Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,67

Mrs. Vanderbilt said, stopping and looking out into the darkness.

“I think it was just a fox-call out in the woods,” Braeden said casually, but Serafina could see him smile and was relieved he wasn’t still cross with her for suspecting Mr. Thorne.

Stay safe tonight, Serafina thought as Braeden and his aunt continued toward the house.

“Listen, your uncle and I have been talking,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said. “We’re worried about you.”

“I’m all right,” Braeden said.

“Your uncle and I need to stay here with the guests, but we’ve decided that it would be best if you went away from Biltmore for a little while. We tried it before, but we think it’s more important than ever now.”

“I don’t want to go away,” Braeden said, and Serafina knew he was thinking of her.

“Just until things settle down and the detectives figure out what’s going on,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said, her voice getting progressively harder to hear as they went back into the house. “It’ll be safer.”

“All right,” he said. “I understand.”

“We’ve asked Mr. Thorne to take you with him in his carriage first thing tomorrow morning,” she said. “Won’t that be nice? You like Mr. Thorne, don’t you? You’ll get to see his house in Asheville.”

As the door closed behind them, Serafina’s heart filled with dread. Braeden trusted Mr. Thorne and would have no choice but to agree with his aunt and uncle’s wishes.

The Man in the Black Cloak would finally get what he wanted.

I need a plan, Serafina thought as she went down the stairs into the basement. And it has to be tonight.

As she ate a late-night dinner with her pa in the workshop, she wanted to tell him everything and beg for his help to save Braeden, but there were no bodies, no weapons, no evidence of any kind to support what her pa would call her “imaginings” about the Vanderbilts’ most trusted guest. Even her best friend didn’t believe her! Her pa never would. But more than that, her pa looked so worn out. His hands were blackened and raw with the day’s work on the Edison machine. He was under fierce pressure to get the lights back on. And rightly so. The darkness made the whole house the demon’s domain.

But then she stopped in mid-thought and realized something.

The darkness made it her domain as well.

“Are you all right?” her father asked as he scraped up the last of his potatoes with his spoon. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

She pulled herself out of her thoughts, looked at her pa, and nodded. “I’m all right.”

“Listen, Sera,” her pa said, “I want you to hunker down tonight. Keep to yourself, you hear?”

“I hear, Pa,” she said obediently, but of course she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

When they went to bed and her pa began to snore, she slipped out of the workshop and climbed the stairs that led outside to the estate grounds. Her mind was awhirl with thoughts and images and fears. She knew her pa wanted her to stay close to him, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel safe in the basement. Staying in the basement tonight was death. It was doom. It would lead to a loneliness she could not bear. Over the last few days, she had felt increasingly constrained there. She didn’t want to be inside anymore. She wanted the freedom of open space and true darkness.

As she walked outside, it was a beautiful moonlit night with a light snow gently falling on the grass and trees. She tried to think it all through. She knew what she had to do; she just didn’t know how to do it. What stratagem could she devise to defeat the Man in the Black Cloak? If he were a rat, how would she catch him?

She walked to the edge of the forest and paused at the point her pa had told her she should never go beyond. Her first foray into the shadows of the forest two nights before had been difficult, terrifying.

But she kept going.

She pushed through the thick brush and walked into the trees. She delved into the forest using the moonlight and the starlight to illuminate her way. Despite all that had happened, she was still drawn here. This was where she wanted to be.

A glint of light caught her eye. She looked up and saw a falling star. Then another. Then ten dashing through the blackness. Then a hundred at once. A shower of falling stars streaked across the sky, filling the crystalline black heavens