Serafina and the Black Cloak (17 page)

Her pa held the lantern out in front of them as they traveled, like a guide leading them through the night. She was glad to let him lead the way.

“You got to the river and followed it like I taught ya,” he said as they walked.

“I wouldn’t have made it otherwise,” she said.

Soon, they left the trees of the forest behind them and then continued for another mile. Finally, they climbed up the bank of the great river and saw the Biltmore mansion shining in the
moonlight on the high ground in the distance. They still had a ways to go, but at least she could see it now. The faint smell of wood smoke drifted on the cold winter air and filled her with a
powerful longing for home.

The local folk called the magnificent house “The Lady on the Hill,” and tonight she could see why. Biltmore looked majestic with her light gray walls and slate-blue rooftops, her
chimneys and towers stretching upward, and the reflection of the moon glistening on her gold and copper trim, like something out of a fairy tale. Serafina had never been so glad to see her home in
all her life.

Her pa took her gently by the shoulders and looked into her face. “I know you’re drawn to the woods, Sera,” he said. “You’ve always been pulled by your curiosity,
but you’ve got to stay outta there. You’ve got to keep yourself safe.”

“I understand,” she said. She sure couldn’t argue with him that it wasn’t dangerous.

“I know you’re good in the dark,” he said, “best I ever seen, but you gotta resist the urges, Sera. You’re my little girl. I’d hate to lose you all the
way.”

When he said
all the way
, it haunted her. She realized then that he felt like he was already losing her. She could hear the despair in the raggedness of his voice and see it glistening in
his eyes as he looked at her. This was his greatest fear; not just that she would be hurt or killed in the forest, but that her wildness would draw her in, that she’d become more and more
wild. More wild than human.

She looked up at him and met his small brown eyes, and saw the reflection of her amber eyes in his. “I’m not gonna leave ya, Pa,” she promised.

He nodded and wiped his mouth. “Come on, then,” he said, wrapping his arm around her. “Let’s get ya home and dry, and get some supper in ya.”

By the time they reached the mansion, the workers had come in from the farms and fields. Most of the mansion’s doors had been closed up and locked. The shutters and shades
had been drawn against the demons that lurked in the night.

As Serafina and her pa headed for the basement, she was surprised to see that the stables were filled with people and activity. Oil lamps glowed brightly in the night.

She and her pa couldn’t help but pause to see what the commotion was about. A returning mounted search party, a dozen riders strong, stormed into the inner courtyard, filling the air with
the clatter of horse hooves striking the brick paving. They’d been looking for Clara Brahms and the other victims. As the riders dismounted and the stablemen hurried out to tend to the
horses, the parents of the missing children gathered around.

Nolan’s pa, who was the stable blacksmith, begged for news of his son, but the riders shook their heads. They’d found nothing.

Poor Mr. Rostonov was there as well, struggling to ask questions in his Russian-hindered English as he held on to his daughter’s little white dog. The shaggy creature barked incessantly,
growling at the horses as if chastising them for the failure of the search.

Watching Mr. Rostonov, the Brahmses, and Nolan’s pa in their desperate struggle to find their children, Serafina’s heart filled with an aching sadness. It made her guts churn to
think about it, to think about her part in it all. She had to find the Man in the Black Cloak.

“Come on,” her pa said as he pulled her away. “This whole place is comin’ apart at the bolts, equipment breakin’ for no reason, folks losin’ their children.
It’s a bad business all around.”

As they ate their dinner together huddled around their little cook fire in the workshop, her pa talked about his day. “I’ve been working on the dynamo, but I can’t figure out
how to fix it. The floors upstairs are pitch-black. The servants had to pass out lanterns and candles to all the guests, but there weren’t enough of them to go around. Everyone’s
frightened. With all the guests in the house and the disappearance of the children, this couldn’t have come at a worse time.…”

She could hear the pain in his voice. “What are you going to do, Pa?”

“I’ve gotta get back to it,” he said. It was only then that she realized that he’d stopped his work in order to look for her. “And you need to go to bed. No hunting
tonight. I mean it. Just hunker down and keep yourself safe.”

She nodded her head. She knew he was right.

“No hunting,” he said again firmly; then he grabbed his tool bag and headed out.

As her father’s footsteps receded down the corridor, heading for the stairs that led down to the electrical room in the subbasement, she said, “You’ll figure it out, Pa. I know
you will.” She knew he would never hear the words from so far away, but she wanted to say them anyway.

She found herself sitting alone in the workshop. The Man in the Black Cloak had taken a victim each night for the last two nights in a row. With the dynamo broken, she imagined him walking
through the darkness of Biltmore’s unlit corridors tonight with a crooked smile on his face. It was going to be easy pickings for him.

She sat on the mattress behind the boiler. When she was out on the mountain ridge in the rain, this was all she wanted—to be dry and well fed and comfortable in her bed. But now that she
was here, it wasn’t where she wanted to be. Her pa had told her to go to sleep, and she knew she should—her body was tired and sore—but her mind was a swirl of memories and
sensations, hopes and fears.

There was only one person in the world who would believe what had happened to her in the forest that day. There was only one person who’d understand everything she’d been through,
and he lived in a room on the second floor at the far end of the house. She missed him. She was worried about him. And she wanted to see him.

When she and Braeden were stranded in the carriage, they were together, they were on the same side, they were as close as close could be. But now that they were both back home again, he in his
bedroom and she in the basement, he seemed farther away than when she was lost in the mountains. There were too many forbidden stairs and doors and corridors between them.

They ain’t our kind of folk, Sera,
her pa had said, and she could only imagine what Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt would say about her if they knew she existed.

Using a wet rag she found in the workshop, she tended to her wounds and cleaned herself up the best she could. Although she lived in a dirty place filled with grease and tools, she liked to keep
herself clean, and her adventure in the mountains had left her as muddy as a mudpuppy on a rainy day. She took off her wet clothes, wiped her face and neck, her hands and arms, and all the way down
her legs until she was spotless once more.

When she was done she changed into a dry shirt, but she’d lost her only belt. She found an old leather machine strap on one of the shelves and used a knife to slice it lengthwise so that
it was about an inch wide. She poked holes in it and cut thinner strips of leather to fasten it. When she was done, she cinched the leather belt around her waist to see what it looked like on her.
She was so thin that she could wrap it around her waist twice, but she thought it looked very nice. If her pa had been there, he would have said that it made her look halfway to half-grown. She had
always wanted to wear a dress, too, like all the other girls, but she’d never been able to find a discarded one, and she didn’t think it was right to steal one. For now, she was happy
with her new belt. She bowed and pretended she was a young woman meeting a friend at the market. She smiled and twittered and pretended to tell a story that made her friend laugh.

Somewhere between washing the blood and mud off her face and seeing herself in her new belt, she decided that if she could survive a haunted forest, find her way through a misty cemetery, and
narrowly escape a highly perturbed mountain lion, then maybe she could sneak into a Vanderbilt’s bedroom while he was sleeping. One way or another, she needed to solve the mystery of the Man
in the Black Cloak, and that wasn’t going to get done with her taking a nap behind the boiler. The Man in the Black Cloak was going to walk again tonight. He was going to take another child.
She was sure of it. And the one he wanted was Braeden Vanderbilt. She had to protect him.

The house was quiet and dark. There was a palpable fear in the air. With no electric lights, the Vanderbilts and their guests had gone to bed early, holing up in the safety of
their rooms, next to their small brick fireplaces. A once bright and grand home had been robbed of light and had become a dark and haunted place.

She knew Mr. Vanderbilt’s room and Mrs. Vanderbilt’s room were both on the second floor, connected by the Oak Sitting Room, where they shared their breakfast each morning. She
didn’t want to go anywhere near there. She turned left down the corridor toward the southern end of the house, where she knew Braeden’s bedroom overlooked the gardens.

She crept past door after door, but they all looked annoyingly similar. Finally, she came to one adorned with a running horse carved in relief in its center panel, and she smiled. She’d
found him.

Crouched outside Braeden’s door, she realized that the real risk she faced wasn’t just that someone would catch her, but that Braeden wouldn’t want her there. He hadn’t
invited her to his room that night. He hadn’t even said he wanted to see her ever again. What if her whole theory of their friendship had been pure and utter imagination on her part? What if
he was glad to get rid of her in the forest that morning? Maybe he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. He certainly wouldn’t want her sneaking into his room late at night.

So she devised a plan. She would peek in, and if her presence there didn’t feel right, she’d turn tail quick as a wink.

She slowly turned the knob and pushed on the door. When she slipped inside the room, Braeden lay fast asleep in his bed. He lay on his stomach beneath several layers of blankets, his cheek
against the white pillow, his arms up around his head. He looked plum tuckered out, like there wasn’t anything in the world that could wake him, and she was glad that he was able to sleep.
Gidean slept on the floor beside him. She was relieved to see that they were both safe.

Sensing her entrance, Gidean opened his eyes and growled.

“Shh,” she whispered. “You know me.…”

Gidean’s ears went down in relief when he recognized her voice, and he stopped growling.

Now, that’s a good dog,
she thought. And it was a pretty good sign that her hopes for friendship with Braeden weren’t on the completely wrong mountaintop. She’d get a
chuckle out of that—if she became friends with the dog but not the boy.

She gently closed the door behind her and locked it. At first, she thought it was the foolish adults who had forgotten to lock the door and protect Braeden from whoever or whatever was making
their children disappear, but then she realized that it was the type of door that could only be locked from the inside. She couldn’t decide whether to be angry with him or pleased. She
couldn’t help but smile a little when she realized that maybe he’d left it unlocked for her. Maybe he was hoping that she would come.

Standing quietly by the door, she gazed around the room. The warm embers of the fire glowed in the fireplace. The red oak-paneled walls were covered with paintings of horses, cats, dogs, hawks,
foxes, and otters. His shelves were filled with books about horseback riding and animals. Award plaques and blue ribbons from equestrian events were everywhere. Soon they would need to build the
young master a new room for all his first-place finishes. Knowing the Vanderbilts, it wouldn’t be just a room but a whole wing.

It felt good to be there with Braeden, to be in the warmth and darkness of his room. She could see that this was his refuge. But she had the feeling that maybe even here, in this seemingly
protected place, they weren’t completely safe. Something was telling her that she should stay on her guard, at least a little while longer.

Careful not to wake him, she moved quietly over to the window and scanned the grounds for signs of danger. The moon cast a ghostly silver light across the Rambles, a maze of giant azaleas,
hollies, and other bushes. The branches of the trees swayed in the wind. It was in the Rambles that Anastasia Rostonova had disappeared, leaving her little white dog behind to search the empty
paths for her.

As she looked down from the second floor to the moonlit gardens below her, she could almost imagine seeing herself a few nights before, walking across the grounds toward the forest’s edge,
two rats clenched in her fists.

She looked behind her at Braeden, lying in the bed. Then she looked out across the forest once more. An owl glided on silent wings across the canopy of trees and then disappeared.

I am a creature of the night,
she thought.