Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series)

by Robert Beatty

  ‘A cold?’ Braeden said, shocked. ‘It started with a cold?’

  This news seized Serafina with new fear. No one died from a cold. Was this what was happening to Mrs Vanderbilt? Was it the same sickness? Had Uriah cast a spell on the mistress of Biltmore?

  ‘You were going to tell us about the possibility of fire,’ Braeden urged Mr Olmsted.

  ‘As you can imagine, Mr Hunt was very concerned about fire at Biltmore, and, being a shrewd man, he incorporated many defences against it. First, he built the entire underlying structure of the house from steel girders, brick walls and stone, rather than wood. Second, the house is divided into six separate sections so that if a fire did start it could not spread. And, third, there are fire detectors throughout the house – all tied together by an electric alarm system.’

  When Mr Olmsted said these words, Serafina looked at Braeden and Braeden looked at her. The rats . . .

  ‘It was all beyond me, of course,’ Mr Olmsted continued. ‘I’m a planter of trees, not an electrical engineer, but I remember that it was all very advanced.’

  ‘But what if someone lit the fire on purpose?’ Serafina asked.

  Mr Olmsted shook his head. ‘They might try, but thanks to Mr Hunt it would be difficult to succeed. First, they would need to defeat the fire alarm and, second, they would need to know the internal details of the house’s six sections to know exactly where to light the fires.’

  ‘Did Uriah see all that when the house was being built?’ Braeden asked.

  ‘Oh, no, he had no access to such information.’

  ‘Is there a way someone could find out about it?’ Braeden asked.

  ‘Well, I suppose. The details of Mr Hunt’s construction are described in his drawings.’

  ‘Where are those?’ Serafina asked.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mr Olmsted said. ‘No one could ever reach those plans. They are kept hidden and protected under lock and key in this very room.’

  After Mr Olmsted left the library, Braeden looked at Serafina. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘First, you need to tell your uncle about what we’ve learned. I’ll go ask my pa to make sure the fire alarm system is working. But before I do that, do you remember the night we were attacked by the horde of rats?’

  ‘We were going to search Grathan’s room.’

  ‘But the rats stopped us,’ she said. ‘Then the dogs went missing. I don’t know where Grathan has gone to, but I’m going to sneak into his room and search it.’

  ‘You be careful,’ Braeden said as he nodded his agreement. He glanced out of the window towards the setting sun. ‘When I talk to my uncle, I’ll also find Rowena. She’ll be wondering where we are.’

  ‘Lady Rowena was very brave last night,’ Serafina said. ‘You go find her. Let’s meet on the back loggia in half an hour.’

  ‘Got it,’ Braeden said.

  As Serafina headed up the back stairs to the third floor, she tried to think everything through. It was clear that Uriah had conjured the Twisted Staff to help him destroy Biltmore and the Vanderbilts. But, just as Waysa had said, Uriah didn’t fight straight on. He wasn’t wielding the staff himself. He had sent in Grathan, his apprentice and spy. When she came to the hallway that led to the Van Dyck Room, she paused and took a deep breath. She’d tried to get into this room before and failed, but this time she was determined to do it.

  She crept down the hallway and pressed her ear to the door, listening for movement within. When she didn’t hear anything, she slowly turned the doorknob. It was locked. She wished she had Mrs King’s master key, but she didn’t.

  She ran down the corridor, slipped into a heating vent and climbed through the wall. It took her a while to find her way through the shafts, but she finally found the brass grille she was looking for and pushed into Mr Grathan’s room.

  She felt like she was crawling into a dragon’s lair. But she found herself in an elegantly attired chamber, with damask goldenrod wallpaper, a parquet wood floor, a Persian rug, a small fireplace and chestnut furniture. The walls were adorned with Van Dyck prints hanging on the wall by long steel wires. It surprised her, but there was nothing obviously wrong or out of place about the room.

  I guess there’s no dead cat, she thought, remembering Essie’s expression.

  But the room wasn’t entirely empty, either. A worn shirt and a wrinkled pair of trousers lay draped over one of the chairs. Three leather suitcases sat on the floor. It made her palms sweat to think about it, but Mr Grathan could come back at any moment.

  She searched the room as fast as she could, looking for shoes and clothing stained with pine sap or the black smudges of fire coals. It crossed her mind that she might even find incriminating containers of the highly flammable sap itself. She reckoned the pine forest wasn’t just a way for Uriah and Grathan to conceal themselves, but part of their plan to destroy Biltmore. Her pa had told her once that there was nothing hotter than a forest fire burning through a stand of pines, that the trunks of the trees actually exploded when the sap boiled. It would be an ideal way to start a fire inside a house, even one that was designed not to burn.

  When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she opened one of his leather suitcases and rummaged through it. Nothing but clothes. She opened up the next suitcase. Still nothing. After checking the third, she finally stopped. She gazed around the room, frustrated.

  There’s nothing here . . .

  From what she could find, Mr Grathan appeared to be a normal, everyday man. She pursed her lips and breathed through her nose, perturbed.

  This doesn’t make sense . . .

  Where were the fire matches and containers of pine sap? Where were the books filled with pentagrams, runes and evil spells? Grathan had been so determined to make sure no one entered his room, but what had he been doing? Hiding his stupid toothbrush?

  There has to be something here . . .

  She went back and double-checked the leather suitcases. She searched them more thoroughly this time, looking for unusual seams or details that seemed out of place. Then she found it. There was a small hidden compartment in the lining of one of the cases.

  Now, this is interesting . . .

  Inside, she found newspaper clippings – some tattered, going back years, others more recent – but they were all articles about hauntings, strange disappearances and gruesome murders. Many of the names and cities in the articles were underlined.

  What are you doing, Mr Grathan?

  Along with the clippings, she found an old, tattered map of the United States. Each of the locations mentioned in the various articles was circled and also marked with what looked like a small X. But then she realised they weren’t Xs. They were small upright crosses, like gravestones. And, even more disturbing, some of the locations were marked with more than one.

  Her first thought was that he was obsessed with following reports of occult and supernatural phenomenon. But then she realised that maybe he wasn’t just a follower. Maybe he was the cause of these events.

  Wherever he goes, people die.

  Her heart began to pound. She dug through the clippings again, checking the date on each one. The headline of the most recent one read, The Mysterious Disappearance of Montgomery Thorne.

  Grathan truly had come to investigate Mr Thorne’s disappearance, but he wasn’t a police detective. Why had he come?

  Besides Mr Thorne, three names were mentioned in the article, the known residents of Biltmore Estate: George, Edith and Braeden Vanderbilt.

  This isn’t good . . .

  Most of the circles on the map were worn and faded, but there was one that stood out: the circle that marked the location of Biltmore Estate. There was no cross beside it.

  After goin’ to all these other places, he’s come here . . .

  She gazed around the room, trying to think.

  The room is so empty, so few clues. But there has to be a way . . .

  She stood and she turned.

  How can I see what can�
�t be seen?

  She noticed a slight discoloration on the floor in front of one of the upholstered chairs. She got down on her hands and knees and put her nose to that area of the carpet.

  It’s dirt from a shoe . . . It’s a scuff mark . . . Mr Grathan sat in this chair . . .

  She moved upward and ran her nose slowly along the arm of the chair, sniffing for scents. At first she couldn’t pick up anything other than the fabric itself. Then she caught a faint but extremely distinct smell.

  I’ve smelled this before . . .

  It was the scent of some kind of powdery stone. And she could smell the lingering trace of metal. It seemed so familiar. She could picture it in her mind, but she couldn’t think of its name. It was a small, rectangular, smooth grey stone.

  It’s a whetstone! That’s what my pa called it.

  She’d seen her pa use a whetstone in the workshop to scrape a steel blade until its gleaming edges were razor sharp.

  She swallowed.

  Grathan sat in this chair and sharpened a bladed weapon . . .

  Her chest began to rise and fall more heavily, her lungs wanting more air. She tried to think it through.

  Uriah summoned Grathan here. But Grathan isn’t just a spy . . .

  He’s an assassin!

  He isn’t just a murder investigator. He’s the murderer!

  She couldn’t help but look around the room, but she’d already searched it. There was no weapon to be found.

  How does he carry the weapon and conceal it?

  And, more important, who has he come to kill?

  She remembered that Essie and Rowena had told her that Grathan had asked many questions about Mr Thorne, Gidean and Braeden. One was already dead. One was a dog.

  There was only one name remaining . . .

  When she heard a noise outside the room, she hit the floor and slid under the bed.

  She waited and listened, her chest rapidly pulling air into her lungs.

  She heard the muffled sounds.

  There was some sort of commotion out in the corridor, people talking, a sense of alarm.

  Her chest filled with panic. She sniffed the air for the smell of smoke, but didn’t detect any.

  She quickly crawled out from under the bed and went over to the door. When she heard Essie’s voice, she quickly twisted open the lock and stepped out of the room.

  ‘Oh, miss, it’s you!’ Essie said in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Is there a fire?’ Serafina asked. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We came up lookin’ for you, miss,’ Essie said.

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Someone told Master Braeden that you were seen in the gardens badly injured. Master Braeden was all a-jumble about where you were, so he sent us up here to look for you while he searched outside.’

  ‘Injured?’ Serafina said in bewilderment. ‘I’m not injured. Who told him that?’

  At that moment, Serafina remembered the night she’d caught the wood rat: every time it had tried to run away, her reflex had been to snatch it up again. When she fell from the Grand Staircase, her reflex had ensured she landed her on her feet. Reflexes were a powerful and useful force. But they could be used against you. She knew it because she’d done it. A few weeks ago, she had walked the corridors of Biltmore dressed as a defenceless victim in a fancy red dress. She had used Mr Thorne’s reflex against him and lured him to his demise.

  But now here she was.

  Someone was in control and it wasn’t her.

  If she was suddenly discovered to be missing and thought to be injured, who was the first person at Biltmore who would react? Who would immediately jump onto his horse and ride blindly into the darkness of the night all by himself to save her?

  She imagined running out into the gardens and finding Braeden’s lifeless body lying on the ground, ambushed and stabbed to death by a man with a sharpened blade.

  She grabbed Essie’s arm. ‘I’m going to go and find Braeden and bring him back. But you need to do something very important. Run downstairs as fast as you can and get my pa, Mr Olmsted and Mr Vanderbilt. I want you to tell them to check the plans of the house and find the places it’s most vulnerable to fire. Go to those places and look for pine sap on the floor and walls, or any kind of flammable material. They should station guards to protect those areas. Make sure no one can light a fire.’

  ‘I’ll do it. I’ll do it right away!’ Essie said.

  Serafina touched Essie one last time and then she ran. She didn’t care who saw her or heard her now. She ran frantically through the house and down the stairs, her lungs gasping for air.

  As she sprinted through the Entrance Hall, she heard the hooves of Braeden’s horse clattering across the courtyard in front of the house. She burst out the front door just in time to see Braeden gallop by. He was leaning forward on the horse, filled with panicked urgency. She’d never seen him go so fast. But he was riding headlong into darkness towards the gardens.

  ‘Braeden!’ she shouted. ‘Come back! I’m here! I’m alive!’ But he didn’t hear her.

  Serafina ran after him. As she went out into the night, she heard the loud, bloodcurdling howl of a wolfhound in the nearby trees. A flood of dread poured into her mind. It sounded like a wolfhound sentinel in the woods had spotted Braeden and was sounding the call for his white-fanged brothers to join him.

  Then she heard the long, yipping, yelping, snapping howl of a single coyote. The howling answer of a hundred other coyotes rose up from all around Biltmore’s grounds.

  A terrible thought struck her mind. All this deception and disguise wasn’t just about finding the Black Cloak and burning down Biltmore. Now they wanted Braeden. Braeden in particular. And soon they would have the boy in their jaws.

  She heard another sound in the distance. She knew the wraithy racket all too well: the clatter of four horses and a carriage on the road to Biltmore.

  They were coming. They were all coming.

  Then she spotted movement ahead at the edge of the gardens. She sucked in a breath. The black silhouette of a figure lurked in the shadows, hunched and slinking in a long dark coat. It was Grathan. He was wielding his cane like a weapon.

  ‘Braeden!’ Serafina screamed as he and his horse disappeared into Biltmore’s vast gardens, but he was too far away to hear her.

  As Grathan ducked into the gardens behind Braeden, he gripped his cane in two hands and drew out a long, pointed, swordlike dagger. There it was. The weapon he had been hiding had finally come forth! The freshly sharpened edges of the blade shone in the moonlight with gleaming power. Brandishing it in front of him, Grathan followed Braeden down the path into the gardens. He was going to kill him!

  Serafina burst forward with new speed. When she finally reached the path, she caught something out of the corner of her eye: a white-faced owl glided low across the courtyard and then disappeared into the garden trees.

  Her chest tightened with fear.

  Grathan, the wolfhounds, the coyotes, the stallions, the owl – everything was coming together.

  The trap had sprung. And she and Braeden were the mice.

  Serafina raced down the path that Braeden and Grathan had taken, but as she rounded a bend she came upon an unexpected sight.

  Grathan stood frozen in the path. His back was to her as he stared at the ground in front of him. Whatever it was, it had stopped him dead in his tracks.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said, his voice trembling as he glanced round at her.

  Serafina didn’t understand what was happening until she saw the timber rattlesnake coiled up on the path in front of him. It was a thick, dangerous-looking snake, nearly five feet long, brown and patterned with jagged bars. Its nasty wedged-shaped head was raised up off the ground, its yellow eyes staring at him, and its black tongue flicking.

  She felt so confused. Why had he warned her?

  ‘Just don’t move, Serafina,’ he said again as the snake began to rattle.

  Then Serafina
saw that it wasn’t just one rattlesnake. There were many of them, lying all over the path and the surrounding grass. One of the loathsome pit vipers coiled mere inches from her bare legs, its head moving back and forth as if it were angling for an attack.

  Grathan gripped his cane in one hand and his dagger in the other.

  He tried to step backwards, but as soon as his legs moved the closest rattlesnake struck like the snap of a whip, leaving two bleeding holes in his leg, so fast that even Serafina barely saw it. Grathan tried to leap away from the terrifying strike, but he landed off the path, right onto a second rattlesnake. That rattlesnake lunged forward, its mouth spread, and sank its venomous fangs deep into his calf. As he cried out and tried to jerk away, a third snake struck his thigh. Grathan screamed in pain and tripped backwards, dropping his dagger. The other snakes converged upon him, striking him in the face and throat and chest. Their fangs pumped venom into his bloodstream. Grathan’s arms and legs and his entire body were shaking. Serafina had no idea whether she should fight the snakes or run. There was nothing she could do but stand there in horror and watch.

  Grathan lay flat on the ground now, face up, with his limbs splayed, the snakes draping and coiling around him. The man’s face was dark and swollen with poison, but his eyes were open and he looked at her.

  ‘She’s . . . not . . . who . . . she . . . seems . . .’ he gasped in a weak, raspy voice, barely able to speak.

  ‘What?’ Serafina asked in confusion. ‘I don’t understand!’

  ‘Run!’ he gasped.

  ‘Tell me what you’re talking about!’ she cried. She wanted to get closer to the man and hear what he was trying to tell her, but she had to keep her distance from the snakes. She knew she was in danger, but she had to have to answers. ‘Who are you? Who are talking about?’ she asked him.

  But Grathan’s eyes closed and he was gone. He died right before her eyes.

  Serafina stepped back, then stepped back again, aghast at what she saw.

  She had thought that Grathan was her mortal enemy, the second occupant of the carriage, Uriah’s spy and assassin. But she suddenly felt a strange sadness that something had just happened that shouldn’t have happened and that it was all her fault. She looked down at the poor dead man on the ground. Had she made a terrible mistake about him? It seemed like he was trying to help her at the end, like he was trying to tell her something.