Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,58

streamed out of the room to organize the search—all but poor Mr. Rostonov, who remained behind, red-faced and upset.

She frowned. Something wasn’t right.

She had planned to use the air vents to find a way to get down to the first floor and then make her way to the basement to rejoin her pa, but now she had a different idea.

She turned around and crawled quickly back to Braeden’s room. She stopped at the vent cover and listened. When she didn’t hear Mrs. Vanderbilt’s voice, she slowly cracked open the vent and peeked inside. Gidean stuck his nose into the crack and growled. Surprised, she recoiled, her back arching like a witch’s best friend as she hissed at him. “It’s me, you stupid dog! I’m on the good side, remember?” At least I think I am, she thought, remembering Mr. Pratt’s comment about the evil nature of creatures of the night.

Gidean stopped growling and stepped back, his face happy with relief and his little tail nub wagging.

“Serafina!” Braeden said excitedly as he pulled her out of the vent. “Where did you go? You were supposed to wait for me in there, not crawl away! You’ll get lost in all those passages! They’re endless!”

“I wasn’t going to get lost,” she said. “I liked it in there.”

“You have to be careful. Didn’t you hear my aunt say that another boy’s gone missing?”

“Your uncle is organizing a search party.”

“How do you know that?”

“Do you know what the Russian word otets means?” she asked abruptly, ignoring his question.

“What?”

“Otets. Or the word batya. What do those words mean?”

“I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

“Do you know anyone who speaks Russian?”

“Mr. Rostonov.”

“Besides him.”

“Mr. Thorne.”

“Definitely besides him. Anyone else?”

“No, but we do have a library.”

“The library…” she said. That was a good idea. “Can we go?”

“You want to go to the library now? What for?”

“We need to look something up. I think it’s important.”

She and Braeden crawled rapidly, one behind the other, through the secret passages of the house. For all his talent in befriending animals and his other good qualities, Braeden sounded like a herd of wild boars trampling through the passage.

“Shh,” she whispered. “Quietly…”

“All right, Little Miss Softpaws,” Braeden retorted, and urged her forward with a push of his head. “Just keep moving.”

For the next few yards through the passage, Braeden made every effort to move more quietly, but he was still too loud.

“I’m going to get in big trouble if my uncle catches us doing this,” Braeden said as they passed another vent.

“He can’t even fit in here,” she said happily.

They crawled past the second-floor living hall and then down the length of the Tapestry Gallery until they reached the south wing of the house.

“There it is,” Braeden said finally.

She peered down through the metal grate into the Biltmore Library Room, with its ornate brass lamps, oak-paneled walls, and plush furniture. The shelves were lined with thousands of books.

“Come on,” she said, and pushed through the grate.

Thirty feet above the floor, Serafina balanced on the high ledge of the hand-carved crown molding that supported the vaulted ceiling, with its famous Italian painting of sunlit clouds and winged angels. She climbed down the upper shelves like they were the rungs of an easy ladder. From there, she scampered like a tightrope artist along a decorative wrought-iron railing. Darting quickly over to the high mantel of the massive black marble fireplace, she leapt lightly onto the soft Persian rugs on the floor and landed on her feet.

“That was fun,” she said with satisfaction.

“Speak for yourself,” said Braeden, who was still thirty feet up in the air, clinging desperately to the highest bookshelf, looking scared out of his wits.

“What are you doing up there, Braeden?” she whispered up to him in confusion. “Quit fooling around. Come on!”

“I’m not fooling around,” Braeden said.

She could see now that he was truly terrified. “Put your left foot on the shelf right below you and go from there,” she said.

She watched as he slowly, clumsily climbed down. He did pretty well at first, but then lost his grip on the last bit, fell a short distance, and landed on his bottom with a relieved sigh.

“You made it,” she said cheerfully, touching his shoulder in congratulations.

He smiled. “Let’s just use the normal door next time, all right?”

She smiled and nodded. She liked how he was already thinking there was going to be a next time.

She gazed around at all the books lining the shelves. She’d never been here in the light of