and gentlemen of the riding party began talking to one another in confusion, wondering what was happening.
Miss Clara Brahms, Serafina thought. That’s the girl in the yellow dress.
The whole time, Mr Boseman kept his hand clamped on her arm.
She wanted to leap forward and tell everyone what she’d seen, but then what would happen? Where did you come from? they’d demand. What were you doing in the basement in the middle of the night? There’d be all sorts of questions she couldn’t answer.
All of a sudden, Mr George Vanderbilt, the master of the house, walked into the centre of the crowd and raised his hands. ‘Everyone, may I please have your attention,’ he said. All the guests and servants immediately stopped talking and listened. ‘I’m sure you all agree that we need to delay our ride and search for Miss Brahms. Once we find her, we’ll resume the activities of the day.’
George Vanderbilt was a slender, dark-haired, intelligent-looking gentleman in his thirties with a thick black moustache and keen, dark, penetrating eyes. He was well known for his love of reading, but he was a fit and healthy-looking man too, who seemed far younger than his years. And Serafina wasn’t the only one who thought so. She had heard the servants in the kitchen joke that their master must have secretly discovered the Fountain of Youth. Mr Vanderbilt was a meticulous dresser, and as she admired his commanding presence, she couldn’t help but notice his clothes too. In particular, his shoes. Like the other gentlemen present, he wore a gentleman’s riding jacket, but instead of riding boots he wore expensive black patent-leather shoes. As he strode across the hard surface of the marble floor, his shoes made a familiar clicking sound . . . the same sound that she’d heard in the corridors of the basement the night before.
She looked at the other men’s shoes. Braeden, Mr Thorne, and Mr Bendel wore riding boots in preparation for their outing, but Mr Vanderbilt was wearing his dress shoes.
He approached the lost girl’s mother and consoled her. ‘We’re going to search this place from top to bottom, Mrs Brahms, and we’ll keep looking until we find her.’ He turned to the ladies and gentlemen and waved over the footmen and maidservants as well. ‘We’ll break up into five separate search parties,’ he explained. ‘We’ll search the entire house, all four floors and also the basement. If anyone finds anything suspicious, report it immediately.’
Mr Vanderbilt’s words struck fear into Serafina’s heart. They were going to search the basement! The basement! That meant the workshop! With a mighty twist of her body, she yanked herself out of Mr Boseman’s grip and darted away before he could stop her. She bounded headlong down the stairs into the basement. She had to warn her pa. The leftovers from last night’s dinner, the mattress she slept on . . . they had to hide it all.
Serafina rushed up to her father in the workshop and grabbed his arm. Trying to talk and catch her breath at the same time, she gasped, ‘Pa, there’s a girl missing just like I said, and Mr Vanderbilt’s searching the whole house!’ Her words tumbled out with a mixture of urgency and pride. As she hurriedly reminded him of what she’d seen the night before, she was sure that he’d see now that she wasn’t dreaming or making up stories.
‘They’re searchin’ the house?’ he asked, ignoring everything else. He turned and quickly gathered his cooking supplies and razor from the bench, then dragged her mattress into the hidden area he’d constructed behind the tool rack. There could be no evidence of their living there when the search party came through.
‘What about the girl I saw disappear?’ she asked in confusion. She couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t more interested in what she was telling him.
‘Children don’t just disappear, Sera,’ he said as he continued his efforts.
Her heart sank. He still didn’t believe her.
Her pa looked around the room one last time to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, and then he looked at her. For a moment, she thought he was finally going to listen to what she was saying, but then he pointed at her hairbrush and snapped, ‘For God’s sake, girl, pick up your things!’
‘But what about the Man in the Black Cloak?’ she argued.
‘I don’t want you thinking about anything like that,’ he barked. ‘It was nothing but a nightmare. Now hush up.’
She flinched from the words. She couldn’t understand why he was being so mean. But she could hear the worry in his voice along with the anger, and in the distance she could hear the search party coming down the stairs. She knew it wasn’t just the threat of discovery that scared him. He hated any talk of the supernatural or any sort of dark and fiendish forces out in the world that he couldn’t fix with his wrenches, hammers and screwdrivers.
‘But it’s real!’ she demanded. ‘The girl’s actually gone, Pa. I’m telling the truth!’
‘A little girl’s got herself lost, that’s it, and they’re lookin’ for her, so they’ll find her, wherever she is. Get your wits about you. People don’t just vanish. She’s gotta be someplace.’
She stood in the centre of the room. ‘I think we should both go out there right now and tell them everything I saw,’ she declared boldly.
‘No, Sera,’ he said. ‘They’ll spit nails if they find me livin’ down here. They’ll fire me. Do you understand that? And God knows what they’ll make of you. They don’t even know you’re alive, and we’re gonna keep it that way. I’m talkin’ to you dead straight now, girl. You hear me?’
The sound of the search party could be heard down the corridor, and it was coming their way.
Clenching her teeth, she shook her head in frustration and stood before him. ‘Why, Pa? Why? Why can’t people see me?’ She didn’t have the courage to tell him that at least one Vanderbilt already had, and that he knew her name. ‘Just tell me, Pa, whatever it is. I’m twelve years old. I’m grown up. I deserve to know.’
‘Look, Sera,’ he said, ‘last night, somebody sabotaged the dynamo, did it some real damage that I’m not sure I can mend. If I don’t get it fixed by nightfall, there’s gonna be hell to pay from the boss, and rightly so. The lights, the elevators, the servant-call system – this whole place depends on the Edison machine.’
She tried to imagine someone sneaking into the electrical room and damaging the equipment. ‘But why would someone do that, Pa?’
The search party was making its way through the kitchens and would arrive in the workshop at any moment.
‘I ain’t got time to think about it,’ he said, moving towards her with his huge body. ‘I just gotta get it workin’, that’s all. Now do what I tell ya!’
He charged around the room and hid things with such roughness and loudness and violence that it frightened her. She crept behind the boiler and watched him. She knew that when he was like this she couldn’t get anywhere with him. He just wanted to be left alone to do his job and work on his machines. But it was gnawing at her, and the more she thought about it, the madder she got. She knew it wasn’t the right time to talk to him about everything she’d been thinking and feeling, but she didn’t care. She just blurted it out.
‘I’m sorry, Pa,’ she said. ‘I know you’re busy, but please just tell me why you don’t want anyone to see me.’ She stepped out from behind the boiler and faced him, her voice getting louder now. ‘Why have you been hiding me all these years?’ she demanded. ‘Just tell me what’s wrong with me. I want to know. Why are you ashamed of me?’
By the time she was done, she was practically screaming at him. Her voice was so loud and shrill that it actually echoed.
Her pa stopped dead in his tracks