Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (13 page)

Only one Balthazar now stood in the room—a flesh-and-blood Balthazar, with smooth skin, and dark hair falling over sharply handsome features. For a moment, terror shot through his eyes—the terror of the young man who had walked into this room just moments ago. But only for a moment. Balthazar gazed down at his limbs and his hands, a cold fire lighting in his eyes.

His gaze lifted to me. “I wilt take thee now, bride.”

My body petrified to stone.

“Speak!” Stepping toward me, he twisted my arm. “Thou wilt speak and bow before me and tell me it is an honor for thee to receive me. If thou doth not, I wilt make thee scream. I will not bed a silent bride.”

His breath was poison on my face.

My mind was ash and decay.

Raising my chin, I met his dark eyes. “If I must speak, then I must speak the truth. A new body does not change you from being the foulest creature who ever walked the earths.”

Incensed, he smacked his hand backwards against my face, sending me to the floor. “I told thee I am a harsh husband and thee will soon learn the extent of my temper.”

By the arm, he dragged me toward the marriage bed. My skin scraped on the rough stone—my limbs too numb to feel the pain.

He pushed me onto the bed, his smile leering. My mind tore away.

“Thou hast grown even more beauteous during the months I slept.” He pulled and clutched at the lace and ribbons of the wedding night gown, his breath hot on my face and smelling of death.

Terrified sounds gasped from my chest.

I wished I’d taken the chambermaid’s advice and had downed the wine she’d offered me. All of it. On the distant wall, the brides of Balthazar stood in the cabinet. I imagined Etiennette’s eyes fluttering open, staring at me.

You suffered what I am now to suffer
, I told her silently.

I welcomed the insanity of seeing Etiennette move. I would go willingly into a fantasy world.

My hands curled into fists.

Stopping for a moment, Balthazar turned his head and cursed in French. “I need wine to wet my tongue. Centuries without a drunken night hath sullied my senses. Didst I see some in the nursery? Girl, fetch me the wine.”

Crawling backwards from the bed, I turned my face away from his. It was a reprieve—however brief.

I stepped away and around the corner to the area where the children’s quarter stood. Stepping toward the cask of wine, I stared at the thick red liquid—liquid like blood. Like all the blood ever spilled in the world. Like the blood of the girls in the cabinet.

My fist curled around the cask. My mind fixed on the key I’d hidden within the drawer beneath. It had been my one secret, my one connection to something far and away from Balthazar. The pattern of Voulo’s opening of the doors played in my head in rapid succession. I recalled his need to close and lock the doors as quickly as he could.

Thorns pricked the back of my neck. What if Voulo had to close the doors to stop something from happening—
or to stop something from getting out?

My heart stilled.

Prudence’s words burned in my mind. She’d said that Balthazar might have bound the spirits of every one of his brides.

If that were true, it would explain Voulo’s crazy haste in shutting and locking the doors. But if their spirits were really in there, would the opening of the cabinet doors cause the brides to wake?

A fearsome plan jolted inside me, shooting through my veins with electric charge.

If Balthazar chose to keep me in the cabinet after each time in his bed, I might never have the chance I had now. Even if Balthazar’s human body crumbled away and his spirit went back to sleep, Voulo would start locking me away again. And next time, I doubted Voulo would want to wait for me to die of natural causes before he stuffed me into the marionette case—permanently. I might never have the chance to find out for myself what it was that had Voulo slamming the doors as though demons would escape. I had to find out for myself—now.

Breath caught fast in my chest. Sliding the drawer open, I retrieved the key from inside the jewelry box. Stepping to the board of keys, I stole the five keys from their hooks that I’d seen Voulo take so many times, taking care not to let them jangle against each other. The stool was still against the cabinets. Voulo hadn’t had to put me back into the cabinet this morning. As silently as I could manage, I slid the keys into their locks. I gazed at Etiennette’s painted wooden face as I pushed Reed’s key in. I had all six keys in place.

“Cassandra, do not delay thy fate,” Balthazar commanded. “If I must fetch thee, it wilt go so much the worse for thee.”

My heart clutched and released like a fist. I turned each key in its lock.

It was done. My last act of defiance.

The marionettes remained motionless.

The shutting of the doors had to be just some nervous compulsion of Voulo’s. Nothing more.

“Cassandra!”

I took the casks and made heavy steps toward Balthazar. He reclined spread-eagled on the bed, a cruel light in his eyes. My fingers shook on the casks—a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by him. A sneer edged into his mouth. He gestured for me to walk quicker.

As I laid the casks on the chest beside him, his hands grabbed my shoulders, digging into my flesh. “Thou art slow as a stuck pig. Remove thy garments and show thy husband thy submission.”

I drew back, my fingers fumbling for the ties of the negligee.

His chin jerked slightly as his attention moved from my chest to something behind me. “Be there anyone skulking about in this room? I sense someone and my senses never be wrong. Voulo? If thou want to watch, show thyself.”

No answer came.

Rising from the bed, Balthazar exhaled air hard between his teeth. Angrily, he knocked past me and stepped around the room. “Be thee human, I wilt stretch thee on the rack and strike thy peeping eyes with hammer and nails! Be thee spirit I wilt crush thee into oblivion.”

I stared at the marionettes—and awaited my fate. The marionettes remained perched in their half-sitting half-standing pose as they had for centuries.

He turned slowly as he caught sight of the keys in the cabinet doors from his side vision. He angled his head toward me, rage flashing in his eyes. “Thou didst
this?
”

My breaths rattled in my throat, loud in my ears.

Instead of advancing toward me, he rushed at the cabinets, toward Etiennette’s compartment. Unlike Voulo and myself, he didn’t need the stool—he was more than tall enough to reach. “Voulo!” he yelled, “I doth not recall thy cursed combination of the locks!”

Etiennette’s eyes opened.

They
opened.

Her lips parted, and she raised a hand to the glass—her palm against the thick glass of her prison.

As I watched, filmy spirits pulled painfully from their wooden hosts—their eyes beset with grief and confusion.

Balthazar recoiled as though he’d been seared with a hot poker, staring at his past wives in horror. He stumbled backward.

Etiennette pushed her door open and stepped from her prison—leaving her wooden marionette behind. Standing on the floor, she tried to speak, but no words came. But in her eyes I saw her fear for me. She made her way across the room—stopping at the children’s quarters. Gently, she rocked the two cradles. I felt her sadness and her longing.

Balthazar’s eyes grew round as he followed her. “It hath been a long night since last I saw thee, Etiennette.”

Disdain passed through the childlike planes of her face.

“Thou canst look at me with revile, but thee art my wife yet,” he asserted. He pointed to me. “She is but a replacement for you. I doth wed her, but she wilt not take your place. Etiennette, we wilt be together again before long, my love.”

She shook her head, tossing her long hair down her back. “
Non! Jamais plus!
”

Her mouth did not move and her voice sounded as though it came from a distance. I understood that she had told him
never again
.

His mouth pressed into an angry line. “Thou art but a weak shadow of thyself. I command thee return to thy resting place, until time comes for thy resurrection.”

More spirits broke free from their places in the open cabinets, unnoticed by Balthazar. The five spirits moved free of the cabinets. Raising their arms, they forced keys to fly off their hooks and through the air to the cabinet. The keys inserted themselves into the locks, and turned with a series of clicks. The other thirty-one spirits woke, their faces registering the same alarm and wonder as the first six. They joined their sister-brides. Their spirits seemed weak and wavering as they gathered behind Balthazar in their flowing dresses, like a silent Greek chorus.

Balthazar wheeled around. “Voulo!” he roared.

Voulo appeared in the middle of the chambers. His mouth opened in disgust and fear at the sight of the spirits.

“How didst Cassandra open the cabinet? And how didst she gain Etiennette’s key?” Balthazar demanded.

Voulo stiffened. “The key is on my chain, Master, where it is hath always been.” He held the key up to show Balthazar. His gaze pierced me as he looked my way. “She is a witch! I didst knoweth this whence I saw her flesh heal itself of the affliction. She doth pretend innocence yet she doth use sorcery.”

Balthazar turned sharply to me, then to the other brides. “Thou art witches—all of thee. None of thee are to be trusted or art worthy to be wives of
le château sur la falaise solitaire
. Return! I bind thee!” Helplessly, he swept the regiment of tin soldiers to the floor. “Did thou not hear me? I bind thee!”

A girl with the palest of white hair closed her eyes and tilted her head upward. Her expression calmed, as though a great peace had come upon her. Her spirit faded, until all that was left was an empty space where she had stood. I knew she hadn’t returned to the cabinet. She had gone to wherever spirits go. Balthazar seemed to have no hold over them—perhaps there were too many. Together, they were a force.

Panic gripped me. If that girl had gone, then they all would go. And I would be left alone with Balthazar, and made to pay for what I’d done.

But the remaining spirits didn’t leave yet. They moved toward Balthazar and Voulo, circling them, restraining them. I sensed that the girls couldn’t manage to hold them for long. The girls hadn’t spent the centuries practicing their craft as spirits—they had been in a long sleep.

Etiennette broke away from the circle, making her way over to me. She wrung her hands together as her dark eyes looked into mine. She was so like me, so like Prudence.

“Cassandra Claiborne,” I told her breathlessly, pointing at my chest.

From her frowning expression, I knew she didn’t understand me.

Desperately, I tried to remember French phrases. I didn’t know the word for ancestor. “
Famille,
” I told her, using the French word for family.

Her red lips parted. “
Allez, Cassandra! Aller toi rapidement. Sauve-toi toi-même!”

Her words were in an older French that I didn’t understand. But I knew she’d understood that I’d called her my family. And I understood the first thing she’d said to me—
Go, Cassandra!

“
Non
,” I told her. “I must stay.”

She shook her head, trying to take my hand—but her hand passed through mine. She hadn’t learned to manipulate air to make herself seem solid—as Jessamine had. She pointed at the dark space where my dressing chamber stood—my scant three dresses hanging on the hooks there, along with my wedding dress. Puzzled, I stepped over to the recess. An odd box had been laid beneath the dresses—a box inlaid with silver. With a cry, I scooped it up. It was the music box that Ethan had given me. Had Molly somehow gotten this to me? Had she begged one of the chamber maids to bring it here? Or had she found the way down to Balthazar’s chambers and she was waiting outside?

Etiennette stared at me with soulful eyes, reaching out pale fingers toward the music box.

I understood then, that the music box had been hers. By the sadness and longing on her face, I guessed that someone close to her had made this especially for her.

“
Allez
....” she whispered. “
Allez!
”

She pointed at the door. I knew that
Allez
meant
go
.

“I will go,” I told her. “Will you be okay?”

She seemed to take her cue from my expression and she nodded. “
Oui
.”

I gazed at her face, wanting to remember every feature—commit them to memory. The painted portrait and wooden marionette were nothing like the real Etiennette. The softness in the curve of her cheek and the expressiveness in her eyes and mouth could never be captured in a still image, and especially not by Voulo.

“Because of you, I am alive,” I told her. I knew she wouldn’t understand, but I needed to say it. She was my ancestor, my blood. It pained me to say goodbye to her, knowing I would not see her again.

Everything—from the dress she wore to her milky skin—shimmered and began to fade. I understood she was using every ounce of strength she possessed to stay as long as possible allow me to get away. Right now, she risked allowing Balthazar to gain control of her and bind her spirit once more.

I stole toward the door. The smell of the ocean in the cold corridor urged me on. Darkness closed around me as I stepped through.

I turned and raced along the corridor, into the day of the ocean passage.

C
ASSIE

The passage stood empty. The door from which the men had burst through just minutes ago was firmly locked. Stepping to the balcony wall, I set the music box down and opened it. The sweet, sad music tinkled, reminding me of everyone I had ever loved, each note paining me to hear it. It was music from another life, a life that was closed to me.

There was nothing to do but stay with my plan.

The music played as I climbed over the balcony wall for what would be my last time. The broad sun warmed my back as I made it down to the crevice in the cliff face. I dropped inside and ran along the dank corridors, down to where the cliff met the sea. Cold water tugged at my ankles. I gasped the suffocating, brackish air once more. The raft was heavy and hard to maneuver as I dragged it against the incoming waves. I tied it to the pedestal with a piece of rope. Wading back to the ship, I searched for the best sword I could find. Unable to manage the bigger, heavier weapons, I picked up a short-bladed sword and brandished it about. I stared into the gleam of its blade.
You are my last hope
.