Serafina and the Seven Stars: Chapters 1–7

But seeing her attempts to outrun them, they became more invigorated than ever.

Her sister bounded ahead of her, growling playfully as she looked back at Serafina over her shoulder, challenging Serafina to chase her.

The other mountain lion circled his sister’s flailing, wire-entangled body in agitation, but was utterly unable to help her.

Serafina’s heart lurched in panic.

“Just stay still, cat. I’m trying to help you!” Serafina told her sister in exasperation, but as the entwined lion stared up at her with her golden eyes, Serafina knew her sister couldn’t understand her.

As she worked to free her sister, she glanced around to get her bearings.

The house was a beautiful sight, tranquil and serene. But she didn’t trust pleasant feelings. Or beauty.

This mishap with her sister aside, nothing sinister had happened at Biltmore in a long time, but she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that it soon would.

The lion kept yanking her paw away at the worst possible moment, anxious to get free, but hindering Serafina’s efforts.

After all their struggles, fighting to stay together and to stay alive, they had been undone by a few words on a wretched piece of paper in a city far away. She had wanted him to stand up, to fight, to slash at his uncle’s words.

Startled, she turned and scanned the line of trees surrounding the distant house, looking for any sort of danger: a mysterious figure or encroaching enemy—anything that might signal that trouble was a-prowl.

Black cloaks and twisted staffs, shadowed sorcerers in the murky night—she didn’t know in what form it would come, but she was the Guardian of Biltmore Estate, and she knew she had to stay alert, or people were going to die.

The carriages were disgorging a flood of passengers into the courtyard.

The happy smiles and soothing charm of laughter didn’t deceive her. There was an enemy among them, a killer, a kidnapper, an arsonist, she was sure of it, or maybe a doppelgänger, a haint, or a wraith-in-the-night come to drink their souls.

As the very last figure stepped out of the thirteenth carriage, Serafina’s senses seethed with anticipation.

None of these people looked like treacherous killers. And none of them looked like murderous demons. It had just been her old fears come a-boiling up again.

She had thought when this time of peace finally came, she would bask in the glow of trouble-free days. But nothing glowed. It burned.

What better way to celebrate their own prosperity, and the arrival of a new century, than with the renowned company of the Vanderbilts?

All through the summer and autumn days there had been an air of tranquility at Biltmore, a sense of new beginnings. She knew she should be happy. Just as everyone else seemed to be.

“Your father specified in his will,” Mr. Vanderbilt continued, “that his children should attend the school that he and the other members of the Vanderbilt family have attended for generations. It is incumbent upon both of us to put our personal feelings aside and do our duty to fulfill your father’s last wishes. I’m afraid the time has come for you to leave Biltmore and return to New York City.”

She walked alone onto the South Terrace, near the windows of the Library, with the view of the mountains in front of her, and the thick vines of wisteria growing in the lattice above her head.

Her pa was in charge of building and fixing the mechanical contraptions at Biltmore. He believed in tools and machines and iron things made by man, and in normal, everyday human beings, not strange and unnatural shape-shifting creatures of the night like her.

She loved to run with her feline brother and sister through the forest, but they were pure mountain lions, not catamount shape-shifters, so she couldn’t strategize with them, sneak through the house with them, make secret plans, devise ingenious traps, kill demons, or do any of the things that normal friends did together.

What worried her now was whether after all these months of peace at Biltmore she would still be able to distinguish a real threat from a startled jump.

Glancing through the windows into the Library, and down the long Tapestry Gallery, she saw the glow of the lamps and candles, and heard the mingling voices of the evening’s revelry, with the women in their long, glittery dresses and the men in their black jackets and white ties, all smiles and grand hellos, sipping their champagne.

Earlier that summer she had gone to see her old friend Waysa, who lived in the Great Smoky Mountains, and she saw the plight of his Cherokee kindred, and many others as well, struggling through a violent attack on the forests there.

Hordes of men with great steel saws and steam-powered winches were slashing down the ancient trees.

And sometimes, more and more when she was in her human form, it felt as if her senses and her brain, and even the core of her body, were changing in dark and primal ways, like she was becoming less human and more panther every day.

He seemed to be standing in front of her, his skin pale in the starlight, his tousle of brown hair more disheveled than usual, his brown eyes brighter than she remembered, and his face filled with tenderness.

“Are…” she began to ask the apparition. “Are you real?”

“I’ve been moping around wonderin’ what to do, and skittish as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

As she looked up at the small cluster of stars, she saw the seven he was talking about, but her feline eyes began to pick up the sparkling dots of light with more and more clarity.

In the light of the stars, the creature’s white fur seemed to almost glow with incandescence as it ran through the darkness of the trees, leaping effortlessly over fallen branches and narrow gullies, and seeming to glide through the ferns.

But the fawn was bleeding from her side, gasping her last labored breaths, her head hanging limp and her long, spindly legs tangled up like broken sticks.

Her pa’s face looked placid, as if he was dreaming of equipment that never failed and machines that always did what they were supposed to.

Mr. Vanderbilt was normally well rested and relaxed, reading his books and enjoying the company of his guests, but today he had a worn, haggard look to him and was filled with the tight breaths and nervous glances of an anxious man.

“I think of you as one of Biltmore’s friends, Serafina, one of its protectors,” he said. “You have been especially adept when it comes to…” He paused there, as if he didn’t quite know how to say it, and then he finally said, “Certain kinds of forces.”

She had no idea how a country cat like her was going to fare in a room chock-full of fancy folk like that, but she said, “I will do it.”

“I know that formal dinners aren’t something you’re used to,” Mr. Vanderbilt said. “But I will provide you with the funds to acquire the dresses and shoes and whatever else you need. And I’ll ask Mrs. King to assign a lady’s maid to help you.”

Some of them might not take to you right away—for the wrinkle in your dress, or the keen look in your eye, or for whatever reason—for you being a girl of these mountains instead of wherever they come from.