina knew that if the dogs followed her downstream and saw her across the river, then they would pursue her. She had to get up, had to keep running, but she couldn’t force her arms and legs to move. She couldn’t even lift her head. The freezing-cold water and pounding force of the river had sapped all the remaining strength from her muscles. Her limbs were shaking. As she lay on the watery stones at the edge of the river, the protection of Biltmore seemed impossibly far away, beyond her reach. Her body was so tired she could barely get a few feet, let alone the miles she needed to go. The small puddles of water among the stones where she lay began to turn dark one by one. She felt so cold.

She wondered if the feral boy was lying mortally wounded in the forest back where she’d left him or still fighting the wolfhounds. Or maybe he had escaped them. She could hear his voice in her mind. Run! he had shouted to her. Run! But she could not run. She could not move.

A wave of black calm passed through her, inviting her to simply shut her eyes and let everything go. A cloud of sickening colours veiled her eyes. She could feel herself passing out. How easy it would be to simply drift away. But a fierceness boiled in her heart. Get up! she told herself. Run! Get home! She struggled to rouse herself, to get onto her feet, to at least raise her head.

She opened her eyes and squinted through the blood. The terrain on this side of the river was low and gentle, dotted with ferns and birch trees, so different from the rocky cliffs that she had left behind on the other side. She saw a light coming towards her in the darkness. At first she thought it must be a twinkling star, for the sky was clear, but it wasn’t one light. It was many lights.

She felt her chest trying helplessly to suck in air in anticipation of an attack, but even in the haze of her fear she hoped that it might be a torch or lantern, her pa coming in search of her like he had once before.

But then she saw that the lights weren’t the flickering flames of a lantern, but the scintillating dance of living creatures floating in the air and coming towards her down the river.

Are they fireflies? she wondered as they came closer.

But these were much larger and bright green in colour, their wings slowly flashing white and green, white and green, as they flew, like the wings of luminescent butterflies.

But they’re not butterflies, either, she thought with a smile. They’re luna moths.

It was an entire eclipse of moths, each one pale green in colour and glowing in the moonlight, hundreds of them flying together down the length of the river, their long tails streaming behind their silent, gently fluttering wings.

She had found her first luna moth in Biltmore’s gardens one midsummer’s night when she was a little girl. She remembered the moth’s almost magical glow in the starlit darkness as she held it in her open hand, its wings moving gently up and down. But it was strange to see so many of them travelling together. Was she imagining this? Was this how death came? A distant memory from the midnights of her past?

But, as she watched the luna moths flying over the water, it struck her again that they weren’t just hovering. They were travelling down the length of the stream, as if they would follow this river to the one that it flowed into, and then onward to the next river, and the next, through the mountains, and all the way to the sea. They were leaving this place. Just like the birds.

She heard the wolfhounds barking and howling to each other on the cliff on the other side of the river. They were coming.

As the last of the luna moths disappeared, she tried to push herself up onto her weakened arms, but she didn’t have the strength. She tried to get her legs underneath her, but she couldn’t.

But she’d seen the luna moths for a reason. She was sure of it.

She looked around for a place to take cover and noticed a grove of birch trees just a few feet away. As she tried to figure out how she was going to reach the trees, she saw a pair of eyes glinting in the darkness.

The eyes were keeping their distance, studying her.

Serafina held the eyes in her gaze and breathed as steadily as she could.

At first, she thought she had misjudged the position of the wolfhounds, that they had already crossed the river and were now surrounding her. But these weren’t the searing black eyes of the wolfhounds. The eyes were golden brown.

A flood of relief flowed into her.

She knew who it must be.

‘I need your help,’ she whispered.

But what emerged from the forest jolted her with a shock of fear. A mountain lion she had never seen before came straight at her. He was a young lion, with dark fur, but he looked strong, unafraid and hungry. He was not at all the creature she was expecting.

Serafina tried to get up to defend herself, but it was no use. The beast could easily kill her.

Then, even as she tried to figure out how she was going to fight this unknown lion, a second lion emerged from the trees.

She breathed a sigh of relief. It was a lioness, full-grown and full of power; a lioness she knew well.

When her mother was in her lion form, she was more beautiful than ever, with a thick tan coat, huge paws and the muscles of many hunts. Her striking face and golden eyes glowed with intelligence.

‘I’m so glad it’s you, Momma,’ Serafina said, surprised by the tearful desperation in her own voice.

But in that moment, before Serafina could make out any sort of answer in her mother’s eyes, the lioness suddenly turned her head and looked across the river.

Then Serafina heard it too. The wolfhounds were upon them. And it wasn’t just two any more. The five were united again, growling and barking and snarling. They would be here in seconds.

Serafina’s mother moved quickly towards her and flattened herself beside her. Serafina didn’t understand what she was doing. Then the darker lion came and nudged Serafina’s body with his head. At first, she thought the lions were trying to rub against her and disguise her scent with theirs, but then she realised their true intention.

Serafina climbed onto her mother’s back, clutching her neck and shoulders. With the lioness carrying her and the dark lion close at her side, the three of them moved into the trees, slowly at first, and then more quickly. Serafina felt her mother’s fur against her face, and the force of her mother’s lungs, and the power of her muscles. The lioness began to move more swiftly through the forest. Soon they were running.

It was the most incredible feeling, streaming through the night at high speed, propelled by the undulating rhythm of the lioness’s bounding stride, so strong and quiet and fast, the dark lion running beside her. Serafina had dreamed of running like this many times, but she had never moved this fast in her entire life. What amazed her was how smooth it was, how agile her mother’s movements, how quickly she could change direction and speed, with both grace and power at her command.

When they reached a prominence of high ground, the two lions paused and looked down towards the river. They watched as the five wolfhounds followed Serafina’s scent to the edge of the river, then crossed it. But they went straight across, not realising she had been swept far downstream by the powerful current. At the time, it had felt like a catastrophe that the river had pulled her off her feet and carried her away, but now she realised that it had saved her. The wolfhounds sniffed the ground, circling in confusion. They’d lost her scent. And when they ran up and down the edge of the river looking to find her trail, their confusion mounted.

They can’t find me, Serafina thought with a smile as she clung to her mother’s back. All they can smell is mountain lion.

Suddenly, the lions were moving again, running through the forest at high speed, leaping small ravines and creeks, dashing through ferns. The branches and trunks of the trees flashed by. The whistle of the wind filled her ears.

They ran for so long through the night that Serafina’s eyes closed, and all she could feel was the movement of the running, the coolness of the air above her, and the warmth of her mother beneath her.

Serafina awoke a short time later on a bed of soft bright green grass that glowed in the moonlight. She felt the warmth of nuzzling fur and the deep and gentle vibration of purring. Her mother’s two cubs snuggled up against Serafina, kneading her back with their tiny paws, so happy to see her that they were giving her a back rub. She couldn’t help but smile. She could feel their little noses pressing against her shoulders and their whiskers tickling her neck. Over the last few weeks that she’d been visiting the cubs at her mother’s den, she had come to love her half brother and half sister, and she knew they had come to love her too.

She reached up to feel the cut on her head. It had been dressed with a leafy compress that had stopped the bleeding and numbed the pain. The wounds on her arms and legs had been treated with poultices of forest herbs. She didn’t want to, but she was pretty sure she could move if she needed to. She had noticed in the past that pain didn’t slow her down like it did many other people. She had surprised her pa in this regard more than once. Cold weather didn’t affect her either. Like her kin, she seemed to have been born with a natural toughness, the ability to keep going even when she had been battered and bloodied. But, even so, the medicine on her cuts and punctures was a welcome relief.

Feeling a gentle hand on her shoulder, she looked up. Her mother was in her human form – with her golden feline eyes, strikingly angled cheekbones, and long light brown hair. But the most striking feature was that whenever Serafina looked into her mother’s face she knew that her mother loved her with all her heart.

‘You’re safe, Serafina,’ her mother said as she checked the dressing on her head.

‘Momma,’ she said, her voice weak and ragged.

Looking around her, Serafina saw that her mother had brought her deep into the forest, to the angel’s glade at the edge of the old, overgrown cemetery. Beneath the cemetery’s dark cloak of twisted and gnarled trees, thick vines strangled the cracked, lichen-covered gravestones. Straggly moss hung down from the dead branches of the trees, and the darkened earth oozed with a ghostly mist. But the mist did not seep into the angel’s glade itself, and a small circle of lush grass always remained perfect and green, even in winter. In the centre of the glade stood a stone monument, a sculpture of a beautiful winged angel with a glinting steel sword. It was as if the angel protected the glade in a cusp of time, making it a place of eternal spring.

Her mother had been raising her two new cubs in a den beneath the roots of a large willow tree at the edge of the glade. And on a very different night from tonight, it had been the battleground on which Serafina and her allies had defeated Mr Thorne, the Man in the Black Cloak.

Find the Black One! the bearded man with the wolfhounds had said earlier that night. She could not help but gaze around the glade for signs of the Black Cloak that she had torn to pieces on the razor-sharp edge of the angel’s sword. She’d been sure that she had destroyed it, but she should have smashed its silver clasp and burned the leftover scraps of cloth. She looked towards the graveyard, with its tilting headstones and its broken coffins, and wondered what might have happened to the last remnants of the cloak.

For as long as she could remember, she had prowled through Biltmore’s darkened corridors on her own. All her life, she’d hunted. It had been her instinct. She had never known why she had a long, curving spine, detached collarbones, and four toes on each foot. She had never known why she could see in the dark and others could not. But when she’d finally met her mother she’d understood. Her mother was a catamount, a shape-shifting cat of the mountains. Serafina had come to understand that she wasn’t just a child. She was a cub.

Desperate to learn more, she had hunted with her mother in the forest every night for the last several weeks, not just learning the lore of the forest, but what it meant to be a catamount. She had listened diligently to her mother’s teachings and studied her mother when she was in her lion form. She had concentrated with all her mind and all her heart just like her mother had taught her. She had tried countless times to envision what she would look like, what it would feel like, but nothing ever happened. She was never able to change. She stayed just who she was. She wanted so badly to ask her mother to help her try again right now, but she had a sick feeling in her stomach that her mother wouldn’t do it.

As the cubs trundled around in front of Serafina and nuzzled her face, she petted them and snuggled them, pressing their little ears back with her hands. The cubs were pure mountain lions, not shape-shifters, but they had accepted her from the beginning, never seeming to notice or care that her teeth were short and her tail was missing.

She wondered where the dark lion had gone. He was too young to be the father of her mother’s cubs, so why had he been with her?

‘Who was that other lion, Momma?’ she asked. ‘The young one –’

‘Never mind about him,’ her mother snarled. ‘I’ve told him to keep his distance from all of us, especially you. This isn’t his territory and he knows it. He’s only passing through with the others.’

Serafina looked up at her in quick surprise. ‘What others?’

Her mother touched her cheek. ‘You need to rest, little one,’ she said, and then began to pull away.

‘Please, tell me what’s happening,’ Serafina pleaded, grabbing her mother’s arm. ‘What others are you talking about? Why are the animals leaving? Who was that man in the forest? Why has he come?’

Her mother turned and looked into her eyes. ‘Never let yourself be seen or heard in the forest, Serafina. Always stay low and quiet. You must keep yourself safe.’

‘But I don’t want to be safe. I want to know what’s happening,’ she said before she could stop herself, realising how childish she sounded.

‘I understand your curiosity. Believe me, I do,’ her mother said gently as she reached out and touched her arm. ‘But how many lives do you think you have, little one? The forest is too dangerous for you. One of these nights I might not be there in time to save you.’

‘I want to be able to change like you, Momma.’

‘I know you do, kitten. I’m sorry,’ her mother said, wiping Serafina’s cheek.

‘Tell me what I need to do,’ Serafina begged. ‘I’ll keep practising.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘Catamount kittens change with their mothers when they are very young, before they walk or run or speak. It becomes so much a part of how they envision themselves that they cannot even remember it being any other way. They see themselves as a catamount, and a catamount they become. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there to teach you when you were young.’

‘Teach me now, Momma.’

‘We’ve been trying every night – you know we have,’ her mother said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s too late for you. You won’t ever be able to change.’

Serafina shook her head fiercely, so frustrated and hurt by her words that she was almost growling at her mother. ‘I know I can do it. Don’t give up on me.’

‘The forest is too dangerous for you to be here,’ her mother said, her eyes filled sadness.

‘You can come back with me to Biltmore in your human form,’ Serafina said excitedly. ‘We can be together.’

‘Serafina,’ her mother said, her tone both soft and firm at the same time, like she knew the loneliness and confusion that Serafina must be feeling. ‘I was trapped in my lion form for twelve years. I can’t even imagine going back into the world of humans again, not yet. You have to understand. My soul was cleaved. I need time to heal, to understand what I am. I’m so sorry, but right now I belong in the forest, and I need to take care of the cubs.’

‘But –’ Serafina tried to say.

‘Wait,’ her mother said softly. ‘Let me finish what I was saying. I need to tell you this.’ She paused, filled with emotion. ‘During those same twelve years that I was a lion, you were as trapped as I was. You were trapped in your human form.’ Her mother wiped a tear from her own eye. ‘That is what you are now. That is what you’ve grown up to be. You’re a human . . . and I’m a catamount.’ She looked down at the ground and pulled in a long, ragged breath. And then she lifted her eyes and looked at Serafina again. ‘I am so thankful that we had this time together, that I got to know you and see what a wonderful girl you’ve grown up to be. I love you with all my heart, Serafina, but I can’t be your mother the way I know I should be.’

‘Momma, please don’t say that . . .’ Serafina said.

‘No, Serafina,’ her mother said, holding her with trembling hands. ‘Listen to me. You almost died tonight. I should have never let you wander the forest alone. I almost lost you.’ Her mother’s voice cracked. ‘You have no idea how much you mean to me . . . and you have no idea how dark a force has been stirred. I want you to go back to Biltmore and stay there. That is your home. You’re safe inside those walls. Things are changing here. I must take the cubs and go. The forest is far too dangerous for you, especially now.’

Serafina looked up at her. ‘You’re going? What do you mean, “especially now”? Tell me what’s happening, Momma. Why are all the animals leaving?’

‘This is not your battle to fight, Serafina. With your two legs, you can’t run fast enough to escape this danger. And you can’t claw hard enough to fight against it. Once you’ve rested, I want you to go home. Be very careful. Stay clear of everything you see. Go straight back to Biltmore.’

Serafina tried to keep from crying. ‘Momma, I want to be here with you in the forest. Please.’

‘Serafina, you don’t be –’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘You have to listen to what I’m saying,’ her mother said more forcefully. ‘You don’t belong here, Serafina.’

Serafina rubbed the tears out of her eyes in fury. She wanted to belong. She wanted to belong more than anything. Her mother’s words were splitting her heart in two. She wanted to keep arguing, but her mother would say no more.

Her mother laid Serafina’s head down in the grass. ‘I’ve given you something to help you sleep. You’ll feel better when you wake.’

Serafina lay quietly, just as her mother had told her, but it was all so confusing. Whether house or forest, she just wanted to find a place to be. She seemed to have friends who weren’t her friends, kin who weren’t her kin. It felt like a dark force was gathering in the forest and seeping into her heart, like the Black Cloak slowly wrapping itself round her soul.

Lying at the base of the angel, she felt herself drifting into a deep and blackened sleep, like she was falling into a bottomless pit, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

When she woke a few hours later, she was no longer lying in the grass. She found herself in total darkness. She felt dirt all around her – below her, above her and on all sides.

It took Serafina several seconds to realise that she was lying in her mother’s earthen den. Her mother must have picked her up and carried her into the den when she was sleeping.

She felt warmer and stronger than she had before. She got herself up onto her hands and knees and crawled out of the den, then stood in the moonlight of the angel’s glade. Looking up at the stars, it felt like a few hours had passed.

Her bleeding had stopped and her wounds did not hurt as badly as they had before. But, as she looked around her, her heart sank, for her mother and the cubs and the dark lion were gone. They had left her here alone.

She found words traced into the dirt.

If you need me, winter, spring, or fall, come where what you climbed is floor and rain is wall.

Serafina frowned. She didn’t know what the words meant or even if they had been left for her.

She gazed around the angel’s glade and then out into the trees. The forest was utter stillness, nothing but a mist drifting through the wet and glistening branches, and she could not hear a single living thing. It was as if the entire world outside the glade had disappeared.

She thought about her mother, and the cubs, and the dark lion, and what her mother had said: You don’t belong here, Serafina! Of all the wounds she’d suffered, that one hurt the most.

Then she thought about Braeden, and her pa, and Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt, and everyone at Biltmore living their daytime lives so separate from her own.

You don’t belong there, either.

Standing in the centre of the angel’s glade, she came to a slow and aching realisation.

She was once again alone.

Just alone.

When she thought about what her mother had told her she would never be able to do, an aching, broken, throbbing part of her just wanted to kneel down and cry. She didn’t understand. She had been so hopeful with all the changes that were happening in her life, but now she felt like she was caught in between, like she didn’t belong anywhere. She was neither forest nor house, neither night nor day.

After a long time, she turned and looked at the beautiful, silent stone angel, with her graceful and powerful wings and her long steel sword. Serafina read the inscription on the pedestal.

OUR CHARACTER ISN’T DEFINED

BY THE BATTLES WE WIN OR LOSE,

BUT BY THE BATTLES WE DARE TO FIGHT.

Then she looked back out into the forest once more. She decided that no matter what she could or couldn’t do, no matter who did or didn’t want her, she was still the C.R.C. – that much she knew for sure. And she’d seen things in the forest tonight that she couldn’t account for. She didn’t know who the bearded man was, except that he was something so dark that the animals fled before him, something so dangerous that even her mother believed that he could not be fought. Her mother was sure the darkest dangers lurked in the forest, and no doubt they did, but Serafina knew from experience that sometimes they crept into the house. She remembered the driverless carriage and the four stallions going onward up the road towards Biltmore. She could swear there had been someone else in that carriage. In what guise would this new stranger arrive and slither his way into Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt’s home? Into her home. And what had he come for? Was he a thief ? Was he a spy?

Standing there in the angel’s glade, Serafina came to a decision. If there were a rat in the house, she was going to find it.

Serafina stopped at the edge of Biltmore’s lagoon, crouched down in the undergrowth and scanned the horizon for danger.

She waited and she watched.

From her current vantage point, she didn’t see any signs of trouble. Everything looked peaceful and serene.

The mirrorlike surface of the lagoon reflected the last of the shimmering stars that would soon give way to dawn. A family of swans flew low over the smooth water, then circled round and came in for a landing, shattering the reflection of the starlit sky.

In the distance, Biltmore House sat majestically atop a great hill, seeming to rise up out of the trees of the parkland that surrounded it. The windows glinted as the first light of the rising sun touched its walls. With its slate-blue roof, elegant arches and spired towers, it looked like a fairytale castle of old, the kind she had read about in the mansion’s library when everyone else was asleep.

Seeing the house, a gentle warmth filled her heart. She was glad to be coming home. She decided that she would try to rekindle her friendship with Braeden, and she’d make sure she thanked Mrs Vanderbilt again for the dress she’d given her. And she would do her best to mind her pa. But the first thing she had to do was to make sure she watched out for any strangers who had arrived at Biltmore during the night. The pain of her wounds had lessened, but the frightening images of the bearded man in the forest and the other figure in the carriage blazed in her mind. And she kept wondering what had happened to the feral boy who had helped her and then disappeared.

She headed towards the house, making her way up the slope through an area of open grassland dotted with large trees. She slinked from tree to tree, careful to stay hidden.

When she spotted two men and a dog in the distance walking towards the edge of the forest, she crouched low and took cover. She immediately recognised the lean, dark-haired figure of Mr Vanderbilt, the master of Biltmore Estate, in his calf-high boots, woodsman jacket and fedora hat. Like most gentlemen, he often carried a stylish cane when he was out and about on formal occasions, but today he had equipped himself with his usual chestnut hiking stave with its spiked metal ferrule and leather wrist strap. Cedric, his huge white and brown St Bernard, walked loyally beside him. Over the last few weeks, she’d got to know Mr Vanderbilt better than she had before. There was much about the quiet man that was still a mystery to her, but she’d come to appreciate him, and hoped he felt the same about her. She was relieved to see him safe and out for what looked like an early-morning walk. This was surely a good sign that all was well at Biltmore.

But then she saw the man walking with him.

He wore a long tannish-brown coat over his light-grey gentleman’s suit, and carried a walking stick with a brass knob that glinted in the sun as he moved. He had an old face, a balding head and a thick grey beard. Serafina narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She immediately thought of the terrifying man she’d seen in the forest, with his silvery glinting eyes and his craggy face. They were disturbingly similar figures. But, as she watched, she decided that this wasn’t him.

The man walking with Mr Vanderbilt was older, slower in movement, more bent of frame. She could not see his face well enough to know who he was, but he seemed familiar. And she remembered that the man with the dogs had exited the carriage and sent it on towards Biltmore. Was this the second occupant of the carriage? Maybe it was one of the bearded man’s servants sent ahead to spy. Or was he a demon like the Man in the Black Cloak? She knew that someone had come to Biltmore during the night. She just needed to find out who it was.

She slipped behind a large black walnut tree and watched the two men. As they walked slowly into the forest, the stranger poked a hole in the ground with the tip of his cane. Then he took something out of his leather shoulder satchel, knelt down and seemed to bury it in the earth. Serafina thought that this was very peculiar behaviour.

The two men and the dog finally disappeared into the foliage, leaving Serafina with nothing but lingering doubt about who this stranger was and how he was connected to the man she’d seen the night before.

As she puzzled through what she’d seen, she continued up the slope towards the house. Her heart leapt when she saw Braeden by the stables saddling one of his horses.

Seeing her friend safe and sound, Serafina smiled and felt her muscles relaxing. She could see now that whoever or whatever had come to Biltmore in the carriage during the night hadn’t hurt her friend. But the first thing she was going to do was tell Braeden what had happened to her in the forest and warn him about what she’d seen.

Braeden was wearing his usual brown tweed hacking jacket and vest, with a white shirt and beige cravat. He moved around easily in his leather riding boots. His tussle of brown hair was blowing in the breeze a little bit. It did not surprise her to see Gidean, his Dobermann, at his side. Braeden seemed to make a lasting bond with whatever animal he met. He had befriended the unusual, pointed-eared black dog while travelling in Germany with his family a few years ago. After the tragic death of his family in a house fire, the boy and his dog had become inseparable. In some ways, Gidean was the last remaining member of Braeden’s family before he came to Biltmore to live with his uncle, and he had found few other friends.

Serafina knew that Braeden rode every day. He’d gallop across the fields like the wind, his horse running so fast that it was like they weren’t even in contact with the earth. It was good to see him here.

She broke from her cover and ran towards him, thinking that she’d pounce on him and knock him to the ground in fun. She was just about to shout, Hey, Braeden! when a second figure stepped out from behind the horse. Serafina dropped quickly into the tall grass.

When she didn’t hear anyone shout, Hey, there’s a peculiar girl in the grass over there! she crawled over to the base of a nearby tree and peeked out.

A tall girl about fourteen years old with long, curly red hair stood waiting for Braeden to adjust the stirrup on her horse’s sidesaddle. She wore a fitted emerald-green velvet riding jacket with an upturned collar, triangular lapels and turned-back cuffs. The jacket’s gold buttons glinted in the sunlight whenever she turned her body or lifted her wrist. Her trim green-and-white-striped waistcoat and long skirt matched her jacket in every detail.

Serafina frowned in irritation. Braeden normally rode alone. His aunt and uncle must have asked him to entertain this young guest. But what should she do now? Should she brush off her ripped, dirtied, bloodstained, fang-shredded dress, and walk over to Braeden and the girl and introduce herself ? She imagined an exaggerated, backwoods version of herself coming out of the brush towards them. ‘Mornin’, y’all. I’m just back from catchin’ some wood rats and nearly gettin’ eaten up by a pack of wolfhounds. How you two doin’ this mornin’?’

She thought about approaching them, but maybe interrupting Braeden and the girl would be a rude, unwelcome imposition.

She had no idea.

Out of instinct more than anything else, she stayed hidden where she was and watched.

The girl allowed Braeden to help her up into the saddle, then rearranged her legs and the long folds of her riding skirt to drape over the left side of the horse. That was when Serafina noticed that she was wearing beautiful dove-grey suede, laced-up, flower-embroidered ankle boots. They were completely ridiculous for horseback riding, and Serafina couldn’t even imagine running through the forest in such delicate things, but they sure were pretty.

Along with her fancy attire, the girl carried a finely made riding cane with a silver topper and a leather whip end. Serafina smirked a little. It seemed like all the fancy folk liked to carry some sort of cane or walking stick or other accoutrement whenever they went outside, but she preferred to have her hands free at all times.

Seeing the whip, Braeden said, ‘You won’t need anything like that.’

‘But it goes with my outfit!’ the girl insisted.

‘If you say so,’ Braeden said. ‘But please don’t touch the horse with it.’

‘Very well,’ the girl agreed. She spoke in a grand and mannerly tone, as if she’d been raised in the way of a proper lady and she wanted people to know it. And Serafina noticed that she had an accent like Mrs King, Biltmore’s head housekeeper, who was from England.

‘So, do tell,’ the girl said. ‘How do I stop this beast if it runs away with me?’

Serafina chuckled at the thought of the horse bolting with the screaming, frilly-dressed girl, jumping a few fences in wild abandon and then landing in a mud pit with a glorious splat.

‘You just need to pull back on the reins a little bit,’ Braeden said politely. It was clear that he didn’t know this girl too well, which further reinforced Serafina’s theory that Braeden’s aunt and uncle were putting him up to this.

Beyond all the girl’s fanciness and airs, there was something that bothered Serafina about her. A highfalutin fashion plate like her would certainly know how to ride a horse, but she seemed to be pretending that she didn’t. Why would she do that? Why would she feign helplessness? Was that what a girl did to attract a boy’s attention?

Seemingly unmoved by the girl’s ploy, Braeden walked over to his horse without further comment. He slipped effortlessly onto his horse’s bare back. A week ago, he had explained to Serafina that he didn’t use a bridle and reins to control his horse but signalled the speed and direction he wanted to go by adjusting the pressure and angle of his legs.

‘Now, we mustn’t go too fast,’ the girl said daintily as the two young riders rode their horses at a walk out onto the grounds of the estate. Serafina could tell she wasn’t scared of the horse but simply pretending to be a delicate soul.

‘Actually, I thought we might do a bit of high-speed racing,’ Braeden said facetiously.

Seeming to realise that Braeden wasn’t falling for her precious-princess routine, the English girl changed her tone as fast as a rattlesnake changes the direction of its coiling path.

‘I would race you,’ she replied haughtily, ‘but I might get a speck of mud on my skirt from my horse kicking up dirt into your face as I passed you.’

Braeden laughed, and Serafina couldn’t help but smile as well. The girl had a bit of spunk in her after all!

As Braeden and the girl rode away down the path, Serafina could hear them talking pleasantly to each other, Braeden telling her about his horses and his dog, Gidean, and the girl listing the particulars of the gown she’d be wearing to dinner that evening.

Serafina noticed that as Braeden and the girl entered the trees, the girl looked warily around her. The wilds of North Carolina must seem a dark and foreboding place to a civilised girl like her. She urged her horse forward to move closer to Braeden.

Braeden looked at the girl as she came up alongside him. Serafina could no longer tell if Braeden was simply being polite or if he actually wanted to be this girl’s friend, but as they rode out into the trees she felt a strange queasiness in her stomach that she’d never felt before.

Serafina could have easily followed them without their knowing it, but she didn’t. She had a job to do.

Last night she’d seen the man in the forest send the carriage to Biltmore. She reckoned that the sensible place to look for signs that the intruder had arrived was the stables.

She crept in through the back door, wary of Mr Rinaldi, the fiery-tempered Italian stable boss who didn’t take kindly to sneakers-about who might spook his horses. It was easy for her to move quietly on the perfectly clean redbrick floor, and even in the daytime there were plenty of shadows in the stables to take advantage of. The horse stalls consisted of lacquered oak boards trimmed in black railing with curving black grilles along the top. She began checking each of the stalls. Along with the Vanderbilts’ several dozen horses, she found a dozen others that belonged to the guests.

Ga-bang!

Serafina hit the floor. Her heart pounded. It sounded like a sledgehammer had hit the side of a stall. Having no idea what she was going to see, she peered down the stable’s central aisle. Disturbed dust floated from the ceiling down towards the floor, as if the earth itself had shaken, but otherwise the aisle was empty. She could see that four of the stalls at the end had been boarded up all the way to the ceiling. They were completely closed in, as if to make sure that whatever they held had no possibility of escape.

She gathered herself up onto her feet and moved slowly down the aisle towards the boarded stalls. She could feel the sweat on her palms.

The oak boards blocked her view of what was inside the stalls, so she crept up close, put her face to the wood and peered through the cracks.

A massive beast hurled itself at the boards of the stall. The flexing wood struck Serafina in the head. The surprise of it sent her tripping backwards in fear. The creature inside kicked the stall boards and slammed them with its shoulders, snorting and thrashing. The boards bent and creaked under the pressure of the pounding animal.

When she heard the stable boss and a gang of stablemen running towards the disturbance she’d caused, she scrambled into an empty stall, ducked down and hid in a shadow.

She gasped for breath, trying to figure out what she’d just seen – a massive dark shape, black eyes, flaring nostrils and pounding hooves.

A storm of questions flooded her mind as Mr Rinaldi and his men came charging down the aisle. The beast continued its terrible pounding and thrashing. The stable boss shouted instructions to his men to reinforce the boards. Serafina quickly climbed out of the back of the stall and darted from the stables before they caught sight of her.

Those were the stallions! There was no question now. Whoever it was, the second occupant of the carriage was here.

She scurried along the stone foundation at the rear of the house, pushed her body through the airshaft, crawled through the passage, pushed aside the wire mesh and entered the basement. Her presence at the estate had become known to the Vanderbilts a few weeks before, so she could theoretically use the doors like normal people, but she seldom did.

She went down the basement corridor, through a door and then down another passageway. As she stepped into the workshop, her pa turned towards her.

‘Good mornin’,’ he began to say in a pleased, casual fashion, but when he got a look at her bedraggled state, he lurched back in surprise. ‘Eh, law! What happened to you, child?’ His hands guided her gently to a stool for her to sit on. ‘Aw, Sera,’ he said as he looked at her wounds. ‘I said you could go out into the forest at night to spend time with your mother, but you’re breakin’ my heart, comin’ home lookin’ like this. What’ve you been doin’ out there in them woods?’

Her pa had found her in the forest the night she was born, so she reckoned he must have had an inkling of what she was, but he didn’t like dark talk of demons and shifters and things that go bump in the night. It was as if he thought that as long as they didn’t talk about those things they would not be real or come into their lives. She had told herself many times that she wouldn’t bother her pa with the details of what happened at night when she went out, and normally she kept that promise, but the moment her pa asked it all just started gushing out of her before she could stop it.

‘I had a terrible run-in with a pack of dogs, Pa!’ she said, choking up.

‘It’s all right, Sera – you’re safe here,’ her pa said as he took her into his thick arms and huge chest and held her. ‘But what dogs are you talking about? It wasn’t the young master’s dog, was it?’

‘No, Pa. Gidean would never hurt me. There was a strange man in the forest with a pack of wolfhounds. He sicced ’em on me somethin’ fierce!’

‘But where did he come from?’ her pa asked. ‘Was he a bear hunter?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. After he got out of the carriage, he sent the carriage on towards Biltmore. I think I saw the horses in the stables. And I saw a strange man with Mr Vanderbilt this morning. Did anyone unusual arrive at the house last night?’

‘The servants have been jabbering on about all the folk comin’ in for Christmastime, but I doubt the man you saw was one of the Vanderbilts’ guests. I’ll wager it was one of those poachers from Mills Gap that we ran off the estate two years ago.’

Serafina could hear the anger seething in her pa’s voice. He was riled up that someone had done his little girl harm. He kept talking as he examined the crusted blood on her head. ‘I’ll go speak with Superintendent McNamee first thing. We’ll take a party out there to confront this fella, whoever he is. But, first off, let’s get you patched up. Then you rest a spell. Your lesson can wait.’

‘My lesson?’ she asked, confused.

‘For them table manners of yourn.’

‘Not again, Pa, please. I’ve got to figure out who’s come to Biltmore.’

‘I told ya. We’re fixing to hammer that nail till it’s sunk in deep.’

‘Sunk in my head, you mean.’

‘Yeah, in your head. Where else do ya learn things? Now that you and the young master are gettin’ on, you need to behave proper.’

‘I know how to behave just fine, Pa.’

‘You’re ’bout as civilised as a weasel, girl. I shoulda been schoolin’ ya more about the folk upstairs and how they go ’bout things, ’cause it hain’t like us.’

‘Braeden is my friend, Pa. He likes me just fine the way I am, if that’s what you’re pokin’ at,’ she said. Although, as she heard herself defending Braeden’s opinion of her, it felt suspiciously like she was lying not just to her pa but to herself. Truth was, she didn’t know if she was or wasn’t Braeden’s friend any more, and she was becoming increasingly less certain of it every day.

‘It’s not directly the young master I’m concerned about,’ her pa continued as he got a clean, wet cloth and started looking after her wounds. ‘It’s the master and the mistress, and especially their guests come city way. You can’t sit at their table if you don’t know the difference between the napkin and the tablecloth.’

‘Why would I need to know the difference between –’

‘The butler told me that Mr Vanderbilt was going to be looking for you upstairs later today. And everyone in the kitchen is fixin’ for a big supper tonight.’

‘A supper? What kind of supper? Is the stranger going to be there? Is that what this is all about? And what about Braeden – is he going to be there?’

‘That’s a bushel more questions than I got answers for,’ her pa said. ‘I don’t know anything about it, truth be told. But, other than the young master, I can’t figure any other reason why the Vanderbilts would be a-looking for you. I just know there’s a big shindig tonight, and the master sent word, and it didn’t sound so much like an invitation as an instruction, if ya get my meaning.’

‘Did they say it was a supper or a shindig, Pa?’ Serafina said, getting confused, and realising as she said it that the Vanderbilts didn’t have events by either of those names.

‘It’s all the same up there, hain’t it?’ her pa said.

Serafina knew that she had to go to the event her pa was telling her about. For one thing, it’d be the best way to see all the new people who had arrived at the house. But the obstacles immediately sprang into her mind. ‘How can I go up there, Pa?’ she said in alarm, looking at the bite marks and scratches all over her arms and legs. They didn’t hurt too badly, but they looked something awful.

‘We’ll clean the mud off ya, get the sticks and blood outten your hair, and you’ll be fine. Your dress will cover them there scratches.’

‘My dress has more holes in it than me,’ she protested as she examined the bloodstained, tattered pieces of the dress Mrs V. had given her. She couldn’t show up in that.

‘Them toothy mongrels sure did a number on you,’ he said as he examined the tear in her lower ear. ‘Don’t that hurt?’

‘Naw, not no more,’ she said, her mind on other things. ‘Where’s that old work shirt of yours that I used to wear?’

‘I threw that thing out as soon as I saw that Mrs Vanderbilt gave you something nice to wear.’

‘Aw, Pa, now I ain’t got nothin’ at all!’

‘Don’t fuss. I’ll make ya somethin’ outta what we got up in here.’

Serafina shook her head in dismay. ‘What we got around here is mostly sackcloth and sandpaper!’

‘Look,’ her pa said, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes. ‘You’re alive, ain’t ya? So toughen up. Bless the Lord and get on with things. In your entire life, has the master of the house ever demanded your presence upstairs? No, he has not. So, yes, ma’am, if the master wants you there, you’re gonna be there. With bells on.’

‘Bells?’ she asked in horror. ‘Why do I have to wear bells?’

How could she sneak and hide if she was wearing noisy bells round her neck? Or did they go on her feet?

‘It’s just an expression, girl,’ her pa said, shaking his head. Then, after a moment, he muttered to himself, ‘At least I think it is.’

Serafina sat, mad and miserable, on the cot while her pa did his level best to clean and bandage her wounds. As usual, she and her pa were surrounded by the workshop’s supply shelves, tool racks and workbenches. But her pa seemed to have forgotten the work he was supposed to be doing that morning. His mind had become consumed with her.

Some of the copper piping and brass fittings from the kitchen’s cold box sat in a twisted clump on the bench. The previous day, her pa had explained something about an ammonia-gas brine system, intake pipes and cooling coils, but none of it took. He’d raised her in his workshop, but she had no talent with machines. She couldn’t remember anything about the contraption other than it was complicated, kept food cold and was one of the few refrigeration systems in the country. The mountain folk kept their food cold by sticking it in a cold spring tumbling down into a creek, which seemed far more sensible to her.

As soon as her pa was done fussing with her, she slipped off the bed, hoping he’d forget his threat to make her rest. ‘I’ve gotta go, Pa,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna sneak upstairs and see if I can spot the intruder.’

‘Now, listen here,’ he said, holding her arm. ‘I don’t want you confrontin’ anybody up there.’

She nodded. ‘I’m with ya, Pa. No confrontin’. I just want to see who’s up there and make sure everyone is all right. No one will ever see me.’

‘I’m needin’ your word on this,’ he said.

‘You got my word, Pa.’

Off she went to the main floor. She spotted a few guests strolling this way and that or lounging in the parlours, but nobody suspicious. She moved up to the second floor next, but she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there, either. She scoured the house from top to bottom, but there was no sign of the stranger she’d seen with Mr Vanderbilt or anyone else who seemed like they might have been the second passenger in the carriage. She listened for scuttlebutt from the servants as they prepared for the event in the Banquet Hall that evening, but she didn’t pick up anything other than how many cucumbers the cook wanted the scullery maid to fetch and how many silver platters the butler needed for his footmen.

She tried to think through everything she had seen the night before, wondering if she’d missed any clues. What had she actually seen when the bearded man threw his walking stick up into the air towards the owl? And who was the second passenger who’d remained in the shadows of the carriage? Was it the stranger she’d seen walking with Mr Vanderbilt? And who was the feral boy who had helped her? Was he still alive? How could she find him again?

Another bushel of questions I don’t have answers to, she thought in frustration, remembering her pa’s words.

Later that afternoon, when she walked back into the workshop, her pa asked, ‘What did you find out?’

‘A whole lot of nothin’,’ she grumbled. ‘No sign of anyone suspicious at all.’

‘I spoke to Superintendent McNamee. He’s sendin’ out a group of his best horsemen to hunt down the poachers.’ As he spoke, her pa wiped his grease-smeared hands with a rag.

‘Elevator actin’ up again, Pa?’ she asked.

Her pa had often boasted that Biltmore had the first and finest electric elevator in the South, but he seemed a mite less keen on the machine today.

‘The gears in the basement keep gettin’ all gaumed up when it hits the fourth floor,’ he said. ‘Everwho installed the thing got them shafts all sigogglin’, this way and that. I swear it ain’t gonna work proper till I tear out the whole thing and start again.’ He waved her over to him. ‘But take a look at this. This is interestin’.’ He showed her a thin piece of sheet metal that looked like it hadn’t just broken but had been torn. It was odd to see metal ripped like that. She didn’t even know how that was possible.

‘What is that, Pa?’ she asked.

‘This here little bracket was supposed to be a-holdin’ the main gear in place, but whenever the elevator ran it kept flexing back and forth, you see?’ As he spoke, he showed her the flexing motion by bending the sheet metal with his fingers. ‘The metal is plenty strong at first. Seems unbreakable, don’t it? But when ya bend it back and forth over and over again like this, watch what happens. It gets weaker and weaker, these little cracks start, and then it finally breaks.’ Just as he said the words, the metal snapped in his fingers. ‘You see that?’

Serafina looked up at her pa and smiled. Some days, he had a special kind of magic about him.

Then she looked over at the other workbench. Somewhere between mending the elevator, fixing the cold box and tending to his other duties, her pa had cobbled together a dress for her made out of a burlap tow sack and discarded scraps of leather.

‘Pa . . .’ she said, horrified by the sight of it.

‘Try it on,’ he said. He seemed rather proud of the stitching he’d done with fibrous twine and the leather-working needle he sometimes used to patch holes in the leather apron he wore. Her pa liked the idea that he could make or mend just about anything.

Serafina walked glumly behind the supply racks, took off her tattered green dress, and put on the thing her pa had made.

‘Looks as fine as a Sunday mornin’,’ her pa said cheerfully as she stepped out from behind the racks, but she could tell he was lying through his teeth. Even he knew it was the most god-awful, ugly thing that ever done walked the earth. But it worked. And to her pa that’s what counted. It was functional. It clothed her body. The dress had longish sleeves that covered most of the punctures and scratches on her arms, and a close-fitting collar that hid at least part of the gruesome cut on her throat. So at least the fancy ladies at the shindig or the supper, or whatever it was, wouldn’t swoon at the corpsy sight of her.

‘Now, sit down here,’ her pa said. ‘I’ll show you how to behave proper at the table.’

She sat reluctantly on the stool he placed in front of an old work board that was meant to represent the forty-foot-long formal dining table in Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt’s grand Banquet Hall.

‘Sit up straight, girl, not all curvy-spined like that,’ her pa said.

Serafina straightened her back.

‘Get your head up, not hunched all over your food like you gotta fight for it.’

Serafina leaned back in the way he instructed.

‘Get them elbows offen the table,’ he said.

‘I ain’t no banjo, Pa, so quit pickin’ on me.’

‘I ain’t pickin’ on you. I’m tryin’ to teach ya somethin’, but you’re too stubborn-born to learn it.’

‘Ain’t as stubborn as you,’ she grumbled.

‘Don’t get briggity with the sass, girl. Now, listen. When you eat your supper, you need to use your forks. You see here? These screwdrivers are your forks. The mortar trowel there is your spoon. And my whittlin’ blade is your dinner knife. From what I’ve heard, you gotta use the right fork for the job.’

‘What job?’ she asked in confusion.

‘For what you’re eatin’. Understand?’

‘No, I don’t understand,’ she admitted.

‘Now, look straight ahead,’ he said, ‘not all shifty-eyed like you’re gonna pounce on somethin’ and kill it at any second. The salad fork here is on the outside. The dinner fork is on the inside. Sera, you hearin’ me?’

She didn’t normally enjoy her pa’s etiquette lessons, but it felt kind of good to be home, safe and sound, suffering through yet another one.

‘You got it?’ he asked when he’d finished explaining about the various utensils.

‘Got it. Dinner fork on the inside. Salad fork on the outside. I just have one question.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s a salad?’

‘Botheration, Serafina!’

‘I’m askin’ a question!’

‘It’s a bowl of, ya know . . . greenery. Lettuce, cabbage, carrots, that sort of thing.’

‘So it’s rabbit food.’

‘No, ma’am, it is not,’ her pa said firmly.

‘It’s poke sallet.’

‘No, it ain’t.’

‘It’s food that prey eats.’

‘I don’t want to hear no talk like that, and you know it.’

As her pa schooled her in the fineries of supper etiquette, she got the notion that he’d never actually sat at the table with the Vanderbilts. She could see that he was going more on what he imagined than live experience, and she was particularly suspicious of his understanding of salads.

‘Why would rich and proper folk like the Vanderbilts eat leaves when they could afford to eat something good? Why don’t they eat chicken all day? If I was them, I’d eat so much chicken I’d get fat and slow.’

‘Sera, you need to take this seriously.’

‘I am!’ she said.

‘Look, you’ve got a friend in the young master now, and that’s a good’n. But if you’re gonna be his friend for long you need to learn the rudiments.’

‘The rudiments?’

‘How to behave like a daytime girl.’

‘I ain’t no Vanderbilt, Pa. He knows that.’

‘I know. It’s just that when you’re up there I don’t want you to –’

‘To what? Horrify them?’

‘Well, now, Sera, you know you ain’t the daintiest flower in the garden, is all. I love ya heaps, but there ain’t no denying it – you’re a sight feral, talkin’ about prey and hunting rats. With me, that’s all fine and good, but –’

‘I understand, Pa,’ she said glumly, wanting him to stop. ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour when I’m up there.’

When she heard someone coming down the corridor, she flinched and almost darted. After years of hiding, it still made her scurry when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

‘Someone’s comin’, Pa,’ she whispered.

‘Naw, hain’t nobody a-comin’. Just pay attention to what I’m tellin’ ya. We’ve got to –’

‘Pardon me, sir,’ a young maid said as she stepped into the workshop.

‘Lordy, girl,’ Serafina’s pa said as he turned round and looked at the maid. ‘Don’t sneak up on a man like that.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ the maid said, curtsying.

The maid was a young girl, a few years older than Serafina, with a pleasant face and strands of dark hair curling out from beneath her white cap. Like the other maids, she wore a black cotton dress with a starched white collar, white cuffs and a long white lace apron. But from the look of her and the sound of her words it seemed like she was one of the local mountain folk.

‘Well, spit it out, girl,’ Serafina’s pa told her.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and glanced at Serafina self-consciously. ‘I have a note from the young master for the little miss.’

As the maid said these words, she eyed Serafina. Serafina could see the girl trying to make sense of the weird angles of her face and the amber colour of her eyes. Or maybe she was noticing the bloody wounds peeking out from beneath the edges of the burlap gunnysack she was wearing. Whatever it was, there was apparently plenty to stare at, and the girl couldn’t quite resist availing herself of the opportunity.

‘Ah, ya see, Sera,’ her pa said. ‘I told ya. Good thing we’ve been a-practisin’. The young master is sending you a proper invitation to the supper this evening.’

‘Here you go, miss,’ the maid said as she stretched out her hand with the note towards Serafina as if she didn’t want to get any closer to her.

‘Thank you,’ Serafina said quietly. She took the note from the maid slowly so as not to startle the girl with too quick a movement.

‘Thank you, miss,’ the maid said, but instead of then leaving, she froze, transfixed, as she studied Serafina’s streaked hair and odd clothing.

‘Was there something else?’ Serafina’s pa said to the maid.

‘Oh no, I’m sorry, pardon me,’ the maid said as she pulled herself out of her stare, curtsied in embarrassment to Serafina and then quickly excused herself from the room.

‘Well, what’s it say, then?’ Serafina’s pa said, gesturing towards the note.

As Serafina carefully opened the small piece of paper, her hands trembled. Whatever it was, it felt important. As she read Braeden’s words, the first thing she understood was that her pa had been wrong. She wasn’t receiving an invitation to a dancing party or a formal dinner. The note dealt with a far darker subject. Just the first sentence tightened her chest with fear. Suddenly, she remembered seeing the black-cloaked Mr Thorne falling dead to the ground, killed by her and her companions. Then another image flashed through her mind: her and Braeden at the gallows, hanging by their necks for the crime of murder. But, as she read the frightening note, there was another emotion as well. She glowed with the knowledge that it was Braeden who was telling her these words. At long last, it was her old friend and ally.

S,

A murder investigator has arrived at Biltmore. He’s the strangest man I have ever seen. You and I have been summoned at 6:00 p.m. for questioning about the disappearance of Mr Thorne. Be careful.

B.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.