Her pa had always warned her about the world, of the dangers that could ensnare her soul, and after everything that had happened she was sure there were more demons out there.
For weeks now, she’d been watching and waiting, like a guard on a watchtower, but she had no idea when or in what shape the demons would come. Her darkest worry, deep down, when she faced it true, was whether she’d be strong enough, smart enough – whether she’d end up the predator or the prey. Maybe the little animals like the wood rat and the chipmunk knew that death was just a pounce away. Did they think of themselves as prey? Maybe they were almost expecting to die, ready to die. But she sure wasn’t. She had things to do.
Her friendship with Braeden had just begun, and she wasn’t going to give up on it just because they’d hit a snag. And she had only just started to understand her connection to the forest, to figure out who and what she was. And now that she’d met the Vanderbilts face to face, her pa had been pressuring her to start acting like a proper daytime girl.
Mrs V. was taking her in, always talking to her with a gentle word. Now she had the basement and the forest and the upstairs – she’d gone from having too few kin to having too many, getting pulled in three directions at once. But after years of living without any family besides her pa it felt good to be getting started with her new life.
All that was fine and good. When danger came, she wanted to fight, she wanted to live. Who didn’t? But what if the danger came so fast she never saw it coming? What if, like an owl attacking a mouse, the claws dropped from the sky and killed her before she even knew they were there? What if the real danger wasn’t just whether she could fight whatever threat that came, but whether she even recognised it before it was too late?
The more she thought about the flocks of birds she’d seen, the more it rankled her peace of mind. It was plenty warm, but she couldn’t stop thinking that December seemed far too late in the year for birds to be coming and going. She frowned and searched the sky for the North Star. When she found it, she realised that the birds hadn’t even been flying in the right direction. She wasn’t even sure they were the kinds of birds that flew south for the winter.
As she stood on the rocky edge of the high ground, the dark ooze of dread seeped into her bones.
She looked up at where the birds had been flying, and then she looked in the direction they came from. She gazed out across the top of the darkened forest. Her mind tried to work it through. And then she realised what was happening.
The birds weren’t migrating.
They were fleeing.
She pulled in a long, deep breath as her body readied itself. Her heart began to pound. The muscles of her arms and legs tightened.
Whatever it was, it was coming.
And it was coming now.
A moment later, a sound in the distance tickled Serafina’s ear. It wasn’t sparrow wings, like she’d heard before, but something earthbound. She tilted her head and listened for it again. It seemed to be coming from down in the valley.
She stood, faced the sound, and cupped her hands round the back of her ears, a trick she’d learned from mimicking a bat.
She heard the faint jangle of harnesses and the clip-clop of hooves. Her stomach tightened. It was a strange sound to encounter in the middle of the night. A team of horses pulling a carriage was making its way up the three-mile-long winding road towards the house. In the daytime, there would be nothing unusual about that. But no one ever came to Biltmore at night. Something was wrong. Was it a messenger bearing bad news? Had someone died? Was the North going to war with the South again? What calamity had befallen the world?
Pulling back from the rocky ledge, she hurried down into the valley and made her way through the forest to one of the arched brick bridges where the road crossed over the stream. She watched from the concealing leaves of the mountain laurel as an old, road-beaten carriage passed by. Most carriages had one or two horses, but this was pulled by four dark brown stallions with powerful, bulging muscles, their hides glistening with sweat in the moonlight and their nostrils flaring.
She swallowed hard. That isn’t a messenger.
Braeden had told her that stallions were wild and notoriously difficult – they kicked their handlers and bit people, and especially hated other stallions – but here were four of them pulling a carriage in unison.
When she looked at who was driving the carriage, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The carriage bench was empty. The horses were all cantering together in a forceful rhythm, as if by the rein of a master, but there was no driver to be seen.
Serafina clenched her teeth. This was all wrong. She could feel it in her core. The carriage was heading straight for Biltmore, where everyone was fast asleep and had no idea it was coming.
As the carriage rounded a bend and went out of sight, Serafina broke into a run and followed.
She ran through the forest, tracking the carriage as it travelled down the winding road. The cotton dress Mrs Vanderbilt had given her wasn’t too long, so it was easy to run in, but keeping pace with the horses was surprisingly difficult. She tore through the forest, leaping over fallen logs and bounding over ferns. She jumped gullies and climbed hills. She took shortcuts, taking advantage of the road’s meandering path. Her chest began to heave as she pulled in great gulps of air. Despite the trepidation she had felt moments before, the challenge of keeping up with the horses made her smile and then made her laugh, which made it all the more difficult to breathe when she was trying to run. Leaping and darting, she loved the thrill of the chase.
Then, all of a sudden, the horses slowed.
Serafina pulled herself short and hunkered down.
The horses came to a stop.
She ducked behind a clump of rhododendrons a stone’s throw from the carriage and concealed herself as she tried to catch her breath.
Why is the carriage stopping?
The horses anxiously shifted their hooves, and steam poured from their nostrils.
Her heart pounded as she watched the carriage.
The handle of the carriage door turned.
She crouched low to the ground.
The carriage door swung slowly open.
She thought she could see two figures inside, but then there was a roil of darkness like she’d never seen before – a shadow so black and fleeting that it was impossible for even her eyes to make it out.
A tall and sinewy man in a wide-brimmed leather hat and a dark, weather-beaten coat emerged from the carriage. He had long, knotty grey hair and a grey moustache and beard that reminded her of moss hanging from a craggy tree. As he climbed down from the carriage and stood on the road, he held a gnarled walking stick and gazed out into the forest.
Behind him, a vicious-looking wolfhound slunk down from the carriage onto the ground. Then another followed. The hounds had large, lanky bodies, massive
