Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (10 page)

I breathed out in slow, measured parts as I turned the pages to the last of the entries. There was my name.
Cassandra
. Just another name amongst so many. He had written down the facts and date of the marriage and the name of the priest. I guessed he didn’t know much about me yet, as the only thing he’d written other than that was how he thought I was wilful and not to be trusted. I had the creeping sensation that he was watching me read this right now. I looked up in a panic. He remained asleep on the bed.

The entry before mine had to be Etiennette’s. I carefully turned the brittle pages until I found her name. She was from a poor village, one in which families slept in a single room, on bales of hay. Her father was English and her mother French. She named her twins Odette and Constantine—Balthazar allowed her and the babies to move from the underground to a room in the castle when the babies were six months old. He detailed the effort to salvage her broken body from the ocean after she jumped from the battlement. His words chilled me.
I wilt never allow her leave of me
.
She is bound to me eternally.

I flipped back to his account of the wedding. It was very similar to the wedding I’d witnessed between Balthazar and Etiennette in the chapel—except that Balthazar would have been human and not ghost back then. The sweat on my clammy skin went dead cold as I read her full name.

Etiennette Emée Claiborne
.

The pages fell away from my hands, and the heavy book slammed shut. I pushed the book quickly back into its place, and rushed away back to the ocean passage.

The next few days passed in a hazy blur.

I sat for hours, locked away in the cabinet, deep in thought.

If Reed were truly Ethan’s ancestor, and Etiennette were mine—then it was as though Ethan and myself had battled Balthazar and the castle before. If it were true that they were our ancestors, then Ethan and I had been born of the same family line. What had the children of Reed and Etiennette been like? They would have been raised by the castle, and by Balthazar.

I remembered Ethan holding me in the museum’s planetarium, telling me there was no destiny. But if I wasn’t destined to be here, then why was I here? Each night, when I stared at myself in the cracked pieces of mirror in the vestibule, I could sense the pieces of the puzzle that remained just out of view—the dark reflection of the missing pieces taunting me.

What was life? And why were any of us here? All the torment and pain—what was it for? Tears came—tears for my mother, my father... tears for Ethan. I even wept for Zach—underneath everything, he was as lost as I was.

Blood burned through my veins.

Was there truth to Dr. Verena’s words? Had I brought myself here to this place? Was there a need inside me even greater than the forces that had brought me here? Secrets whispered within my head... secrets spoken by distant voices just out of earshot.

I became obsessed with the cave down at the ocean’s edge. Each midnight, I made my way down to the ship’s hull, and sat there for hours, wondering on Reed and Etiennette, watching the moon and the restless waves.

The cave replaced my fantasy of throwing myself from the walkway. Instead, my mind fixed on fashioning a raft from the old wreck—one that hadn’t half-rotted away like the one Reed had made—and sailing out into the midnight sea. I could taste the cold freedom of putting as much distance between the castle and myself as possible, just drifting on and on. I was terrified that my dreams were so vivid that Balthazar would sense my restlessness and wake from his slumber.

Then reality would crunch in. I could not leave. If I left—whether I lived or died—my actions would seal the fate of the people of the museum. And it would seal the fate of other girls who bore the name, Cassandra Claiborne.

The caves would remain an escape only in my mind, my chance. I traveled down there every night for weeks. Each night, I hung a dry dress in the small crevice as Etiennette had done before me, and spent my time in the cave. Each morning, I changed into the dry dress and raced back to Balthazar’s chambers just before dawn.

Voulo would look at me with narrowed eyes, but he said nothing. Perhaps he was biding his time, knowing that Balthazar’s brides never seemed to last long. He was not so concerned with having me obey Balthazar as he was in seeing me as part of Balthazar’s collection of marionettes.

Tonight he scowled as he unlocked the compartment, staring fixedly at my hands as I pushed the door open.

“Art thou a witch?” Impatience hissed through his voice.

“What? What do you mean?”

“How doth thee remain in bloom, whilst others withered on the vine? It must be witchcraft.” His eyes were dull but menacing.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am no witch.”

I rushed away from him as quickly as my stiffened limbs could manage. My heart pumping, I sat down to a cold, roast dinner. Gravy had congealed on the potatoes. I tried not to think of Voulo. He was a strange man—and he was a man who had lived in another time. He might have just accused me of witchcraft, but I made myself believe he would not harm a bride of Balthazar’s.

Sitting down in front of the mirror and wash bowl, I dipped my hands into the water. My pale face stared back at me, in fractured pieces in the cracked mirror. Flicking the water from my hands, I reached for the towel. For the first time in weeks, I studied the patches on my fingers. I’d been avoiding seeing the affliction take over my body, not wanting that daily reminder. And in the constant darkness I lived in, it was easy not to look closely. I splayed out my fingers. The dark patches were disappearing, fading. I lifted my chin, inspecting the underside of my ear. The dark patch had gone.

Was this what had disturbed Voulo? Did he think I was using witchcraft to heal myself? And why was I healing?

Breathing deeply of the cooler air that had ushered in, I felt a weight lifting from me. I was no longer being eaten alive by some hideous disease. Perhaps I had time now—time to figure things out.

I stepped into the walkway. A wild wind whipped up and blew around my shoulders, sending a spatter of rain across my face and body. Rain and wind together would make it riskier to climb down the chain tonight. But my spirit ached for the cave. Doing this in secret had made me feel a thread of life, and I didn’t want to let go.

A leaf spiraled down from high above. I caught it in my fist, then slowly opened my fingers. Apart from the ocean, it was the only piece of the natural world I’d touched since I was brought here to the chambers. I brought the leaf up close to my face, studying it. Its color was deep, amber. The color of fall.

A gasp drew from my lungs.

At the death of summer, Balthazar would wake.

And this leaf—this reddened leaf—meant that summer was at an end.

It had come too soon.

Far, far too soon.

I would never be ready for him. Not in a thousand lifetimes.

A rage boiled inside me. I wanted to rush to the ocean cave and take up a sword and return to plunge it into his chest.

But he couldn’t die.

A ghost could not be killed with a sword, or even by time itself.

Crushing the leaf in my hand, I threw it far over the balcony wall.

C
ASSIE

I climbed over the wall and onto the chain without my usual care. Wind lashed at me as I struggled to keep my hands and feet from slipping on the links. A deep rumble vibrated through my stomach. The sound of creaking and heavy scraping echoed through the air above.

A
désorienter
had begun in the castle.

Dropping inside the crevice in the cliff wall, I fell to my knees and vomited what little I had in my stomach. Summer had drawn its last dying gasp.

A blackness crept through my veins. I could already feel Balthazar’s clawing hands on me.

I needed to go back down to the ocean, to feel the spray on my face and breathe in the fresh, wide air.

One last time.

But I stood in the passage, unmoving. My head turned to the passage that I’d unblocked weeks ago... the passage that led... up. To the tower.

My dark desperation turned to a single thought.

Mindlessly, I crawled once more through the tree roots and ran along the passage. I didn’t stop until I reached the opening that led to the outside. I only had around eight hours between midnight and dawn—with dawn coming at almost eight in the morning. But I had no clock or watch with me to mark the exact passing of hours. Panting, I steadied myself against the rock wall.

Why was I here?

I had to return. Balthazar’s anger would know no bounds when he discovered where I had gone tonight.

But I couldn’t force myself to turn back. I stepped out into the blustering wind that hurled itself against the cliff face. The tower stood in the darkness far above me.

Fear grew like strangling vines inside me. But I knew with all certainty that the tower held a secret to which I must know the answer. From the first time I had seen the figure in the tower, I had known this. That morning in the mist, I had been drawn to the castle, wanting to know its secrets. My spirit, everything within me, was tied to this tower. Whatever it contained had been unreachable to me my entire life.

And I was willing to risk anything—even death—to enter inside.

~.~

Darting upward, I pulled my dress up around my knees. Around the next corner, the gate blocked my path. I held my breath as I pulled on the metal ring in its center. The gate held firm—time and weather had sealed the perimeter of the gate tight. If I had something high to stand on, I might be able to climb up and over the top. But I had nothing. In my mind, I saw the glint of the tools I’d left behind at the entrance to the upward passage. But to go back and get them would take too long—by the time I returned to the walkway where I was supposed to be, I would be racing against the dawn.

If whatever waited for me in the tower didn’t kill me first.

I made a terrifying decision. I would go fetch the tools.

Turning, I ran back down the stairs. I had to move quickly.

At the other end of the passage, I bundled a sturdy axe in my arms, and then rushed back to the gate. The axe, made back in the fourteenth century, was thick and heavy, and dragged on my shoulders.

Outside where the stairs met open sky, wind howled around my body, furious at the human who ignored its might. I came up against the gate, my heart beating against my chest wall.

I stuck the axe into a gap between the rock wall and gate, and tried to lever the door free. The blade snapped loose from its handle—the handle falling deep into a crevice.

With the axe blade I scraped away at the dirt and plant matter that was wedged around the perimeter of the door. Moss and earth crumbled away as the door shifted.

With a yell, I scrambled a few steps down as the door swung open and crashed against the rock wall. I gasped cold air down my throat as my breaths grew fast and deep. Less than twenty steps led directly upward to the arched door of the tower. I kept my grip on the blade as I slowly walked each step. As I stood on the top stair, I gazed back at the storming night. Once I entered the tower, there was no going back.

Dirt fell away from the edges of the door as I opened it. The thick wood pushed inwards. There was little in the room except for a rotting wooden stairway that spiraled upward. I gathered myself as I stepped inside and stood on the cool stonework. The space was deathly quiet, as though no one had been here for centuries.

My breaths quickened again as I took the stairs. I was about to come face to face with the dark figure in the tower, the one who had silently kept watch. I could sense this being in a way that was almost palpable—it was something that wrenched and twisted at my very core.

The stairs wound upwards—eternally upwards. There were no windows and little light. My feet slipped on the uneven, rotting boards. I passed no floors between the bottom floor and the very top. I clutched the railing as I reached the top stair. A large dark space lay before me. Moonlight streaked silver across the stone floor from a single narrow window.

The window
. The window from which I’d been observed through every terror-filled day since I had been here.

My eyes adjusted to the sharply-contrasting light. Ice froze along my spine. Something slowly spun in a high space in the center of the room—a figure suspended in the air.

The inhabitant of the tower.

I edged closer.

In a long cape, the figure slowly spun—a girl—her arms hanging limply, her face turned upwards. Above her, an eye-shaped crystal hung weightless in the air. The girl’s eyes were open but dull and unseeing, her face partly obscured by the cape.

I gazed at her, frozen, taking in everything—the long dark hair, the dress with the dark stain on the bodice, the wrists with the cut marks on them....

Shock roared through me like a freight train.

Of all the universes of things, of people, of beings... I would never have expected to see what was before me now. Why had I been so afraid? Yet there was something—something about her—that chilled me to the bone.

“Prudence...” I whispered.

She seemed to shock out of her trance-like state. With a cry she fell to the floor.

The axe blade dropped from my hands.

I ran to her, kneeling beside her frail body.

Gasping, I realized she was solid, real. Not a ghost.

She struggled to sit, her eyes losing their glaze. She gripped my arms. “Cassandra....”

“My God, what have they done to you?”

Her eyes regarded me with horror. “I watched... in the chapel... as they made you his bride. I wanted to protect you, but I couldn’t. How... how did you make your way to the tower?”

“I found the secret passage. I had to know who it was that watched me from the window all those times. But I never guessed....” I inhaled deeply. “Prudence, I don’t understand. Why are you here? And you’re not a....”

“Not a ghost?” She bent her head, shaking it softly. “No. I’m in between. Neither dead nor alive. That is the fate of someone who submits to the serpent.”