Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (8 page)

As soon as her pa was done fussing with her, she slipped off the bed, hoping he’d forget his threat to make her rest. ‘I’ve gotta go, Pa,’ she said. ‘I’m
gonna sneak upstairs and see if I can spot the intruder.’

‘Now, listen here,’ he said, holding her arm. ‘I don’t want you confrontin’ anybody up there.’

She nodded. ‘I’m with ya, Pa. No confrontin’. I just want to see who’s up there and make sure everyone is all right. No one will ever see me.’

‘I’m needin’ your word on this,’ he said.

‘You got my word, Pa.’

Off she went to the main floor. She spotted a few guests strolling this way and that or lounging in the parlours, but nobody suspicious. She moved up to the second floor next, but she
didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there, either. She scoured the house from top to bottom, but there was no sign of the stranger she’d seen with Mr Vanderbilt or anyone else who
seemed like they might have been the second passenger in the carriage. She listened for scuttlebutt from the servants as they prepared for the event in the Banquet Hall that evening, but she
didn’t pick up anything other than how many cucumbers the cook wanted the scullery maid to fetch and how many silver platters the butler needed for his footmen.

She tried to think through everything she had seen the night before, wondering if she’d missed any clues. What had she actually seen when the bearded man threw his walking stick up into
the air towards the owl? And who was the second passenger who’d remained in the shadows of the carriage? Was it the stranger she’d seen walking with Mr Vanderbilt? And who was the feral
boy who had helped her? Was he still alive? How could she find him again?

Another bushel of questions I don’t have answers to
, she thought in frustration, remembering her pa’s words.

Later that afternoon, when she walked back into the workshop, her pa asked, ‘What did you find out?’

‘A whole lot of nothin’,’ she grumbled. ‘No sign of anyone suspicious at all.’

‘I spoke to Superintendent McNamee. He’s sendin’ out a group of his best horsemen to hunt down the poachers.’ As he spoke, her pa wiped his grease-smeared hands with a
rag.

‘Elevator actin’ up again, Pa?’ she asked.

Her pa had often boasted that Biltmore had the first and finest electric elevator in the South, but he seemed a mite less keen on the machine today.

‘The gears in the basement keep gettin’ all gaumed up when it hits the fourth floor,’ he said. ‘Everwho installed the thing got them shafts all sigogglin’, this way
and that. I swear it ain’t gonna work proper till I tear out the whole thing and start again.’ He waved her over to him. ‘But take a look at this. This is
interestin’.’ He showed her a thin piece of sheet metal that looked like it hadn’t just broken but had been torn. It was odd to see metal ripped like that. She didn’t even
know how that was possible.

‘What is that, Pa?’ she asked.

‘This here little bracket was supposed to be a-holdin’ the main gear in place, but whenever the elevator ran it kept flexing back and forth, you see?’ As he spoke, he showed
her the flexing motion by bending the sheet metal with his fingers. ‘The metal is plenty strong at first. Seems unbreakable, don’t it? But when ya bend it back and forth over and over
again like this, watch what happens. It gets weaker and weaker, these little cracks start, and then it finally breaks.’ Just as he said the words, the metal snapped in his fingers. ‘You
see that?’

Serafina looked up at her pa and smiled. Some days, he had a special kind of magic about him.

Then she looked over at the other workbench. Somewhere between mending the elevator, fixing the cold box and tending to his other duties, her pa had cobbled together a dress for her made out of
a burlap tow sack and discarded scraps of leather.

‘Pa . . .’ she said, horrified by the sight of it.

‘Try it on,’ he said. He seemed rather proud of the stitching he’d done with fibrous twine and the leather-working needle he sometimes used to patch holes in the leather apron
he wore. Her pa liked the idea that he could make or mend just about anything.

Serafina walked glumly behind the supply racks, took off her tattered green dress, and put on the thing her pa had made.

‘Looks as fine as a Sunday mornin’,’ her pa said cheerfully as she stepped out from behind the racks, but she could tell he was lying through his teeth. Even he knew it was the
most god-awful, ugly thing that ever done walked the earth. But it worked. And to her pa that’s what counted. It was functional. It clothed her body. The dress had longish sleeves that
covered most of the punctures and scratches on her arms, and a close-fitting collar that hid at least part of the gruesome cut on her throat. So at least the fancy ladies at the shindig or the
supper, or whatever it was, wouldn’t swoon at the corpsy sight of her.

‘Now, sit down here,’ her pa said. ‘I’ll show you how to behave proper at the table.’

She sat reluctantly on the stool he placed in front of an old work board that was meant to represent the forty-foot-long formal dining table in Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt’s grand Banquet
Hall.

‘Sit up straight, girl, not all curvy-spined like that,’ her pa said.

Serafina straightened her back.

‘Get your head up, not hunched all over your food like you gotta fight for it.’

Serafina leaned back in the way he instructed.

‘Get them elbows offen the table,’ he said.

‘I ain’t no banjo, Pa, so quit pickin’ on me.’

‘I ain’t pickin’ on you. I’m tryin’ to teach ya somethin’, but you’re too stubborn-born to learn it.’

‘Ain’t as stubborn as you,’ she grumbled.

‘Don’t get briggity with the sass, girl. Now, listen. When you eat your supper, you need to use your forks. You see here? These screwdrivers are your forks. The mortar trowel there
is your spoon. And my whittlin’ blade is your dinner knife. From what I’ve heard, you gotta use the right fork for the job.’

‘What job?’ she asked in confusion.

‘For what you’re eatin’. Understand?’

‘No, I don’t understand,’ she admitted.

‘Now, look straight ahead,’ he said, ‘not all shifty-eyed like you’re gonna pounce on somethin’ and kill it at any second. The salad fork here is on the outside.
The dinner fork is on the inside. Sera, you hearin’ me?’

She didn’t normally enjoy her pa’s etiquette lessons, but it felt kind of good to be home, safe and sound, suffering through yet another one.

‘You got it?’ he asked when he’d finished explaining about the various utensils.

‘Got it. Dinner fork on the inside. Salad fork on the outside. I just have one question.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s a salad?’

‘Botheration, Serafina!’

‘I’m askin’ a question!’

‘It’s a bowl of, ya know . . . greenery. Lettuce, cabbage, carrots, that sort of thing.’

‘So it’s rabbit food.’

‘No, ma’am, it is not,’ her pa said firmly.

‘It’s poke sallet.’

‘No, it ain’t.’

‘It’s food that prey eats.’

‘I don’t want to hear no talk like that, and you know it.’

As her pa schooled her in the fineries of supper etiquette, she got the notion that he’d never actually sat at the table with the Vanderbilts. She could see that he was going more on what
he imagined than live experience, and she was particularly suspicious of his understanding of salads.

‘Why would rich and proper folk like the Vanderbilts eat leaves when they could afford to eat something good? Why don’t they eat chicken all day? If I was them, I’d eat so much
chicken I’d get fat and slow.’

‘Sera, you need to take this seriously.’

‘I am!’ she said.

‘Look, you’ve got a friend in the young master now, and that’s a good’n. But if you’re gonna be his friend for long you need to learn the rudiments.’

‘The rudiments?’

‘How to behave like a daytime girl.’

‘I ain’t no Vanderbilt, Pa. He knows that.’

‘I know. It’s just that when you’re up there I don’t want you to –’

‘To what? Horrify them?’

‘Well, now, Sera, you know you ain’t the daintiest flower in the garden, is all. I love ya heaps, but there ain’t no denying it – you’re a sight feral,
talkin’ about prey and hunting rats. With me, that’s all fine and good, but –’

‘I understand, Pa,’ she said glumly, wanting him to stop. ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour when I’m up there.’

When she heard someone coming down the corridor, she flinched and almost darted. After years of hiding, it still made her scurry when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

‘Someone’s comin’, Pa,’ she whispered.

‘Naw, hain’t nobody a-comin’. Just pay attention to what I’m tellin’ ya. We’ve got to –’

‘Pardon me, sir,’ a young maid said as she stepped into the workshop.

‘Lordy, girl,’ Serafina’s pa said as he turned round and looked at the maid. ‘Don’t sneak up on a man like that.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ the maid said, curtsying.

The maid was a young girl, a few years older than Serafina, with a pleasant face and strands of dark hair curling out from beneath her white cap. Like the other maids, she wore a black cotton
dress with a starched white collar, white cuffs and a long white lace apron. But from the look of her and the sound of her words it seemed like she was one of the local mountain folk.

‘Well, spit it out, girl,’ Serafina’s pa told her.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and glanced at Serafina self-consciously. ‘I have a note from the young master for the little miss.’

As the maid said these words, she eyed Serafina. Serafina could see the girl trying to make sense of the weird angles of her face and the amber colour of her eyes. Or maybe she was noticing the
bloody wounds peeking out from beneath the edges of the burlap gunnysack she was wearing. Whatever it was, there was apparently plenty to stare at, and the girl couldn’t quite resist availing
herself of the opportunity.

‘Ah, ya see, Sera,’ her pa said. ‘I told ya. Good thing we’ve been a-practisin’. The young master is sending you a proper invitation to the supper this
evening.’

‘Here you go, miss,’ the maid said as she stretched out her hand with the note towards Serafina as if she didn’t want to get any closer to her.

‘Thank you,’ Serafina said quietly. She took the note from the maid slowly so as not to startle the girl with too quick a movement.

‘Thank you, miss,’ the maid said, but instead of then leaving, she froze, transfixed, as she studied Serafina’s streaked hair and odd clothing.

‘Was there something else?’ Serafina’s pa said to the maid.

‘Oh no, I’m sorry, pardon me,’ the maid said as she pulled herself out of her stare, curtsied in embarrassment to Serafina and then quickly excused herself from the room.

‘Well, what’s it say, then?’ Serafina’s pa said, gesturing towards the note.

As Serafina carefully opened the small piece of paper, her hands trembled. Whatever it was, it felt important. As she read Braeden’s words, the first thing she understood was that her pa
had been wrong. She wasn’t receiving an invitation to a dancing party or a formal dinner. The note dealt with a far darker subject. Just the first sentence tightened her chest with fear.
Suddenly, she remembered seeing the black-cloaked Mr Thorne falling dead to the ground, killed by her and her companions. Then another image flashed through her mind: her and Braeden at the
gallows, hanging by their necks for the crime of murder. But, as she read the frightening note, there was another emotion as well. She glowed with the knowledge that it was Braeden who was telling
her these words. At long last, it was her old friend and ally.

S
erafina suspected that the murder investigator was the second man in the carriage. It appeared that she didn’t need to look for him, because
he was looking for her. She thought, too, that he must have been the stranger she’d seen with Mr Vanderbilt earlier that morning. But, no matter who he was, getting interrogated by the police
couldn’t be a good thing. What was she going to say when he asked about Mr Thorne’s disappearance? ‘Oh, him? Yes, I remember him. I led him into a trap by my mother’s den,
and my allies killed him. Do you want me to show you where it all happened?’

As she headed up the narrow, unlit back stairway towards the main floor, it felt like her head was filled with more thoughts than her mind could hold.

It was half past five in the afternoon. She had half an hour to spy on the house and gather clues before she had to report for the interrogation. But she ran into an immediate problem.

The young maid who had stared at her earlier was waiting for her at the top of the stairs, blocking her path.

Serafina stopped and narrowed her eyes at her. ‘What do you want?’

When the girl stepped towards her, Serafina stepped back warily.

‘I need to talk to you, miss . . .’