‘When somethin’ bad happens, Sera, no matter how foul and painful it is, ya don’t go runnin’ off,’ he told her. ‘Ya come home, girl. Ya come to me and we talk about it, whatever it is. That’s what kin are for. You got it?’
She nodded. She knew he was right. ‘I got it, Pa.’
As they ate their breakfast, Serafina turned to darker thoughts. ‘Tell me what’s been happening here, Pa. Is everyone all right? How is Braeden?’
Her pa shook his head. ‘I’m afraid the boy’s been having a hard time of it.’
‘Did Gidean die?’ she asked, her voice quivering.
‘The dog was terribly wounded, beyond the veterinarian’s help. I don’t know if they finally decided to put him outten his misery.’
A flash of heat seared Serafina’s face. She pressed her lips tight together to keep the hot tears from bursting into her eyes. She took in a breath and covered her face with her hands, and then, after several seconds, she tried to continue. ‘Is everyone else all right?’
‘No, there’s other bad news,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, the stable master, Mr Rinaldi, passed away while you were gone.’
‘What happened to him?’ Serafina asked. ‘Was he sick?’
Her pa shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it. ‘He was kicked by a horse and killed.’
Serafina looked at him in alarm. ‘Was it one of those stallions?’
‘I don’t know which horse it was, but it was the darnedest thing. Everyone was shocked by it.’
‘I’m sorry about Mr Rinaldi,’ Serafina said.
‘But, other than that, more guests have arrived for the Christmas jubilee, and Mr Vanderbilt has been very busy.’
‘What about Mrs Vanderbilt? Is she feeling better?’
‘She’s been up and around on some days, but other days I don’t see her at all.’
‘Is Detective Grathan still here?’ Serafina asked.
‘He came down here yesterday a-looking for you,’ her pa said.
‘What did you say to him?’ Serafina asked in surprise.
‘I told him you were good and gone and that I didn’t know where you were, which was the truth.’
‘Good,’ she said. That was the best thing her pa could have said. The less Grathan knew about her the better. ‘Whatever he says, whatever he does, do not trust that man, Pa.’
She glanced around the room to see what her pa was working on. ‘Were you able to get the elevator gears fixed like you wanted to?’
Her pa nodded with satisfaction. ‘Them gears are fit as a fiddle now, working well and fine, just like I knew they could. But your vermin have been mommucking again.’
‘What do you mean?’ Serafina asked, confused.
He stepped over to one of his benches and showed her a bundle of black-coated wire.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, moving towards him.
‘The house is protected by a fire alarm system that’s all tied in to a central point by these here wires, but take a look . . .’
At first, Serafina thought he was showing her a wire that had been cut by snippers, but when she looked at it more closely, she saw tiny tooth marks. The wire had been chewed.
‘I guess, when you’re away, the rats will play,’ her pa said. ‘Them darn varmints chewed the insulation clean off, then bit right through the copper core. Never seen anything like it. If I hadn’t noticed this and fixed it, the whole system woulda been useless. We might woulda had a fire start up and get total outten hand before we had time to put out the flames. And, worse yet, people wouldn’t have had time to get out.’
‘I’ll see to them rats, Pa,’ Serafina promised, furious that she’d only been off the job for a short time and the rats were already back.
As she and her pa caught up on things, she realised how foolish she’d been to feel ashamed to see him. He had no reproach, no anger, nothing but love and concern for her.
‘You were gone for a few long days,’ he said, seeming to sense what was on her mind. ‘How far’d ya go?’
‘Up into the Black Mountains,’ she said.
‘The Blacks?’ he said in surprise. ‘That’s way back up in through there to them rocks. Musta been awful bad cold this time a year.’
‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘Did Superintendent McNamee and his men go out into the forest to look for that poacher?’
He pa nodded. ‘They went out, came back, didn’t see nothin’, but they found all manner of tracks out there.’
‘There’s something bad comin’, Pa,’ she told him.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, looking at her with a seriousness in his eyes. There had been a time when he didn’t have ears for her stories, but that time had passed.
But even as he laid out the question before her, she realised how difficult it was going to be to explain everything she’d learned. ‘I got a glimpse of something nasty in the forest, and it’s comin’ this way,’ she said. ‘Just be careful, Pa. And tell me if you see anything unusual, all right?’
Her pa stared at her, silent and unblinking, not liking her answer one bit. She’d got his attention full and earnest now. ‘You’re acting like you saw a haint or some such,’ he said quietly.
‘I did, Pa,’ she said. ‘I did.’
She didn’t mean that she had literally seen a ghost, but it was the only way she could get to the gist of it. A man, a haint, a demon, a spirit – she had no idea what he truly was, but she knew he would come. And Grathan was already crawling beneath their very noses. The first thing she needed to do was to somehow gain Braeden’s trust again, warn him about what she’d learned and develop a plan of attack. It made her all qualmish in her gut whenever she tried to think about what she was going to say to Braeden about what had happened with Gidean, but she knew she had to do it.
When they heard the first sounds of the servants down the hall, she and her pa realised it was time for them to start their day.
She said goodbye to him and went down the corridor.
As she passed the open door of the servants’ washroom, she saw her reflection in the little mirror above the basin. She gave it nothing but a glance as she walked by, but then she stopped, backed up and looked again, surprised by what she saw.
Given how she’d occupied herself while she was away, it didn’t surprise her that the dress that Essie had lent her was torn and stained. She’d need to apologise to Essie and somehow replace it. And she saw, too, that her face had been marked by a rather gruesome variety of cuts and scratches to go along with the vicious scar from the neck wound she’d suffered a few weeks before. She was not a pretty sight. But what truly gave her pause were her eyes. All her life, her eyes had been a soft golden amber colour, but now they looked bright yellow. She frowned and growled a little in frustration. She seemed to be evolving from merely peculiar-looking to positively hideous.
She went up the back stairs to the main floor, ducked into a heating vent, then shimmied her way up a vertical metal shaft to the second floor. Crawling through the airshaft down to Braeden’s end of the house reminded her of their adventures a few weeks before. She came to the vent that supplied Braeden’s bedroom and peered through the decorative metal wall grate beneath his desk and into his room.
Her heart swelled when she saw that Braeden was there. She so desperately wanted to push open the grate and speak with him, explain what had happened and try to convince him one more time that she’d never meant to hurt Gidean. But then she saw something that shocked her. Gidean was lying on the floor next to Braeden. He was alive! She didn’t know how that was possible, but she was so glad and relieved. Gidean lay in a soft bed of pillows that Braeden had made for him, his eyes shut as Braeden stroked his head. He was clearly gravely wounded, but he was alive!
‘I’m here with you, boy,’ Braeden said to his dog as he gently petted his ears.
When the tears seeped out of Serafina’s eyes, she quickly pulled back from the grate and crawled down the shaft a few feet. Sitting alone in the dar
kness, she hugged her knees to her body and covered her face. If she watched Braeden and Gidean any longer, she’d start sobbing – from sadness, but mostly from relief that he was still alive – and no one wanted to hear sobbing in their heating vent.
Serafina heard the faint sound of approaching footsteps. She crawled to the adjacent vent, which looked into the hallway.
Whoever it was had stopped walking. He was just standing there outside Braeden’s door. What was he doing?
She could see his shoes and trousers, but she couldn’t see his face because of her low position. She knew it wasn’t Mr Vanderbilt, for she knew his shoes well. She pressed herself to the floor and tried to look upward. Now she could see that the man standing outside Braeden’s door was holding a spiralling wooden cane with a hooked antler handle and he had straggly rat-brown hair.
Suddenly, she felt the closeness of the shaft she was hiding in, the dusty air moving in and out of her lungs. She tried to stay calm, but her chest rose and fell more and more heavily as she waited and watched.
She expected the man to knock, but he did not.
He leaned forward, pressed his ear against the door, and listened.
The rat was spying on Braeden.
Serafina watched, her heart beating strong and steady in her chest, marking time. When Braeden came out of his room, the spy stepped back into the shadow of an alcove and hid from him.
Serafina sucked in a breath and readied herself to push open the vent cover and leap into action, but as Braeden walked by the man remained hidden. He did not attack.
To Serafina’s astonishment, Gidean walked at Braeden’s side. The dog moved slowly, carefully, but he was walking on his own. Serafina couldn’t believe it. How was this possible? She’d only been gone a few days. How could the dog’s broken bones have healed so quickly?
The spy waited until Braeden was gone, then quietly slipped into his room.
That dirty rotten rat, Serafina thought as she crawled back to the other vent to watch him.
The intruder rummaged hurriedly through Braeden’s desk and opened his dresser drawers. She worried that he’d pull back the vent cover and see her there, or maybe hear her breathing, but she had to stay and see what he was doing. As he bent down to look under Braeden’s bed, she saw the side of his scarred face. Just as she’d suspected, it was Grathan.
She felt the fear rising up in her stomach.
Why was he rummaging through Braeden’s belongings? Was he truly looking for evidence of Mr Thorne’s murder? Or was he looking for clues to the whereabouts of the Black Cloak?
Or did Braeden have some other connection to all this that she didn’t understand?
Grathan found a small map of the riding trails that Braeden had been working on, but seemed frustrated that he couldn’t find anything else. When he finally left Braeden’s room, Serafina breathed a sigh of relief, but she couldn’t rest.
She dropped down through the shaft to the main floor and looked through a vent just in time to see Gidean lying down in the morning sun in the Entrance Hall with the master’s huge St Bernard, Cedric. That meant Braeden couldn’t be too far away. But finding him and staying undetected wasn’t going to be easy.
Many of the fancy-dressed guests were taking their strolls. Servants bustled about the house attending to their various duties upstairs and down. Several families of Vanderbilts were arriving from New York to spend the holidays. Serafina prowled from spot to spot, avoiding a gaggle of housemaids and then sneaking past a pair of footmen, one of whom had a bandaged hand from her bite a few days before.
By afternoon, the house was so busy that she had to take refuge in the hidden compartment beneath the stairway on the south side of the second floor. When she overheard two chambermaids saying that the young master had gone out to the south terrace, she ran for it.
Slipping out through a side door, she darted along the columns at the front of the house, beneath the strange creatures carved into the tops of the columns and the gargoyles mounted along the edge of the roof. Few people seemed to notice them, but she had always been fascinated by the menagerie of Gothic carvings that adorned the house – weird dragons and chimeras, seahorses and sea serpents, bearded men and fanged beasts, strange girls with wings, mysterious figures in cloak and hood, and a hundred other fantastical creatures of the imagination. She had always wondered where Biltmore’s stone carvers had come up with their ideas.
She ran down the steps to the long, wisteria-covered pergola that bordered the south terrace – a flat, open, grass-covered courtyard with a picturesque view of the river valley and the mountains beyond. Braeden and Lady Rowena stood on the terrace alone, gazing out at the scenery. Serafina had been hoping that Lady Rowena’s father had finally arrived and taken her away, but clearly that hadn’t happened.
Serafina desperately wanted to talk to Braeden, to warn him about what she’d learned in the mountains, but she couldn’t do it with Lady Rowena there. She ran down the length of the pergola, came up the steps that approached from the other side and then peeked across the terrace.
Lady Rowena wore a peacock-blue walking dress with an elaborate triple lapel, a black-laced throat and a collar that stood high round the back of her neck, as if holding the tumble of her red hair. She carried a matching parasol casually over her shoulder to protect herself from the sun. She reminded Serafina of the girls depicted in the hand-coloured fashion plates of the ladies’ magazines. She seemed to have a new dress or outfit for every activity and time of day.
But the sight of Braeden and Lady Rowena together wasn’t the most startling thing. What surprised Serafina was that Braeden was carrying a large bird of prey on his leather-gloved left hand.
That must be Kess, Braeden’s peregrine falcon with the broken wing.
Kess was a strikingly handsome bird, with blue-grey wings and back, and a pale breast streaked with dark bars. Her throat was pure white, but much of her head was black, like she was wearing a helmet and mask, ready for aerial battle. But what Serafina loved most of all were Kess’s powerful yellow talons with long, curving black claws, perfect for raking her prey from the sky.
‘It’s a rather menacing-looking creature, isn’t it?’ Lady Rowena remarked to Braeden.
When Serafina heard Lady Rowena say this about such a beautiful bird of prey, she struggled to keep herself calm. She wanted to yell, That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! but she was pretty sure that at least one of them would figure out who it was hiding in the bushes.
‘I think she’s beautiful,’ Braeden said calmly.
There was something about his tone that caught Serafina. He didn’t seem angry or annoyed like she thought he should be. If anything, he seemed a bit distant, like he had other things on his mind. But then he seemed to slowly bring himself round and focus on the moment at hand.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s see what she can do today . . .’
Braeden had told her that the falcon would never be able to fly again. She thought it was kind of him to bring Kess out into the sunlight, at least, so that she could look around and remember better days. But then, to Serafina’s amazement, Braeden lowered his arm and threw the falcon up into the sky. Kess didn’t just fly; she flapped up into the breeze and soared, calling out in pure joy. Serafina could see the smile on Braeden’s face as he pointed to the bird and talked to Lady Rowena, excitedly sharing all the different facts he knew about hawks and falcons. Kess’s flight had changed his mood entirely.
The flying peregrine had long, pointed wings that pumped her through the sky, and a long tail that she used for steering and braking. Serafina could tell that she was still favouring her damaged wing, but she seemed so happy to be in the sky even for a little while. But it bewildered Serafina. How did Braeden fix a broken wing that could not be fixed?
Lady Rowena watched the flying falcon in silence as if nothing she was seeing impressed her. Serafina wanted to scratch her eyes out more than ever. But right at that moment something extraordinary happ
ened. A red fox ran up the steps, brushed past Serafina and trotted across the south terrace towards Braeden and Lady Rowena. The fox had a beautiful red-and-silver coat, with black legs, a white underside and a huge, puffy red tail. Its ears were perked up, its nose pointed and its eyes alert.
When Lady Rowena saw the fox coming towards her and Braeden, she screamed, ‘An animal!’
The startled fox paused and sat a few yards away from them as if he were sorry that he had scared the girl in the fancy dress.
But Braeden squatted down and faced the fox. ‘Come on, little guy. We won’t hurt you,’ he said, stretching out his hand. ‘You’re welcome to join us. How’s your paw doing?’
The fox walked up to Braeden and sat at his feet.
Serafina watched in amazement. A dog or a horse was one thing, but how could Braeden befriend a wild fox?
Keeping low, she crawled up a few more steps to get a closer look.
The falcon continued to circle in the open air out beyond the wall where Braeden and Lady Rowena were standing. When Braeden whistled, the bird tilted her wing and looked at him.
Braeden smiled. ‘Did you see that? Did you see how she looked over at us? She’s so happy!’
‘Well, I must say, it does seem to like you,’ Lady Rowena said with a smile, finally giving in to Braeden’s enthusiasm as she watched the bird fly around them.
‘She’s a girl,’ Braeden said gently. ‘Her name is Kess.’
He seemed to be so willing to teach Lady Rowena about animals and show her a better way of thinking, like he understood that she was from the city and didn’t understand animals the way he did. Serafina thought he was far more patient than she could ever be.
‘Can you get it to do whatever you tell it to do?’ Lady Rowena asked. ‘Does it follow your commands?’
‘No,’ Braeden said. ‘She’s my friend. I do things for her and she does things for me.’
‘I see . . .’ Lady Rowena said thoughtfully, looking up at the bird. Suddenly, this interested her. She turned and pointed towards the ridge of the house. ‘Can you have it kill one of those pigeons up there?’
Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) Page 15