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

heard her pa ask other mountain folk where they were from.
    ‘I don’t rightly know,’ Essie said. ‘My ma and pa passed away when I was but one or two. My nanny and papaw raised me for a while, out on a farm up Madison County way,
pert nigh Walnut, but when they passed, I didn’t have nowhere to go. Mrs Vanderbilt heard about me and took me in and gave me a bed to sleep in. I told her I wanted to make myself
useful.’
    ‘You’re pretty young for being a maid at Biltmore,’ Serafina said.
    ‘Youngest maid ever,’ Essie said, smiling proudly. ‘Come on, let’s go. We’ll get ya sorted out.’ Essie reached for Serafina’s hand, but Serafina
reflexively pulled away, snapping her whole body back before Essie was even close to touching her.
    Essie caught her breath, startled by Serafina’s quick movement.
    ‘You’re a mite skittish, aren’t ya?’ Essie said.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Serafina said, embarrassed.
    ‘It’s all right,’ Essie said. ‘We’ve all got somethin’ that spooks us, right? But come on. Time’s a-tickin’.’
    Essie turned and bolted up the stairs. Serafina followed easily right behind her. The two of them ran up three flights, then darted through a small doorway that led to a back corridor, then up
another stairway to the fourth floor. Essie led them down a tight passage that ran beneath the north tower, past a cluster of maids’ rooms, round a corner, down six steps and through the main
servant hall, where three maids and a house girl were gathered around the fireplace on their break.
    ‘Don’t pay us no mind,’ Essie called as she and Serafina ran through the room. They dashed down a long, narrow corridor with a Gothic arched ceiling wedged beneath the steep
angle of the mansion’s slanted rooftop. There were twenty-one rooms on the fourth floor for the maids and other female servants. And Essie’s room was the third on the right.
    ‘We’ll duck in here, miss,’ Essie said as Serafina followed her in.
    During her nightly prowls, Serafina had sometimes snuck into one of the maids’ rooms when the maid went down the hall to the water closet, so she had seen the clean, plainly finished rooms
before. But Essie had made up her room’s simple white metal bed with soft pillows and an autumn quilt. To Serafina, it looked like a perfect warm spot for curling up in the late-afternoon
sun. But she had a feeling Essie didn’t get much time for napping. A clump of wrinkled clothing lay across the splint-reed chair, two of the drawers on the chestnut dresser were pulled out
and there was water left over in the basin on the washstand.
    ‘Pardon the mess, miss,’ Essie said, quickly picking up the underclothing from the floor and pushing the dresser drawers shut. ‘Lord protect me if Mrs King comes up for an
inspection this afternoon, but five o’clock comes awful early some mornin’s. Wasn’t thinkin’ on company when I left.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ Serafina said. ‘You should see where I sleep.’
    ‘I was all blurry-eyed this mornin’ on account of I stayed up with that awful Mr Scrooge,’ Essie said as she moved the clothes off the chair. Hearing these words,
Serafina’s ears perked right up. Who was this Mr Scrooge? But then she saw a copy of
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens on Essie’s nightstand, piled with some Asheville
newspapers, a Bible and a scrap of what looked like Mrs King’s weekly work schedule. Serafina realised with a bit of a shock that Christmas was only a week away. The tan leather-bound book
with gold-leaf lettering on the front looked suspiciously like the same edition of
A Christmas Carol
that Serafina had ‘borrowed’ from Mr Vanderbilt’s collection the year
before.
So I’m not the only one who steals Mr Vanderbilt’s books
, Serafina thought with a smile.
    Across Essie’s dresser lay all manner of feminine accoutrements: hairbrushes, hairpins, little tins of ointment and a glass bottle of Essie’s lemon scent, which