“She heard doors closing then the fall of footsteps and muffled noises. Her heart began to thump lightly in her chest. Someone was walking through the corridors of the basement. Her basement.”

This brief passage begins the novel’s inciting incident. After catching and releasing two rats into the forest, Serafina returns to Biltmore and discovers a well-dressed man in the basement in the middle of the night. The line also emphasizes ownership: The basement “belongs” to Serafina not only because it is the only home she knows but because she feels territorial over it; she prowls nightly for rats, sleeps and eats there with Pa, and only leaves to dispose of her catch or spy on guests upstairs.

“Don’t be a dumb mouse. Don’t be a dumb mouse.”

Panic-stricken, Serafina coaches herself to stay in hiding as the Man in the Black Cloak searches for her in the basement laundry. Serafina just saw what the cloak can do and knows she is next to disappear if caught. The passage highlights Serafina’s felinity and foreshadows her eventual cat-and-mouse relationship with the villain. She feels like a metaphorical mouse right now—fearful and hiding—but, by the end of the novel, the roles reverse.

“You’ve had a bad dream is all. Been readin’ too many of them ghost stories. I told ya to stay away from Mr. Poe. Now look at ya. You’re all scuffed up like a cornered possum.”

When Serafina first tries to tell Pa about the Man in the Black Cloak, he dismisses every word as a dream she had.