Had he seen something so frightening that he’d flung himself over the railing to get away from it?
Not wanting to look down at the gruesome sight of the dead Mr. Kettering again, she traced her eyes along the arc of the stairs. It had always disturbed her how on some nights the Grand Staircase looked so lovely and benevolent in spirit, but other nights, when the moonlight poured in, it seemed haunted with a pale, cold menace.
Tap-tap-tap…
She quickly tilted her head toward a sound in the distance.
Tap-tap-tap…
Coming closer. Tiny cloven hooves on the stone floor.
Tap-tap-tap…
Fear flooded into her limbs. Her body froze, unable to move. Suddenly, she felt as if she was being hunted again, like she was being tracked down. She was going to be killed. Was this the terror that had driven Mr. Kettering over the railing? Should she try to spin and fight? Should she try to flee?
Tap-tap-tap…
Whatever it was, it was right behind her now. Just a few feet away. But she was too frightened to turn and look.
A loud crashing noise exploded on the second floor above her, then the wailing caterwaul of a terrified cat. It was Ember!
As Serafina leapt to her feet, she glanced behind her, bracing herself for a startling fright. But to her surprise, there was nothing there.
What she thought had been there just a moment before was gone now.
She didn’t have time to think about it. She sprinted up the stairway to help her cat.
She could hear the snarling, hissing little tabby fighting something, lamps getting knocked over, vases smashing onto the floor, like she was in a fierce, knock-down, drag-out battle to the death.
That ain’t no rat, Serafina thought as she ran. And as she came up to the top of the stairway, she saw it. At first her brain couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. It appeared to be a hunched, lizardlike creature, about the size of a dog, but it had scaly skin, clawed feet, a long, writhing tail, leathery bat-like wings, and ugly bulging eyes. The sight of the unnatural beast jolted her with such intense fear that it almost paralyzed her. But she was desperate to save Ember. She charged forward.
The bizarre beast scurried away from her, running beneath a chair and then a sofa. Then it scuttled down into a ventilation shaft and disappeared, leaving her with nothing but a shudder down her spine.
Serafina ran back to help her wounded cat. “Poor little kitten,” she whispered as she picked Ember up and held her. “I’ve got ya. We’re all right now.”
But Ember’s body went limp in her hands.
“Are you all right, little one?” she cried.
But as Serafina held her, she could tell that Ember wasn’t all right.
Her little legs hung loose, her eyes were closed, and her head was tilted down at an odd angle.
Her body was still warm, but Ember was dead.
Serafina’s stomach churned.
Whatever that terrifying creature was, it had killed her cat.
Serafina held her in her hands.
“Good-bye, little one,” she whispered as she looked down at her, stroking the fur on her cat’s head and ears. She wanted Ember to open her eyes, to look at her, to purr like she used to.
Tap-tap-tap…
Serafina heard the sound coming up behind her, little hooves on the hardwood floor.
Tap-tap-tap…
She slowly set Ember’s body back down, and then turned and looked behind her.
Her eyes widened.
Here, on the second floor of Biltmore, down at the end of the darkened corridor that led to the nursery and to Braeden’s bedroom, stood the white deer.
And it was staring straight at her.
The white deer looked at her with the blackest eyes she had ever seen, filled not just with the darkness of the midnight sky, but the unsettling moonlike shimmer of knowing.
Serafina did not turn, but she knew that the moon was visible in the window behind her. And as she studied the deer, she could swear that she saw the reflection of herself and the moon in the deer’s eyes.
She thought it must be the same white deer she had seen before. But now it was larger in size and it had a full set of antlers sticking up from its head like clusters of branches. She knew that normally only male deer had antlers, but this was a doe. It seemed to be changing every time she saw it, as if it wasn’t just growing at a startling rate, but morphing its shape from one thing to another.
As she gazed at it, she kept thinking it was going to do something, run away or attack her, or even speak, but it just stared at her with those beady black eyes.
“What do you want?” Serafina asked the deer. “Why are you here?”
The deer made some sort of noise, but she could not tell what it meant.
When Serafina took a small step to the left to get a bit closer to the escape of the staircase, the deer took a small step to the right.
Feeling a creeping shiver run up the back of her neck, Serafina glanced into the shadows behind her, half expecting some horrible beast to lunge out at her, but there was nothing there.
When she turned back to the deer, it was gone.
She was left standing there in confusion.
What in the world? she wondered in exasperation. What is going on in this place?
And then she remembered Ember. She turned and saw Ember’s body lying on the floor.
Her heart filled with aching pain as she slowly crumpled onto her knees next to her dead little cat. Her hands rose to her face and pressed against the bridge of her nose, and she breathed long, ragged breaths, pulling air in through her fingers. Ember’s head was tucked in the way she used to when she was a little kitten, and her paws were curled tight.
Serafina remembered finding Smoke and Ember when they were just bundles of fuzz a few weeks old, and bringing them into the house, and feeding them, and letting them sleep curled up with her in bed, purring. She remembered teaching them how to hunt for mice and rats, and telling them that they had to make sure there were no vermin in the house.
No vermin in the house, Serafina thought now, her heart breaking. That’s exactly what Ember had been trying to do.
“Poor Ember, you must have fought so hard,” she said, crying. “This was a kind of vermin that you were too little to fight.”
She just hoped that Smoke had somehow managed to escape.
Tears welling up in her eyes, Serafina lifted Ember’s limp body in her cupped hands. The little cat’s head hung down on one side of her hands and her long tail hung down on the other. Her fur was still so soft and her body still warm.
Serafina slowly carried her back into their bedroom and gently set her on the windowsill. She would bury her out in the garden by the azaleas. But right now, there were other things she knew she must do.
When she was younger, hunting rats down in the basement, she had crept through the shadows alone night after night, but over the last year she had learned many things, and one of them was that sometimes she needed to get help.
She crossed the living hall, went into the alcove, and knocked on the oak door of Mr. Vanderbilt’s bedroom.
“It’s me, sir. It’s Serafina,” she called through the door. “Something has happened. You need to get up.”
Knowing that it would be difficult to rouse Mr. Vanderbilt from sleep in the middle of the night, she was just about to call out again, but the door suddenly opened and he stood before her. It startled her to see that he was not only wide-awake at this hour, but fully dressed.
“What is it? What’s happened?” he asked.
“There’s been an attack,” she said. “Mr. Kettering is…” She had trouble saying the words. She knew he had been Mr. Vanderbilt’s friend. But she had to tell him. “Mr. Kettering is dead, sir.”
“What?” Mr. Vanderbilt said in dismay. “How?”
“There was some sort of creature…” she said. “Mr. Kettering fell over the railing of the stairs.”
“Tell me what
it looked like,” he demanded.
It startled her that he didn’t seem surprised by the news that there was a murderous creature in the house. He just wanted the specifics. As she did her best to describe it, she glanced into Mr. Vanderbilt’s private bedchamber behind him, looking for some clue as to why he was up in the middle of the night.
She could make out the deep maroon curtains blocking out the night’s moonlight, and the matching upholstery on the dark walnut furniture. With all the ancient Greek frescoes, oil paintings, and bronze sculptures in his room, it was like an art museum all in itself, so different from the sunlit velvet airiness of Mrs. Vanderbilt’s suite, which was connected to his by the formal Oak Sitting Room where they shared their breakfast each morning.
When she was finished describing the creature to him, Mr. Vanderbilt nodded. “I think that’s what I saw the other night. It frightened me so badly that I couldn’t even utter words to describe it. I didn’t think it could be real. I prayed I had imagined it. For days now, I have been doubting my own sanity.”
“I understand,” she said, and she truly did. “But now we both know that it’s very real. And I’m so sorry about Mr. Kettering. I know he was your friend.”
Mr. Vanderbilt nodded appreciatively, and said, “You had better take me to him.”
Serafina led him along the corridor, through the smashed-up living hall where Ember had died, and then down the Grand Staircase.
But when they got to the bottom of the stairs, she stopped abruptly in astonishment.
The floor was empty.
Mr. Kettering’s body was gone.
“I don’t understand,” Mr. Vanderbilt said, looking at her.
“I heard him scream, I know I did,” Serafina said, her voice shaking with uncertainty. “And I saw Mr. Kettering’s body lying right here. I swear it. Right here.”
But even as she said the words, the doubt began to creep into her mind.
Serafina watched Mr. Vanderbilt carefully as he stared down at the empty space on the floor.
She still didn’t understand how it was possible that Mr. Kettering’s body wasn’t there. There wasn’t even any blood. But she had heard the struggle from her bedroom and she had seen his body lying on the floor. Had that all been a bad dream?
She knew that Mr. Vanderbilt had already wondered how and why she’d been so close to the hunting party when it was attacked. Now what would he think of her? She’d gotten him up in the middle of the night with outlandish stories of dead bodies lying in the Main Hall.
When she saw the strained, uncertain expression on his face she was sure he was regretting his decision to move her up to the second floor. It was obvious now that she couldn’t protect him and his family. She had no idea what was going on. She couldn’t even tell the difference between real and unreal!
“This is indeed inexplicable,” Mr. Vanderbilt said in confusion, his eyes still staring at the empty spot on the floor. “But I know you wouldn’t make something like this up.”
“I honestly don’t understand where the body went…” she said in exasperation.
“It’s possible that someone, or something, moved it,” he said. “I will go and speak with the security manager. There has to be some kind of explanation.”
It surprised her that he seemed so calm and logical about it all—she wasn’t quite sure how he managed it—but there was something even more startling.
He believes me, she thought in wonder. He actually believes me.
It felt as if up to this moment she’d been buried in heavy stones, and now someone was lifting the stones away one by one. Finally, she had an ally, someone who truly trusted her, someone she could fight alongside. Maybe she wasn’t losing her mind. It didn’t seem possible that she had killed the hunters in the forest. And she was pretty sure she hadn’t imagined Mr. Kettering’s body lying on the floor. If someone as smart and honorable as Mr. Vanderbilt believed in her, then she should believe in herself.
She nodded in agreement with his plan, but Ember’s death, and then Mr. Kettering’s death, had shaken her badly, and her mind kept going back to the reason Mr. Vanderbilt had brought her up to the second floor. “I’m sure Baby Nell is fine, but I’m going to go back upstairs and make sure she’s all right.”
She quickly parted from him and hurried to the second floor. As she slipped into the darkened nursery and closed the door, she saw Baby Nell sleeping safely in her crib. A nursemaid usually attended to her, but Serafina was surprised to see that tonight Mrs. Vanderbilt was there, sound asleep in the moonlight, curled up on the settee beside the crib, her hair tumbling loosely around her shoulder. It was as if her mother’s instinct had told her that something in the house was amiss.
Serafina could hear, beyond the closed nursery door, that the house had gone still and quiet again, and that suited her just fine. We need some peace and quiet, she thought.
She stepped over to the window and scanned the moonlit courtyard in front of the house, looking for any signs of trouble.
Pulling back from the window, she draped a blanket over her sleeping mistress, and stoked the embers in the fireplace to warm the room.
As she tiptoed back to the crib, she was expecting the baby to still be asleep, but little Nell looked up at her with her big beautiful eyes. The baby gazed at her for several seconds, then broke into a huge smile when she recognized her. Baby Nell began making little purring noises, imitating the sounds that Serafina had often made to her.
“Shh, shh,” Serafina whispered gently, patting Nell before she woke up her mother.
Thonk-thonk.
Serafina jumped in surprise. Something had thudded against the nursery door. But then she realized what it was. When she opened the door a few inches, Smoke ran into the room.
“I’m glad to see you, my friend,” she whispered, as she scooped him up into her arms and hugged him tight. But he was in no mood for cuddling. He jumped down from her arms and darted down the corridor, meowing. It wasn’t like him to meow.
“What is it?” she asked as she closed the nursery door and went after him. “Show me.”
She followed him around the corner, through the living hall, and down the Grand Staircase. She didn’t want to leave Mrs. Vanderbilt and the baby, but it was clear that Smoke was on the trail of something.
“Where are you taking me?” she whispered, but Smoke just kept going, quiet and serious now.
As soon as he reached the first floor, he darted down the narrow servants’ stairs into the basement and ran toward the kitchens.
“This better not be about getting a bowl of milk,” she whispered.
Tap-tap-tap.
She stopped in the basement corridor and froze. It wasn’t about a bowl of milk.
Tap-tap-tap.
The muscles in her back tightened.
Tap-tap-tap.
Her teeth clenched. Not this again, she thought.
Tap-tap-tap.
Fear pulsed through her veins, but she was sick of this! She wanted answers! She spun around, determined to confront her enemy once and for all.
In the split second it took her to turn, the corridor was already empty. She heard the tap-tap-tap of her enemy’s feet trotting around the corner.
She dashed down the corridor and made the turn, only to catch a fleeting glimpse of something turning the next one.
She burst after it, rounding the next corner, but there was nothing there.
She paused and listened for any sort of sound coming from ahead of her. But then she heard the tap-tap-tap of the creature’s footsteps immediately behind her.
That thing’s wicked fast, she thought, but before she could even turn to see it, a clattering racket rose up from the kitchens, glass breaking, pots and pans crashing to the floor. A man screamed in horror. She charged toward the sound.
Her cat Smoke shot out of the Rotisserie Kitchen like a gray streak, his tail huge, his claws skittering across the tile floor in panic.
“Run, Smoke!” she shouted as
they passed each other.
The moment she reached the doorway of the kitchen, she lurched back in confusion. Mr. Vanderbilt was there! And he was charging straight at Mr. Cobere, Biltmore’s butcher and rotisserie cook.
Mr. Cobere tripped backward, trying desperately to escape him. “Stop! Please! No!” he begged as he threw up his shaking hands to defend himself. But Mr. Vanderbilt attacked, filled with a violence she had never seen in him.
Mr. Vanderbilt grabbed Mr. Cobere and shoved him back until the poor man crashed against the butcher block. He lost his balance and fell against the large black iron rotisserie spit where he had been roasting a haunch of venison on the cook fire.
As the two men grappled, Serafina froze in shock. Who was she supposed to fight, the attacker or the attacked?
“No! Please!” Mr. Cobere begged as Mr. Vanderbilt struck him repeatedly with his fist. Mr. Cobere tried to struggle away, tried to fight back, but he was a small man and there was little he could do. And then Mr. Vanderbilt grabbed one of the wrought-iron fire pokers and slammed it hard against his head. Poor Mr. Cobere toppled to the tiled floor.
Serafina gasped in horror.
Mr. Vanderbilt turned and saw her for the first time. His face looked bronze-colored in the dim, flickering glow of the rotisserie fire, and his eyes were filled with terrifying wildness. He dropped the iron poker to the floor with a ringing clatter and ran from the room, fleeing down the corridor.
She knew she should go after him, fight him, capture him, something, but she was too stunned by what she had just seen to even move.
A bout of black-haze dizziness swept through her like a sickening wave. She pressed her hand to the wall to steady herself. How could it be?
Her mind swirled in anguish and confusion, her temples pounding. It felt like everything she had ever counted on in the world was crashing down around her head. But she knew she had to stay focused, she had to stay sane.
Just get your wits, girl, she told herself fiercely.
Serafina and the Seven Stars Page 11