Serafina and the Black Cloak Read Free Page A

she moved toward the sound.
    She went past her pa’s workshop, the kitchens, and the other rooms she knew well, and into the deeper areas where she hunted less often. She heard doors closing, then the fall of footsteps
and muffled noises. Her heart began to thump lightly in her chest. Someone was walking through the corridors of the basement.
Her
basement.
    She moved closer.
    It wasn’t the servant who collected the garbage each night, or one of the footmen fetching a late-night snack for a guest—she knew the sound of their footsteps well. Sometimes the
butler’s assistant, who was eleven, would stop in the corridor and gobble down a few of the cookies from the silver tray that the butler had sent him to retrieve. She’d stand just
around the corner from him in the darkness and pretend that they were friends just talking and enjoying each other’s company for a while. Then the boy would wipe the powdered sugar off his
lips, and off he’d go, hurrying up the stairs to catch up on the time he’d lost. But this wasn’t him.
    Whoever it was, he wore what sounded like hard-soled shoes—
expensive
shoes. But a gentleman proper had no business coming down into this area of the house. Why was he wandering
through the dark passages in the middle of the night?
    Increasingly curious, she followed the stranger, careful to avoid being seen. Whenever she snuck up close enough to almost see him, all she could make out was the shadow of a tall black shape
carrying a dimly lit lantern. And there was another shadow there, too, someone or something with him, but she didn’t dare creep close enough to see who or what it was.
    It was a vast basement with many different rooms, corridors, and levels, which had been built into the slope of the earth beneath the house. Some areas, like the kitchens and the laundry, had
smooth plaster walls and windows. The rooms there were plainly finished, but clean and dry, and well-suited to the daily work of the servants. The more distant reaches of the understructure delved
deep into the damp and earthen burrows of the house’s massive foundation. Here the dark, hardened mortar oozed out from between the roughly hewn stone blocks that formed the walls and
ceiling, and she seldom went there because it was cold, dirty, and dank.
    Suddenly, the footsteps changed direction. They came toward her. Five screeching rats came running down the corridor ahead of the footfalls, more terrified than any rodents she had ever seen.
Spiders crawled out of the cracks in the walls. Cockroaches and centipedes erupted from the earthen floor. Astounded by what she was seeing, she caught her breath and pressed herself to the wall,
frozen in fear like a little rabbit kit trembling beneath the shadow of a passing hawk.
    As the man walked toward her, she heard another sound, too. It was a shuffling agitation like a small person—slippered feet, perhaps a child—but there was something wrong. The
child’s feet were scraping on the stone, sometimes sliding…the child was crippled…no…the child was being
dragged
.
    “No, sir! Please! No!” the girl whimpered, her voice trembling with despair. “We’re not supposed to be down here.” The girl spoke like someone who had been raised
in a well-heeled family and attended a fancy school.
    “Don’t worry. We’re going right in here…” the man said, stopping at the door just around the corner from Serafina. Now she could hear his breathing, the movement
of his hands, and the rustle of his clothing. Flashes of heat scorched through her. She wanted to run, to flee, but she couldn’t get her legs to move.
    “There’s nothing to be frightened of, child,” he said to the girl. “I’m not going to hurt you…”
    The way he said these words caused the hairs on the back of Serafina’s neck to rise.
Don’t go with him,
she thought.
Don’t go!
    The girl sounded like she was just a little younger than her, and Serafina wanted to help her, but she