Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,70

real family, with brothers and sisters, and a mother and father, and friends.

She quickly scrubbed her face and brushed her hair and made herself as pretty as she could. It felt silly, but she needed to look the part. She tried to imagine that she was going to an extravagant dance, in a ballroom crowded with glittering ladies and gentlemen, and boys who would ask her to dance.

But she wasn’t, and she knew it.

When she thought about the place she was going and the dark forces she’d meet there, it felt like she was jumping a chasm and she wasn’t going to make it to the other side.

She tried to block it out of her mind and just kept lacing her dress up her back with shaky fingers, but she was having a terrible go of it. Normal girls must have extremely long and bendy arms to do this every night, she thought.

When she was finally done, she looked around at the workshop one last time. She couldn’t tamp down the feeling that she wouldn’t be coming back. She looked over to where her pa lay sleeping. She had seen how tired and overwhelmed he was. His struggles with the dynamo and searching for her these last few days had taken a toll on him. She wanted to curl up in the crook of his arm like she used to, but she knew she couldn’t. Sleep well, Pa, she thought.

Finally, she gathered her courage and turned. She made her way through the basement, and then climbed the stairs to the first floor.

At the top, she paused. She took a deep breath, and then walked down the darkened corridor of the house.

She walked slowly, deliberately, not darting and hiding like she normally did, but walking down the center of the wide hallway like a proper young lady. She walked like the girls she had watched from the shadows so many times over the years. She did everything she could to take on the appearance of the helpless young daughter of one of the guests. She was no longer a predator; she was a vulnerable child.

The air was very still. Moonlight shone in through the windows, falling onto the marble floor. The grandfather clock in the Entrance Hall chimed off the twelve bells of midnight. The corridors of the house were mostly empty because it was so late, just a candle here and there to light the way for guests. But she sensed that there were a few people still awake.

As she made a slow promenade in her long, wide dress through the broad corridors of the house, it felt deeply strange not to be hunting, not to be the eyes of the predator but the prey that is seen. Her stomach churned. Her muscles flinched and twitched, begging her to dash away. She hated walking straight. And she hated walking slow. You’re a normal girl, she told herself. Just keep breathing, keep pulling air into your lungs. You’re a normal girl. It took every ounce of courage she had to just keep walking a straight line in the open.

She’d come up against the Man in the Black Cloak before, but she was determined to make this time different. Tonight, she was going to fight—fight on her own terms and in her own way, with tooth and claw.

She lingered near the Winter Garden, with its high glass ceiling, just outside the door into the Billiard Room, where she knew from what she’d learned at Mrs. Vanderbilt’s gathering earlier that evening she had the best chance of setting her trap.

Suddenly, the door to the Billiard Room opened. Mr. Vanderbilt, Mr. Bendel, Mr. Thorne, and several other gentlemen were sitting together in the leather chairs and drinking out of odd-shaped glasses. The smell of cigar smoke wafted into the corridor. Mr. Pratt came out of the room with a large silver tray balanced on his hand and hurried down the hall.

Serafina stepped into a shadow behind a column to avoid being seen, and there she waited, lingering on the edge of darkness. She was a china doll, and she was a wraith, in and out of the shadows, a girl in between.

Finally, the fireside chat began to break up. Mr. Vanderbilt stood and said good night to each of his guests. Mr. Bendel shook everyone’s hand, and then retired as well. In the end, only Mr. Thorne remained.

Serafina watched him through the open door, her heart pounding slow and heavy. He sat in the