Serafina thought Braeden must have hidden the Black Cloak away somewhere in the house or back in the flume under the pond, but she wasn’t sure.
As she watched him talking with the others at the table, it reminded her of watching Mr. Thorne months before in this very room as he lingered among the guests and their children. There was something in the look behind Braeden’s eyes that she could not quite fathom, not just the sadness and detachment that she’d seen, but as if he was going through the motions of his life, biding his time, waiting to get to what was important. But that was the question. What was important to him now? Was it using the cloak each night? Is that what he longed for, the dark embrace of its power?
She watched him all through the evening, looking for signs. Was his skin flaking off his hands as it had with Mr. Thorne? Did he watch the children in the room with particular interest? You have to resist it, Braeden, she kept thinking.
She looked for signs of good and evil in her friend, of truth and deceit, wondering which side was winning. She could see him doing the things he was expected to do, but was it truly him? Or was he like one of those weird horned beetles that wears the shell of another beetle on its back to hide itself?
But then something happened.
When he thought no one was looking, Braeden slid his hand under the table, and he tapped his fingers lightly on the wooden edge of his chair.
In the corner across the room, Gidean sat up and tilted his head in curiosity.
Braeden tapped again.
Gidean rose to his feet and moved quickly toward Braeden. The dog slipped under the table and put his nose against Braeden’s hand to let him know he was there.
Without anyone noticing, Braeden slid the food from his plate and gave it to Gidean beneath the table. The surprised Doberman gobbled the food down in an instant and looked up appreciatively for more.
Serafina smiled. This was new. Something was changing in Braeden. She didn’t know if using the cloak had turned him evil or not, or to what degree he could control his use of it, but for the first time in a long time, this was the Braeden she knew, the one who fed his dog from his plate, the one who would fight for his friends no matter what. This wasn’t the cloak’s doing. This was something else. Somehow, someway, he was still in there, deep down inside, at least a little bit. And this was the Braeden she held on to in her heart.
When the final course was done, Braeden politely excused himself from the table and said good night to everyone. They all wished him a pleasant good night in return.
As Serafina followed him out of the Banquet Hall and around the Winter Garden, she was glad to see Gidean walking with him. But then Braeden took Gidean over to a side door, let him outside, and continued on through the house without him.
“That’s strange,” Serafina said, and followed Braeden up the Grand Staircase to the second floor.
As Braeden entered his bedroom, she thought he was going to go to sleep, but then he got down on his hands and knees and dragged a heap of outdoor clothes from under the bed. They were dry, so they weren’t the clothes he’d worn in the flume, but the shirt, trousers, and boots were stained with dirt. They’d been used before without being washed. He quickly pulled the clothes on and then grabbed the rope out from under his bed.
“Here we go again,” she said as he went out the window.
Serafina climbed down the rope to the terrace below and then followed him through the gardens. “Back to the Black Cloak again?” she asked him.
But then Gidean came running toward him out of the darkness. Instead of going toward the pond, Braeden and Gidean followed a path into the forest. It was a path she knew well. And clearly so did Braeden.
He was heading for the graveyard where she was buried.
Serafina followed Braeden through the forest at a distance, uncertain how her presence might affect him. That first night she came to him, he had suffered such anguish. She wasn’t keen on driving him afoul again, so she let him get a fair piece in front of her.
She made her way through the darkened cemetery on her own, following the path that she thought Braeden was on. But she could no longer hear him and Gidean walking ahead of her. Either she’d let them get too far up the path or something else had happened. Suddenly, she felt very much alone.
As she crept past the weathered headstones marking the graves, the graveyard’s swampy moist air clung to her skin like leeches. A low chorus of crickets, cicadas, and other buzzing insects pulsed around her. Long, wispy trails of mist oozed across the ground at her feet. The twisting roots of the old trees weaved through the damp earth beneath her bare feet, and vines hung down from the trees’ crooked, dangling limbs.
She had already read many of the epitaphs chiseled in block letters on these gravestones, and she had no desire to do it again tonight, but as she moved among them, the voices of the dead came alive.
Here lies blood, and let it lie, speechless still, and never cry, one said, but she tried not to look or listen.
Our bed is lovely, dark, and sweet. Come join us now and we shall meet, said the two sisters lying in the ground side by side. It felt as if they were talking to her, inviting her back to where she belonged.
She hurried past the cloven man and through the six-sixty crosses of the buried Confederate soldiers. When she finally made it through the graveyard, she came to the small open area of the angel’s glade.
She found Braeden lying stretched out facedown on the dirt mound of her grave. His body was flat to the ground. His left leg was straight, but his right leg was bent beside him, clenched in the metal brace. His arms were up around his head, the fingers of his hands splayed, as if he had been holding the earth. Gidean lay flat on the ground a few feet away, just as still as he.
Serafina’s heart filled with fear, for it looked like they were both dead. She couldn’t breathe.
But then Braeden’s head moved and Serafina exhaled in relief.
Braeden’s eyes were closed and his face filled with sadness, but he was alive. He had come to visit her, to sleep there on the ground, stretched out on her grave.
She noticed the dried stains on his trousers and the old dirt on his boots. He’d been here before. Many times. He hadn’t been sneaking out of the house every night to use the Black Cloak. He’d been coming here.
She imagined him coming out here night after night, sleeping on her grave when his family thought he was home in his bed.
Had Mr. Vanderbilt come during the night with a search party and looked upon his nephew in dread? Was that why Mr. Vanderbilt had been so concerned about him? Was that why he’d told Braeden that he had double-locked Biltmore’s doors?
As Braeden lay on her grave, his shoulders moved with a slow and troubled breathing.
She gazed upon him in sadness, pursing her lips as she felt a thickness catching in her throat.