Serafina and the Seven Stars

by Robert Beatty

  Copyright © 2019 by Robert Beatty

  Designed by Phil Buchanan

  Cover art © 2019 by Alexander Jansson

  Cover design by Phil Buchanan

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-368-01062-7

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  About the Author

  Biltmore Estate

  Asheville, North Carolina

  1900

  Serafina raced through the forest, her sharp panther claws ripping into the leafy autumn ground, propelling her long, black-furred body through the underbrush. She scrambled up moss-covered rocky slopes and dashed through shaded meadows of swaying ferns, making her way swiftly home.

  The sound of rapid footfalls charged up behind her.

  She burst forward with new speed, leaping over the trunk of a fallen tree, then tearing through an open field.

  But now two of them were on her, snarling as they lunged at her sides.

  The first mountain lion pounced on her back with a ferocious growl and tumbled her to the ground. The second slammed into her head.

  She spun on them with a hissing bite, pushing them away with her legs and swatting them repeatedly with her claws retracted, then broke free and ran.

  You silly cats need to get out of here, she thought as she leapt the stream that marked the back side of Diana Hill. We’re getting too close to the house. You’ve got to go back.

  She surged forward, trying to put enough distance between her and her young half sister and half brother that they would finally return to the depths of the forest. But seeing her attempts to outrun them, they became more invigorated than ever. Her sister bounded ahead of her, growling playfully as she looked back at Serafina over her shoulder, challenging Serafina to chase her.

  Slow down, Serafina thought as they reached the top of the hill. You need to be careful here.

  But in that instant, the air exploded with the loud, wrenching sound of twisting metal, bending wire, and a mountain lion yowling in pain. Her sister had been running so fast that she never saw the wire fence in her path—didn’t even know what a fence was—and slammed right into it. The terrified lion kicked and clawed, trying desperately to fight this strange, coiling attacker.

  The other mountain lion circled his sister’s flailing, wire-entangled body in agitation, but was utterly unable to help her.

  Serafina’s heart lurched in panic. She quickly shifted into human form and moved toward her struggling sister.

  The more the young mountain lion fought against the wire, the more entangled she became.

  Serafina grabbed the rat’s nest of metal with her bare hands and tried to tear it away. But the lion kept fighting, pulling against the wires, scratching and biting and growling.

  “Just stay still, cat. I’m trying to help you!” Serafina told her sister in exasperation, but as the entwined lion stared up at her with her golden eyes, Serafina knew her sister couldn’t understand her.

  “I told you we were done playing for the day,” she said as she pulled and pried at the wire. “You shouldn’t try to follow me home. We’re too close to the house.”

  As she worked to free her sister, she glanced around to get her bearings. A short distance away, surrounded by the vine-wrapped stone columns of a small gazebo, stood Biltmore’s Roman statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt, with a bow in one hand, a quiver of arrows on her back, and a deer standing at her side.

  We’re far too close, Serafina thought again as she struggled with a length of wire that had ensnared her sister’s legs. Her brother and sister might get themselves into all sorts of trouble if they passed into the grounds of the mansion; the last thing she needed was for someone to spot a mountain lion running across Biltmore’s lawn.

  From this high position atop Diana Hill, Serafina could see Biltmore House below her, with its pale-gray limestone walls and leaded-glass windows gleaming in the light of the setting sun, the steeply slanted slate-blue rooftops piercing the sky, and the misty ranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains rising in the distance.

  The house was a beautiful sight, tranquil and serene. But she didn’t trust pleasant feelings. Or beauty. And she definitely couldn’t cotton to the nerve-racking peace and quiet that had been slithering around the estate for the last several months. This mishap with her sister aside, nothing sinister had happened at Biltmore in a long time, but she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that it soon would.

  She finally managed to get her sister out of most of the wires, but there was still a bad one wrapped around her front leg. The lion kept yanking her paw away at the worst possible moment, anxious to get free, but hindering Serafina’s efforts.

  “Just hold on, girl,” Serafina said, stroking the lion’s head. “I’m almost done.”

  There were small cuts on her sister’s shoulders and legs, but Serafina wasn’t sure how she could help her. She didn’t have any bandages, and even if she did, there wasn’t any way to keep them in place.

  I need Braeden, she thought in frustration. He would calm the lion and heal her wounds.

  But Braeden was gone. And the shock of it still throbbed in Serafina’s heart. After all their struggles, fighting to stay together and to stay alive, they had been undone by a few words on a wretched piece of paper in a city far away. She had wanted him to stand up, to fight, to slash at his uncle’s words.

  But he couldn’t fight it. He knew he shouldn’t fight it.

  And now she was once again alone.

  As she wrenched the last of the twisted wire from her sister’s leg, the lion rose to her feet and rubbe
d her whiskered face appreciatively against Serafina’s cheek. And their brother came over and rubbed his shoulders against them as well.

  It seemed as if maybe they were a little sorry for their rambunctiousness, and she was sorry, too. She should have stopped running sooner than she did and warned them of the dangers of the man-made world. Biltmore’s groundskeepers must have put up the wire fence to protect the stand of small maple trees they had planted at the top of Diana Hill. The cubs were full-grown now, but they were still young and inexperienced.

  But as she was hugging her brother and sister, a shift in the breeze touched the bare skin on the back of her neck, and put a chill down her spine.

  Startled, she turned and scanned the line of trees surrounding the distant house, looking for any sort of danger: a mysterious figure or encroaching enemy—anything that might signal that trouble was a-prowl.

  She studied the balconies and towers of the house for unusual movement, and then the gate, the road, and the paths leading into the gardens.

  Over the last few months, she had patrolled the grounds day and night, sleeping only when she had to, for her memories of her past battles never slept.

  No, she told herself as she gazed down at the house and out across the mountains, she wasn’t going to let any of this beauty and pleasantness fool her.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was always wrong at Biltmore.

  Black cloaks and twisted staffs, shadowed sorcerers in the murky night—she didn’t know in what form it would come, but she was the Guardian of Biltmore Estate, and she knew she had to stay alert, or people were going to die.

  When she heard a sound drifting through the forest from the north, goose bumps rose on her arms.

  She tilted her head and listened.

  The whispers of the wind moved through the boughs of the trees.

  She didn’t trust wind. Or trees.

  In the months since her past battles, the slightest creak of a distant stick or the faint rustling of leaves had sent her into a twitch and a shifting glance. And now, as she stood on the hill and heard the sound of the whispering wind coming toward her, she wasn’t sure whether it was truth or lie, but a crawling sensation crept up her sides.

  Pulling a long breath in through her nose, she smelled something on the breeze, a trace of sulfur and charcoal that she hadn’t smelled in a long time. It reminded her of death.

  And then she began to hear the sound more clearly: the clip-clop of trotting hooves, a carriage coming up the Approach Road toward Biltmore.

  The logical part of her human mind told her that not all carriages were filled with demons and murderers. But her lungs started sucking in air, as if they knew they would soon be needed.

  This could be nothing, she tried to tell herself. It could be a carriage full of kind and gracious gentlefolk coming for a pleasant visit.

  But her heart pounded in her chest.

  The beauty. The forest. The wind.

  She quickly turned to her brother and sister. “Now listen—get on out of here, right away! Run!”

  For once, the two big cats did exactly what she told them, hightailing it into the cover of the forest.

  Serafina ran to protect Biltmore even as a carriage and its team of horses came barreling through the main gate into the courtyard. Before she could even see who was inside, a second carriage came rolling in behind it, and then a third, until there were thirteen carriages in all, their drivers steering them straight toward the front doors of the house.

  Serafina reached the front terrace and ducked behind the stone railing just as the carriages came to a stop.

  Still trying to catch her breath from the sprint to the house, and staying well hidden, she peered out.

  The carriages were disgorging a flood of passengers into the courtyard.

  Some of the women wore long city coats with sweeping, upturned collars, but most of the new arrivals, both the ladies and the gentlemen, wore brown tweed jackets, autumn gloves, and leather lace-up boots for hiking and shooting.

  A dozen of Biltmore’s footmen and other manservants hurried out to attend to the new arrivals, unloading their strapped leather luggage, their riding gear, and their shotguns and hunting rifles protected in long oak cases.

  The smiling Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt stood in the archway of Biltmore’s open doors, shaking the hands of the new guests as they came in, embracing many of them—friends and family and acquaintances new and old—inviting them into their home.

  Her eyes searched the new arrivals one by one. How will the intruder cloak himself this time? she wondered as she studied them. How will he twist himself into our lives?

  The happy smiles and soothing charm of laughter didn’t deceive her. There was an enemy among them, a killer, a kidnapper, an arsonist, she was sure of it, or maybe a doppelgänger, a haint, or a wraith-in-the-night come to drink their souls. She felt it twisting tightly around her mind, strangling her thoughts.

  One of the new strangers was a distinguished, silver-haired, finely dressed man who gazed around at the surrounding forest and mountains as if he’d been dropped off in the middle of the wildest and most uncivilized place he had ever seen.

  Another was a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man in a khaki jacket and heavy boots wearing a stern hunter’s gaze, as if he was just about ready to shoot anything that moved.

  “Be careful of those rifles!” he shouted at one of the footmen unloading the stack of cases from his carriage.

  As the very last figure stepped out of the thirteenth carriage, Serafina’s senses seethed with anticipation. She was sure this was going to be the villain. But it was a young, dark-haired girl, maybe fourteen years old, in a plain, clean gray dress, a journeying satchel over her shoulder, and a pair of brass binoculars in her hand.

  The girl looked around the surrounding forest, as if checking the trees for species of birds she had not yet seen, and then gazed at the lions, carved from Italian rose marble, sitting on guard on each side of the house’s great oaken doors. Finally, she lifted her eyes up toward the immensity of the house.

  The girl’s face filled with an expression of awe as she took in not just the mansion’s grand size, but all the details of its facade. Serafina watched her gaze up in wonder at the hundreds of ornate carvings of gargoyles and mythical creatures that adorned the walls, gutters, and steeples of the house. And then the girl’s face bloomed into a smile of delight as she spotted the statue of Joan of Arc, a beautiful warrior in full plate armor carrying her banner into battle, and beside her, the statue of the chain mail–clad St. Louis holding his cross and longsword.

  As Serafina saw the excitement in the new girl’s face, the fierceness that she had been feeling moments before began to fade. None of these people looked like treacherous killers. And none of them looked like murderous demons. It had just been her old fears come a-boiling up again.

  You’re such a flinchy-clawed scaredy-cat, she scolded herself. This ain’t nothin’ but thirteen bushels of everyday folk.

  She crumpled down onto the floor behind the railing, pulling her knees to her chest in discouragement and hugging them, her muscles twitching against enemies of the mind that she could not see and could not fight but that forever battled her.

  Over the last few months, when guests in the house tried to strike up a conversation with her, she found herself watching the shadows at the edge of the room. She often startled at the clink of a teacup or the crackle of a warm fire. If someone touched her arm or brushed her shoulder, she flinched.

  She was supposedly the Guardian of Biltmore, but she and Braeden had defeated all of the estate’s enemies, and no new enemies had appeared. She had thought when this time of peace finally came, she would bask in the glow of trouble-free days. But nothing glowed. It burned.

  What good was a Chief Rat Catcher once all the rats were caught?

  What use was a warrior once the war was fought?

  What worth was loyalty to a friend who had taken the train nor
th to a different world?

  I should have known, she thought as she glanced through the railing at the arriving guests. The carriages weren’t carrying enemies. They were just Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt’s friends and family coming for the fall hunting season.

  They had come not just for the shooting, which was a long tradition among the ladies and gentlemen of wealthy society, but for the formal-dress dinners in the Banquet Hall, the elegant lantern-lit evening parties in the Italian Garden, and the late-night games in the Billiard Room. What better way to celebrate their own prosperity, and the arrival of a new century, than with the renowned company of the Vanderbilts?

  And they had come for another reason, too. The night before, while sneaking through the rooms of a couple who had already arrived, she had overheard them whispering about getting their first glimpse of Biltmore’s smallest and most beloved new resident.

  Serafina had been waiting just outside the nursery with Braeden, Mr. Vanderbilt, and the other friends and family members when little Miss Cornelia Vanderbilt came into the world, a tiny bundle of wriggling coos in the arms of her loving mother. Serafina had heard Baby Nell’s first cry, and she had played with her in the nursery many times since. During the night, Serafina had often lain on the balcony outside the nursery window, looking out across the grounds, swishing her long black tail back and forth in a guardian’s contentment, while Baby Nell slept safely inside. She remembered thinking that Cornelia was the first Vanderbilt to be born in the mountains of North Carolina. Did that make her and Cornelia sisters of a kind? What would she be like? How would she speak? How would she see the world? Would the Vanderbilts of the future become people of the Southern mountains?

  All through the summer and autumn days there had been an air of tranquility at Biltmore, a sense of new beginnings. She knew she should be happy. Just as everyone else seemed to be. She enjoyed her life in the workshop with her pa and her life around Biltmore, but when she was supposed to be sleeping, she tossed and turned. When she was walking the grounds, a mere squirrel dashing out in front of her would drench her limbs with fear. Several times while patrolling the forests around the house she had shifted rapidly into panther form, sure that an attack was a split second away, only to find nothing but a babbling brook or wind in the trees.