Robert Beatty - Serafina and the Twisted Staff

First published in the USA in 2016 by Disney•Hyperion,

an imprint of Disney Book Group

First published in Great Britain 2016

by Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Copyright © 2016 Robert Beatty

The moral rights of the author and illustrators have been asserted

First e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978 1 4052 8415 8

eISBN 978 1 7803 1755 7

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties.

Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

This book is dedicated to you, the readers who helped spread the word about Serafina and the Black Cloak , and in so doing, made this second book possible.

And to Jennifer, Camille, Genevieve, and Elizabeth:

My co-conspirators, co-creators, and the loves of my life.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright First published in the USA in 2016 by Disney•Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group First published in Great Britain 2016 by Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN Copyright © 2016 Robert Beatty The moral rights of the author and illustrators have been asserted First e-book edition 2016 ISBN 978 1 4052 8415 8 eISBN 978 1 7803 1755 7 www.egmont.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

Dedication This book is dedicated to you, the readers who helped spread the word about Serafina and the Black Cloak , and in so doing, made this second book possible. And to Jennifer, Camille, Genevieve, and Elizabeth: My co-conspirators, co-creators, and the loves of my life.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

An Invitation to Biltmore

Acknowledgements

Back series promotional page

Biltmore Estate

Asheville, North Carolina

1899

Three weeks after defeating

the Man in the Black Cloak

Serafina stalked through the underbrush of the moonlit forest, slinking low to the ground, her eyes fixed on her prey. Just a few feet in front of her, a large wood rat gnawed on a beetle he’d dug up. Her heart beat strong and steady in her chest, marking her slow and quiet creep towards the rat. Her muscles buzzed, ready to pounce. But she did not rush. Swivelling her shoulders back and forth to fine-tune the angle of her attack, she waited for just the right moment. When the rat bent down to pick up another beetle, she leapt.

The rat caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye just as she sprang. It was beyond her ken why so many animals of the forest froze in terror when she pounced. If death by tooth and claw came leaping at her out of the darkness, she’d fight. Or she’d run. She’d do something . Little woodland creatures like rats and rabbits and chipmunks weren’t known for their boldness of heart, but what was freezing in sheer terror going to do?

As she dropped onto the rat, she snatched him up quicker than a whiskerblink, and clutched him in her hand. And now that it was well past too late, he started squirming, biting and scratching, his furry little body becoming a wriggling snake, his tiny heart racing at a terrific pace.

There it is , she thought, feeling the thumpty-thumpty of his heartbeat in her bare hand. There’s the fight. It quickened her pulse and stirred her senses. Suddenly, she could detect everything in the forest around her – the sound of a tree frog moving on a branch thirty feet behind her, the reedy buzz of a lonely timberdoodle in the distance, and the glimpse of a bat swishing through the starlit sky above the broken canopy of the trees.

It was all for practice, of course, the prowling and the pouncing, the stalking of prey and the snatching hold. She didn’t kill the wild things she hunted, didn’t need to, but they didn’t know that, darn it! She was terror! She was death! So why at the last moment of her attack did they freeze? Why didn’t they flee?

Serafina sat down on the forest floor with her back against an old, gnarled, lichen-covered oak tree and held the rat in a clenched fist on her lap.

Then she slowly opened her hand.

The rat darted away as fast as he could, but she snatched him up and brought him back to her lap again.

She held him tight for several seconds and then opened her hand once more.

This time, the rat did not run. He sat on her hand, trembling and panting, too confused and exhausted to move.

She lifted the terrified rodent a little closer, tilted her head and studied him. The wood rat didn’t look like the nasty grey sewer varmints she was used to catching in the basement of Biltmore Estate. This particular rat had a scarred tear in his left ear. He’d encountered some trouble before. And with his dark little eyes and the tremulous whiskers of his long, pointy nose, he seemed more like a cute, chubby brown mouse than the proper vermin on which she had earned her title. She could almost imagine a little hat on his head and a buttoned vest. She felt a pang of guilt that she’d caught him, but she also knew that if he tried to run again her hand would snatch him up before she even thought about it. It wasn’t a decision. It was a reflex.

As the little rat tried to catch his breath, his eyes darted to and fro for a way out. But he didn’t dare. He knew that as soon as he tried to run, she’d grab him again; that it was the nature of her kind: to play with him, to paw him, to claw him, until he was finally dead.