Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) by Robert Beatty Page B

head. Then, after a moment, he muttered to himself, ‘At least I think it is.’

S erafina sat, mad and miserable, on the cot while her pa did his level best to clean and bandage her wounds. As usual, she and her pa were
surrounded by the workshop’s supply shelves, tool racks and workbenches. But her pa seemed to have forgotten the work he was supposed to be doing that morning. His mind had become consumed
with her.
    Some of the copper piping and brass fittings from the kitchen’s cold box sat in a twisted clump on the bench. The previous day, her pa had explained something about an ammonia-gas brine
system, intake pipes and cooling coils, but none of it took. He’d raised her in his workshop, but she had no talent with machines. She couldn’t remember anything about the contraption
other than it was complicated, kept food cold and was one of the few refrigeration systems in the country. The mountain folk kept their food cold by sticking it in a cold spring tumbling down into
a creek, which seemed far more sensible to her.
    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.