flawless hands, chatting and sipping lightly as they promenaded among the roses, dahlias and zinnias. Bathed in the conservatory’s glow, a string quartet played a beautiful song. Footmen in their formal black-and-white livery strolled among the crowd serving custard tarts, cheeses and freshly baked cream puffs from their trays. Serafina suddenly felt pangs of hunger.
But everything about this party flummoxed her. It must have taken weeks of planning to arrange all this, and yet she hadn’t heard anything about it. And why wasn’t Braeden here? There were so many strangers. Where were Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt?
A few of the more adventurous adult guests and a coterie of their fancifully attired children huddled together and lit candles inside small paper lanterns, then held them aloft. As if by magic, the rising heat of the candles lifted the lanterns upward out of their hands into the nighttime sky. Serafina watched with the other children as the lanterns floated slowly up into the heavens. She couldn’t help but smile at the sight of it, but then a melancholy swept through her. She knew it was foolish after everything she’d been through, but she felt so sad that she hadn’t been invited to this wonderful party. It was an evening party. And she was a creature of the night! If anyone should have been part of it, she should have been! It felt like so much had changed, like the whole world had been slipping by without her.
After destroying the Black Cloak and freeing the estate’s lost children from its dark imprisonment, she had entered the daylight world upstairs. The Vanderbilts had welcomed her into their home. She had become part of Biltmore now. Hadn’t she? So why wasn’t she at this party? It made her qualmish in her stomach thinking about it. What had happened? What had she missed? Hadn’t anyone noticed that she wasn’t there?
It was hard to understand how all these fancy-dressed people could gather for this lovely party, when just a few miles away a storm had raged through the forest. A short distance down the hill the inlet stream was quietly flooding the pond. A dark force was coming, but they seemed to have no idea.
When she heard Mrs Vanderbilt’s gentle laugh in the distance, Serafina turned hopefully towards the sound. She saw right away that Braeden wasn’t there, but Mr Vanderbilt and Mrs Vanderbilt were standing together with several of their guests near one of the rose trellises.
Mr Vanderbilt was easily recognisable with his black hair and moustache, and his lean, shrewd face with dark, inquisitive eyes. He was dressed in a handsome black tux with tails and white tie. Many of the men she’d spied on over the years were loud of voice and boisterous of manner, but Mr Vanderbilt was a quieter, more refined, thinking kind of gentleman. Usually, if he wasn’t reading in his library, he was watching and learning from those around him. He was always kind and welcoming in spirit when he spoke to people, whether they were guests or servants or workers on the estate, but he also seemed to enjoy watching people from a distance at parties, taking everything in.
Mrs Vanderbilt was more outgoing, more talkative and social with the guests. She had dark hair like her husband, and a similar spark of intelligence, but she had an easy charm and a gracious smile. She wore a lovely, loosely flowing mauve dress, but what truly stunned Serafina was that Mrs Vanderbilt’s belly was large with her baby. The last time Serafina had seen her, she couldn’t even tell that she was with child.
It hasn’t just been twenty-eight days, Serafina thought. She felt as if she were being lowered into a deep, dark well. I’ve been gone for months . . . They’ve all forgotten about me . . .
‘And where is that dear nephew of yours tonight?’ one of the lady guests asked Mrs Vanderbilt.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the lady’s husband. ‘Where is Young Master Braeden?’
‘Oh, he’s around,’ Mrs Vanderbilt said lightly, but Serafina noticed that the mistress of the house didn’t actually look around her when she said these words. It was as if she already knew her nephew wasn’t nearby. She was acting cheerful in front of her guests, but Serafina could hear the twinge of concern in her voice.
As Mrs Vanderbilt and her friends continued their conversation, Mr Vanderbilt stepped back from them and looked up towards the library terrace. Serafina could see the wrinkles of worry around his eyes and mouth.
‘So, how has Braeden been doing?’ one of the guests asked Mrs Vanderbilt.
‘Oh, he’s fine,’ Mrs Vanderbilt said. ‘He’s fine. He’s doing well.’
One he’s fine was enough, Serafina thought, but two was too many. There was definitely something wrong.
‘If you’ll excuse me for a moment,’ Mr Vanderbilt said. He touched his wife’s arm and then left them.
As Mr Vanderbilt walked quickly through the crowd, several people tried to talk to him, for he was host of the grand party, but he kindly gave his regrets and kept moving.
Ducking through the hedges, Serafina followed him. After being away for months, the sight of her was no doubt going to startle him, but as soon as he was alone, she was going to tell him about the dangers she’d seen in the forest. She could show him the rising water of the pond as evidence of it all. But she sensed the urgency in his movement.
Mr Vanderbilt ascended the steps through the walled garden’s arched stone entrance and up the next set of steps to the path through the shrub garden. Serafina darted through the roses and then weaved behind the fruit trees to follow him, careful to avoid the detection of the guests. She had lost her ability to shift shape, but she certainly hadn’t lost her knack for sneaking unseen or unheard. She was as fast and light on her feet as she had always been.
She followed Mr Vanderbilt up past the purple-leafed beech and then the elm tree with its low, splaying branches, until he went up the steps and reached the pergola.
‘Wine, sir?’ a footman said as he hurried down from the house towards the party with his tray restocked.
‘No, thank you, John,’ Mr Vanderbilt said. ‘Do you happen to have a sweet tea on your tray?’
‘Oh, yes, sir, I do,’ the footman said in surprise, for iced tea was not his master’s normal drink. Braeden, Serafina thought.
‘Thank you very much, John,’ Mr Vanderbilt said as he took the tea and kept moving. ‘Take good care of everyone.’
‘I will, sir,’ John said, a worried twinge in his voice as he watched his master rush up the steps towards the terrace.
Finally the footman turned and continued on his way towards the party.
As Serafina slipped behind a tree trunk to avoid the passing footman’s attention, she couldn’t help but wonder about how little people noticed the things around them. She knew that theoretically she could walk openly among the guests of the house, and she had felt left out about not being there, but the truth was, she still felt far more comfortable spying on a party than attending it. And the soaking wet, grave-dirtied, dress-torn, bloodstained look of her would have shocked them all. Right now, she had her eyes fixed on one person, and that was Mr Vanderbilt.
Serafina went right after him. She ran across the gravel path, making barely a rustling step of noise, then bounded up the stone steps at the southeast corner of the house to reach the library terrace. It was a flat area just outside the glass doors of the library with a view to the forest and the Blue Ridge Mountains. The terrace was covered by an arbour heavily laden with long, hanging purple wisteria. The vines grew thick and twisty around the arbour’s stout posts and up into its latticework above. The warm amber light of the library fell through the open doors onto the terrace.
