Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (32 page)

She knew now that when she had put on the Black Cloak it had deceived her, tried to convince her that it had been created for good, but it hadn’t. Uriah had pulled Mr Thorne into his web
of deceit and sent him into Biltmore to gather souls, to gather power. And now Uriah was making the Twisted Staff to give him control over the animals. Uriah wanted the people, and the animals, and
the forest, and the land, and he was going to use his demons and his devices to do it. He wanted to control it all.

‘Are you all right?’ Braeden asked, touching her arm.

She blinked and pulled herself out of her thoughts and looked at him. ‘Yes, I’m all right, I’m sorry, go ahead.’

‘Mr Olmsted,’ Braeden asked, ‘would it truly be possible for someone to burn down Biltmore?’

‘I’m not the architect, but I can tell you what I know.’

‘Pardon me, Mr Olmsted,’ Serafina interjected suddenly as a thought came into her mind. ‘What happened to Mr Hunt?’

‘In the last year of the house’s construction, just a few months before the greatest work of his life was completed, our friend Mr Hunt sadly passed away.’

‘He died?’ Braeden asked.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. We were all very shocked and devastated by the terrible turn of events.’

‘How did he die?’ Serafina asked.

‘He got a cold first, and then a bad cough, and then his gout flared up. The doctors weren’t sure, but in the end, it appeared that he died of heart failure.’

‘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.’

A
fter 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?