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

through for a while. When she saw the boy was on the down-go, she had the menfolk haul him into her carriage, and she carted
him all the way to the hospital in Asheville.’
    ‘What happened to the boy?’ Serafina asked as she finally figured out how to slip into the dress and fasten up the last of the buttons.
    ‘He’s still mighty sick,’ Essie said. ‘But I hear they’re taking good care of him down there.’
    ‘You can turn around now,’ Serafina said.
    ‘Oh, miss!’ Essie said. ‘That’s a whole heap better, believe me. Come over to the mirror and take a look while I fix your hair.’
    Essie didn’t seem to care that Serafina was different from everyone else, that her face was scratched, her eyes too large and the angle of her cheeks unusually severe. She just went
straight to work. ‘This hair of yourn!’ she said, and started tugging away at it like it was a bushel of misbehaving ferrets. ‘We ain’t got time for me to do a proper job,
but we’ll get it wrangled up.’
    As Essie worked, Serafina found herself looking into the mirror and noticed something odd. There appeared to be chunks of long black hair growing among the rest that she’d never seen
before.
    ‘What’s wrong, miss?’ Essie said, seeing her frown.
    ‘My hair is brown, not black,’ she said, mystified as she raised her hand slowly up to her head and touched the black strands.
    ‘You want ’em gone, miss? I used to cut my mamaw’s grey hairs out all the time. They’d come in all long and wiry like they’d drunk too much moonshine, and
we’d cut ’em out quick as they came.’
    ‘Just yank ’em,’ Serafina said.
    ‘That’s gonna hurt, miss. There’s a lot of ’em.’
    ‘Just grab ’em hard and yank ’em out,’ Serafina insisted. If she didn’t have enough problems going to the main floor for all to see, now she had strange things
growing out of her head. She looked hideous.
    Essie selected the strands of black hair and pulled so hard that it tugged Serafina’s head back.
    ‘Sorry, miss,’ Essie said.
    ‘Keep goin’,’ she said. As Essie worked, Serafina decided to ask a question about what she’d seen earlier that morning. You said you’re fixin’ to be a
lady’s maid. Have you served that new girl who’s been visitin’?’
    ‘The English girl,’ Essie groaned, making it pretty clear she was none too keen on her.
    ‘You don’t like her?’ Serafina asked, amused.
    ‘I don’t trust that girl any farther than I can throw her, coming in here with all her fancy high-and-mighty airs and puttin’ a bead on the young master first thing.’
    Serafina wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by all that, but it occurred to her that someone in Essie’s position, working in the rooms on the second and third floors, might see
things that she herself did not.
    ‘What about the murder investigator who came in last night?’ she asked. ‘Have you seen him?’
    ‘Not yet, but I heard from one of the footmen that he had all sorts of trunks and cases hauled up to his room, filled with strange instruments of some kind. He’s been giving all the
servants orders, demanding this and that.’
    That doesn’t sound good
, Serafina thought.
    Having yanked out several chunks of black strands, Essie picked up her brush and started brushing Serafina’s hair in long, pulling strokes. It felt so strange but so oddly pleasant to have
someone pull a brush through her hair, the sensation of the drag on her roots, and the detangling of her hair, and the gentle rake of the soft bristles against her scalp. She had to do everything
she could to keep from purring.
    ‘Can I ask you a question, miss?’ Essie asked as she brushed. ‘Ya know, Mrs King keeps tellin’ all of us girls to mind our own business, but everyone’s been
talkin’ about it all the same. We all want to know what’s goin’ on.’
    ‘Going on with what?’ Serafina asked uncertainly.
    ‘With Mrs V.,’ Essie said. ‘She didn’t come out of