Serafina and the Black Cloak (23 page)

But then she stopped in mid-thought and realized something.

The darkness made it
her
domain as well.

“Are you all right?” her father asked as he scraped up the last of his potatoes with his spoon. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

She pulled herself out of her thoughts, looked at her pa, and nodded. “I’m all right.”

“Listen, Sera,” her pa said, “I want you to hunker down tonight. Keep to yourself, you hear?”

“I hear, Pa,” she said obediently, but of course she wouldn’t. She
couldn’t
.

When they went to bed and her pa began to snore, she slipped out of the workshop and climbed the stairs that led outside to the estate grounds. Her mind was awhirl with thoughts and images and
fears. She knew her pa wanted her to stay close to him, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel safe in the basement. Staying in the basement tonight was death. It was doom. It
would lead to a loneliness she could not bear. Over the last few days, she had felt increasingly constrained there. She didn’t want to be inside anymore. She wanted the freedom of open space
and true darkness.

As she walked outside, it was a beautiful moonlit night with a light snow gently falling on the grass and trees. She tried to think it all through. She knew what she had to do; she just
didn’t know how to do it. What stratagem could she devise to defeat the Man in the Black Cloak? If he were a rat, how would she catch him?

She walked to the edge of the forest and paused at the point her pa had told her she should never go beyond. Her first foray into the shadows of the forest two nights before had been difficult,
terrifying.

But she kept going.

She pushed through the thick brush and walked into the trees. She delved into the forest using the moonlight and the starlight to illuminate her way. Despite all that had happened, she was still
drawn here. This was where she wanted to be.

A glint of light caught her eye. She looked up and saw a falling star. Then another. Then ten dashing through the blackness. Then a hundred at once. A shower of falling stars streaked across the
sky, filling the crystalline black heavens with blazing light. And then the shower was gone, leaving nothing but the stillness of the glistening stars and the glowing planets in the infinite space
above her.

She heard tiny footsteps behind her, a small country mouse out foraging and now making his way back home to his family, warm beneath a hollowed log.

The forest was alive at night, filled with motion, sound, creatures, and light.

She felt comfortable here.
Connected.

She walked a little farther, studying the lichen-covered rocks, the trees with their outstretched limbs, and the little rills of glistening water that ran beneath the ferns. Was this the forest
her mother had come from?

Was this where she belonged?

She thought about why
she
could see that Mr. Thorne was the Man in the Black Cloak but no one else could. Not even Braeden. Why could
she
believe it but they could not? Because
they were normal, mortal human beings, and she was not. She was closer to the Man in the Black Cloak than she wished to admit. Closer to being a demon.

She knew she couldn’t fight the Man in the Black Cloak directly. He was far too strong. In their first encounters, she had barely escaped him with her life. A shiver ran down her spine
just thinking about it. But she couldn’t just keep running away and hiding from him, either. Somehow, she had to
stop
him. But he possessed an otherworldly power—if her theory
about him was correct, then he had within him all the strength and capability of every person he’d ever absorbed into his cloak. And if she gave him another chance, he would surely absorb her
as well.

No, she couldn’t fight the Man in the Black Cloak head-on.

Not alone.

She looked around her, and a dark idea formed in her mind. She asked herself the question again: If he were a rat, how would she catch him?

Suddenly, she knew the answer.

She’d bait him.

Fear rose up in her like bile from a half-digested meal. She wanted to turn away from the idea, to avoid it, but her mind kept going back to it as the only solution.

She thought of her pa’s words once more:
Never go into the deep parts of the forest for there are many dangers there, both dark and bright
.…

You’re right, Pa,
she thought.
There are.
And I’m one of them.

Standing in the woods, she came to a conclusion about herself, something that she’d known deep down for a long time but that she had never wanted to come to grips with: She was not like
her pa. She was not like Braeden. She was not human.

At least not entirely.

The thought of it brought a lump to her throat. She felt a terrible loneliness. She didn’t know what it meant, she wasn’t even sure she
wanted
to know what it meant, but she
knew it was true. She was not like the people she loved. She’d been born in the forest, a forest as black as the Black Cloak and as haunted as the graveyard. She was one of them, a creature
of the night.

She’d overheard Mr. Pratt say that the creatures of the night came straight from hell, that they were evil. She wondered about it again, her mind pushing through thorny brambles of
conflict and confusion. Did evil creatures think of themselves as evil? Or did they think they were doing what was right? Was evil something that was in your heart or was it how people viewed you?
She felt like she was good, but was she actually bad and just didn’t know it? She lived underground. She slinked through the darkness without being seen or heard. She secretly listened to
people’s conversations. She pawed through their belongings when they weren’t in their rooms. She killed animals. She battled. She lied. She stole. She hid. She watched children lose
their souls. And yet she was still living—thriving, even—drawing energy and knowledge and awareness from each and every night that she prowled through the darkness and another child was
taken.

She stood for a long time, thinking about why she was alive and the others weren’t, and she asked herself again: Was she good or was she evil? She had been born in and lived in the world
of darkness, but which side was she on? Darkness or light?

She looked up at the stars. She didn’t know what she was or how she got that way, but she knew what she wanted to be. She wanted to be
good
. She wanted to save Braeden and the other
children who were still alive. She wanted to protect Biltmore. She thought about the inscription on the base of the stone angel’s pedestal:
Our character isn’t defined by the battles
we win or lose, but by the battles we dare to fight.
Standing in the forest at that moment, that’s what she chose to believe. It was true that she was a creature of the night. But
she
would decide for herself what that meant.

She had two choices before her: to slink away and hide, or to dare to fight.

At that moment, she saw a plan in her mind and knew what she must do.

A part of her didn’t want to do it. It would mean she could well die this very night. And her death would come at the moment in her life when she had finally crawled out of the basement
and found a friend and begun to understand and connect to the world around her. She wanted to go home and sleep in front of Braeden’s fireplace, and eat chicken and grits with her pa, and
pretend like none of this was happening. She wanted to curl up in the basement behind the boiler and hide like she’d done all her life. But she couldn’t. Thorne was going to keep
coming. He was going to take Braeden’s life. She had to stop him. She might die, but it meant that Braeden might live. He’d go on with Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt, and his horses, and with
Gidean at his side. And that, she decided, more than anything, was what she wanted. She wanted Braeden to live.

She’d seen with her own eyes that the Man in the Black Cloak absorbed any child he encountered, but she knew that he wanted Braeden Vanderbilt next. She’d seen this when the Man in
the Black Cloak attacked them in the forest. He hadn’t come for Nolan, he had gone straight for Braeden. There was a talent in Braeden that Thorne craved: Braeden’s expertise in
horsemanship, but more than that, his almost telepathic connection to animals. She imagined what it would be like to be able to befriend all the animals around her, even to control them.

But she sensed there was something more as well, something that obsessed Mr. Thorne, that drove him even beyond Braeden. More and more, he had to take a child every night. Any child. And
she’d use that need against him. She would meet him face-to-face on the most deadly battlefield she could think of. She would defeat him once and for all. Or she’d die trying.

She turned around and headed back toward the estate. As midnight approached, she went down the stairs toward the workshop.

It did not surprise her that her pa was asleep in his cot, snoring gently, exhausted from a long and difficult day. But then she saw something lying on her makeshift bed behind the boiler. As
she stepped toward it, she realized it was the dress that Braeden had given her. Braeden must have come down and laid it there while she was gone. There was a note attached:

Serafina stared at the note. She didn’t want to believe it. He was really going to do what his aunt and uncle wanted.

But then she looked at the dress.

She was sure it wasn’t Braeden’s intention, but it was a perfect addition to her plan. Now she would look the part.

The time for sneaking and hiding was over.

She was going to make sure one man in particular saw her.

And tonight was the night.

The Chief Rat Catcher had a job to do.

S
erafina put on the beautiful, dark maroon winter gown that Braeden had given her the night before.

The intricate black brocade corset felt tight around her chest and back, and she worried that when it came time to fight, it would restrict her. She twisted and turned to test her freedom of
movement. The long skirt hung heavily around her legs, but even as unfamiliar as the girls’ clothing felt, she couldn’t help but be taken by it. It felt almost magical to be putting on
a dress for the first time in her life. The material was fine and feminine and soft, like nothing she’d ever worn before. She felt like one of the girls in the books she read—like a
real
girl, with a real family, with brothers and sisters, and a mother and father, and friends.

She quickly scrubbed her face and brushed her hair and made herself as pretty as she could. It felt silly, but she needed to look the part. She tried to imagine that she was going to an
extravagant dance, in a ballroom crowded with glittering ladies and gentlemen, and boys who would ask her to dance.

But she wasn’t, and she knew it.

When she thought about the place she was going and the dark forces she’d meet there, it felt like she was jumping a chasm and she wasn’t going to make it to the other side.

She tried to block it out of her mind and just kept lacing her dress up her back with shaky fingers, but she was having a terrible go of it.
Normal girls must have extremely long and bendy
arms to do this every night,
she thought.

When she was finally done, she looked around at the workshop one last time. She couldn’t tamp down the feeling that she wouldn’t be coming back. She looked over to where her pa lay
sleeping. She had seen how tired and overwhelmed he was. His struggles with the dynamo and searching for her these last few days had taken a toll on him. She wanted to curl up in the crook of his
arm like she used to, but she knew she couldn’t.
Sleep well, Pa,
she thought.

Finally, she gathered her courage and turned. She made her way through the basement, and then climbed the stairs to the first floor.

At the top, she paused. She took a deep breath, and then walked down the darkened corridor of the house.

She walked slowly, deliberately, not darting and hiding like she normally did, but walking down the center of the wide hallway like a proper young lady. She walked like the girls she had watched
from the shadows so many times over the years. She did everything she could to take on the appearance of the helpless young daughter of one of the guests. She was no longer a predator; she was a
vulnerable child.

The air was very still. Moonlight shone in through the windows, falling onto the marble floor. The grandfather clock in the Entrance Hall chimed off the twelve bells of midnight. The corridors
of the house were mostly empty because it was so late, just a candle here and there to light the way for guests. But she sensed that there were a few people still awake.

As she made a slow promenade in her long, wide dress through the broad corridors of the house, it felt deeply strange not to be hunting, not to be the eyes of the predator but the prey that is
seen. Her stomach churned. Her muscles flinched and twitched, begging her to dash away. She hated walking straight. And she hated walking slow.
You’re a normal girl, s
he told herself.
Just keep breathing, keep pulling air into your lungs. You’re a normal girl.
It took every ounce of courage she had to just keep walking a straight line in the open.