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

disappearance,’ Braeden said. It seemed that he, too, had picked up on his uncle’s warning. When Braeden glanced at her with a knowing look,
she was sure of it. In that moment, the two friends silently agreed what course they must take: to give the detective no advantage, to speak the careful truth but nothing more.
    The detective turned his head slowly back to Serafina. ‘And when was the last time you saw Mr Thorne?’
    The last time she’d seen him, he’d been lying dead on the ground in the graveyard, his blood leaking out of him, and then his body decomposed before her eyes, his worldly carcass
becoming nothing but blood-soaked earth.
    ‘I believe it was the last day we all saw him,’ she said. ‘The day he disappeared.’
    ‘At what
time
did you last see him?’
    ‘As I recall, it was after dark,’ she said, but
midnight
would have been more accurate.
    ‘So you were one of the last people to see him here at Biltmore.’
    ‘I believe I must have been.’
    ‘And what was he doing when you saw him last?’
    ‘The last time I saw him here at Biltmore, he was putting on his cloak and going out the door.’
    ‘You saw him leave Biltmore?’
    ‘Yes, very clearly. He was running out the door.’
    ‘Running?’ the detective asked in surprise.
    ‘Yes. Running.’
He was chasing me
, she thought,
and I led him to his death
.
    The detective’s head pivoted to Braeden.
    ‘And did you see this as well?’
    ‘No,’ Braeden said. ‘I went to bed after the party.’
    The detective’s eyes held steady on Braeden for several seconds as if he did not believe his answer. Then he said, ‘The black dog is yours.’ Serafina had no idea how he knew
this, because Gidean wasn’t even in the room.
    ‘Yes,’ Braeden replied uncertainly.
    ‘The dog is almost always with you, but you say you went to bed early that night. How and when did the dog suffer a wound to its right shoulder?’
    ‘I . . .’ Braeden said, confused and disturbed by the question.
    ‘How was the dog wounded?’ the detective pressed.
    ‘I did not see him get hurt,’ Braeden said truthfully.
    ‘But when did it happen?’
    ‘It was the morning we discovered that another child had gone missing. I sent Gidean out into the woods to track the child,’ Braeden said.
    Serafina thought it was clever the way Braeden said
another child had gone missing
, disguising the fact that it had actually been
she
who had gone missing. She had gone out to trap
Mr Thorne. And she liked the way Braeden described it as
the morning
, which was technically correct because it had been after midnight, but gave the impression that it was the next day.
    ‘And did the dog find the missing child?’ the detective asked.
    ‘Yes, he did,’ Braeden said. Then he looked at Mr Vanderbilt. ‘Uncle, why is he asking me all these questions about Gidean? Does he think Gidean and I did something
wrong?’
    Serafina couldn’t tell if Braeden was faking his expression of fear and bewilderment or whether it was genuine, but either way it was convincing.
    ‘No, of course not, Braeden,’ Mr Vanderbilt said, looking firmly at the detective when he said these words. ‘He’s just doing his job.’ It was clear that Mr
Vanderbilt would brook little more of this imposition. ‘Just answer his questions truthfully,’ he said again, and this time Serafina was sure of it – he was helping them. He was
on their side.
Choose your words carefully
, he was telling them. She knew that the key was to avoid and deflect the difficult questions.
    The detective turned his head with a sharp scrape of his neck and looked at Serafina. ‘Do you know what happened to Mr Thorne on the night about which we speak?’
    How in the world was she going to avoid that question without lying through her teeth? She could already see them erecting the gallows and tying the noose for her neck.
    ‘God rest his soul,’ she said abruptly.
    ‘Then you think that he’s not just missing but actually