Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (16 page)

Nabaasa took Frances by the hand, taking her away to a corner of the room.

My gaze fell to the comatose Molly and Aisha that were lying there like statues. Their eyes twitched slightly beneath closed eyelids. They were alive.
Still alive.

Molly drew her hood back, letting her snow-flecked hair spill out. Relief flooded her pale features. “Cassie, you got away....”

Words jumbled inside my head. “God, I never thought I’d see you again....”

I started to rush forward—to hold her, to assure myself that she was really here—but she held up the palm of her hand, silently signaling to me not to come closer. I stopped, uncomprehending.

She bowed her head. “I can’t tell you what it means to me to see you here. I’ve died a thousand deaths knowing you were there with Balthazar.”

My jaw trembled. “Parker’s father told me about you... about those medical tests....”

She nodded somberly. “The illness I had in the dollhouse was caused by the leukemia. Back when I woke from the coma, the doctors managed to put it into remission. But even then they told me that the kind of cancer that I had wasn’t curable. I didn’t want to tell you—I didn’t want you or your mother worried or fussing over me.” She pushed back a curtain of deep red hair. Her face was almost bloodless—dark rings around her sunken eyes. “I wanted my life to mean something. So I threw myself into finding out all that I could about Henry and why we were all kept in the dollhouse. I wanted to stop him. But now my time is running out....”

“You never rested.” My words came out in a rush, almost scolding her, full of my fear and pain. “You always kept going until you collapsed. You need to take some time now, time to rest. You need to get better.”

“Cassie, I’m not going to get better,” she said quietly. “I might only have days left. Maybe just this day. I don’t know.”

My mind hardened—it became coal and cinders. I wanted to shut out what she’d just told me, take her words and burn them as though they’d never been spoken.

Ethan moved his arm around me. “Molly... I was going to go back to the castle to get you.... But why are you here? Did Henry send you?”

“Yes,” she replied. “We were sent to find out anything we could—to keep searching for the book. He’s given us two hours before we return. Except, we’re never going to return....”

I stared at her and Aisha. “What do you mean, you’re never going to return?”

Aisha’s eyes were shadowed and impossible to read beneath the hood she kept pulled over her forehead. “We’re not going back to the castle.”

Molly’s fair eyelashes drifted down. “Cassie, my heart ached for you every day you were forced to exist with Balthazar. When the last day of summer came and went, I could stand it no longer. I knew that Balthazar would be waking and I had to do something.” She eyed the double of herself that was lying still in the bed. “But I knew I couldn’t do much if I’m not going to live for much longer. So I convinced Parker that I was on their side, that I wanted to search for the book. I asked to be sent back to the ice world. But of course, he didn’t know what I planned to do here.” She drew her lips in, a tremendous strain showing in the delicate lines of her face. “I only have one thing left to give. Myself. If this double of me has survived all this time without any treatment, then she is far stronger than me. And together, we would be stronger than one.”

My heart jolted in horror, my breaths quickening as I understood just what it was she had planned to do. “No! You can’t....”

A deepening frown indented her smooth forehead. “I have two choices. Die, and allow the Molly of this world to die too. Or give us both a chance of living on.”

I stepped toward her.

Again she held up a hand. “Please, I know you, Cassie. I know your heart. You’ll try to stop me, because you won’t want to let me go. And I can’t let you do that. This is what I want.”

A tear tracked down my face. “
You w
ould be the one to disappear. Molly. I need you. We’ll find a way to keep you here, to keep you from being pulled back to the castle. And find a way of making you better.”

She shook her head sadly. “There is no
better
for me. I feel it. Day by day. I’m fading.” She turned to her double. “But she might have a chance, where I have none. And if every double of us in all the universes is like a part of ourselves, then she is part of me and I am already part of her. Even if she has only the smallest possibility of waking, this is my gift to her... and to you.”

Sophronia rubbed her forehead. “Cassie is right. You should not do this. You might die along with your double. If the machines have been off for over an hour, then they are barely clinging to life.”

Aisha’s eyes were stony. “I’m already dead. If I switch over and die along with her, then there is no difference.” She looked down at the otherworld Aisha.

Cold cement poured into my limbs. “Aish,” I cried, “not you too? You can’t do this....”

With a heavy sigh, she pulled the hood from her face. Her hair hung wild and stringy around her cheeks, as though she hadn’t bothered brushing it in days. “Why? All I’ve done is hurt you. I can no longer live with myself. All the things I’ve done—to everyone. All the people and things I left behind are haunting me now. I can’t live like this anymore.”

“So join with us,” I pleaded. “Be on our side.”

Sophronia nodded. “Yes. Both of you. Stay here with us. Help us. Leave these girls and come upstairs—there’s nothing more anyone can do for them now.”

“Please....” My voice weakened to a whisper.

Aisha’s expression clouded. “I have nothing to give. Every day, every night, I’ve battled with myself. All I think of is killing myself. And Emerson—he’s changed. He was never a loving husband, but this autumn he showed who he truly is. Cold and cruel. A true Batiste.” She spat the last word out as though it pained her to say it. Her hands tightened around each other. “Molly found me with a rope and noose in the orchards this morning. She stopped me. We talked about everything and she told me what she was coming here to do today. Together, we made a decision.”

“Emerson’s not a Batiste,” I said quickly. “None of them are. Balthazar never had children. I found this out... in my time with Balthazar. Everyone chooses their own path, and people can change, if they want to.”

A tear streaked down Aisha’s pale face. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters, anymore.”

I stared at them both, stricken. “You can’t do this. Please. You can’t take your own lives like this.”

Molly’s eyes were calm. “I see it as the chance to give life, however small. I have no chances left. Cassie, I treasure the time I had to know you outside of the dollhouse.” She turned to Aisha. “And in the brief time that I’ve come to know you better, I wish I’d been able to know you sooner. Maybe I will, on the other side.”

Molly’s hand reached toward that of the otherworld Molly.

Tears streamed down my face unchecked. “Molly... Aisha... I need to tell you both something....”

They paused, their fingers almost touching those of their doubles.

“I need to tell you about the tower at the castle,” I breathed, afraid that at any moment, it would be too late to tell them the things that were burning inside me. “I know who it is that they keep in there. It’s Prudence.”

Their lips parted in shock, stunned looks widening their eyes.

“They keep her there in service to the serpent,” I told them. “She watched us, every day at the castle, unable to contact us.” I turned to Molly. “Molly, she said that it wasn’t what you told her when she first came to the dollhouse that made her try to kill herself. I know you always hated yourself for telling her that Jessamine was a spirit, but it wasn’t because of anything you said. It was because she could see too much—in the dollhouse she could see Balthazar and the castle and the evil drove her to lose her mind.”

I paused, then smiled tightly at Aisha. “Aish, Prudence told me she saw the battle within you and knew that it was fear that paralyzed you.” I wiped the wetness from my face with both hands. “I know what fear is like and how it binds you. I too, have been paralyzed with fear my whole life. I found the source of that fear in the tower. My mother lost a baby when I was very small. From then on, I spent my life terrified of loss, of darkness. In the tower, I found the baby that my mother lost—grown up into my sister.” I inhaled deeply. “Prudence.”

Molly and Aisha stared at me.

“That explains so much,” said Molly softly. “Thank you.”

Aisha just nodded, her eyes brimming, giving me a small smile.

I felt the tightness in my body relax. They’d understood.

They each turned back to their doubles. As if in slow motion, their hands reached across the beds.

Cold realization closed over me. Nothing was going to change the path they’d chosen. Not my words. Not anything.

I watched as empty spaces formed where Molly and Aisha had been.

As though they’d never been there.

In the stillness, seconds ticked away.

Nabaasa stepped over to each of the girls in the beds, bending to place a hand on each cheek and say her goodbyes. She turned back to us. “I will leave you to grieve your loss.” Quietly, she left the room.

Sophronia stepped over to hold hands with Ethan and Frances and me. In a circle, we stood in the dim room together. In the numb stillness of my mind, thoughts like poison arrows hurtled toward me.

I’d thought I’d known Molly so well. But in the end, she was unknowable, and she ended a life that was to me a bright thing shining in this universe—in any universe. Molly’s star had burned so brightly, she’d scared me sometimes.

I had even thought I knew Aisha—at least, I’d thought I knew the person she’d become. I’d seen moments where she’d battled herself, but in the end, she’d seemed to choose Emerson and the castle. But I was wrong. She’d never completely stepped over to that side.

I prayed for some way of answering the dragging weight inside me, the knowledge that I couldn’t stop Molly and Aisha from sacrificing themselves.

No answer came.

––––––––

C
ASSIE

A soft gasp of air sounded behind us.

I whirled around. Molly’s eyelashes stirred.

I didn’t really see that.

But as I watched, a frown etched itself into her forehead. Her eyes opened to the ceiling.

Sorrow and hope charged through me.

We rushed to her bedside. Her eyes met ours, growing large with unspeakable fear and confusion. She tried to talk, but was unable to form words.

I looked to Sophronia, expecting her to say something, but she shook her head. Then I remembered—Molly had never heard Sophronia utter a word. In Molly’s mind, she’d woken straight from the bed chamber of the dollhouse—straight from the world where she was Missouri and we were in our last days.

I grasped her hand. We needed her to know this wasn’t a dream or an imagining. “Missouri, we’re all safe.” I bent my head down to hers. “We got out of the dollhouse. We’re free.”

We weren’t safe, or free, but in this moment, we were together—and that was enough.

Her eyes moistened, and she stared at each of us in turn.

I didn’t want to scare her by staring back like she was a miracle. But that’s what she was—an insane, amazing miracle.

Clattering footfall echoed down the stairwell to the basement.

Ethan turned his head sharply. “I’ll go head them off. And I’ll get Nabaasa back down here—she’ll know what to do.”

Molly’s eyes closed again—seemingly exhausted by her brief wakening. She slipped into a deep sleep.

Frances gazed at the sleeping Molly, her little face quietly frantic.

“Don’t worry,” Sophronia told her, “she’ll wake again.”

I released the lungful of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

Beside us, in the next bed, came a breathy,
no.

A
isha opened eyes filled with unspeakable fear. I knew what was in her mind. She’d gone to sleep with an overdose of sleeping potion, thinking she’d never wake—and being waking now was her worst nightmare.

“Go....” I whispered to Ethan.

The Aisha of almost two years ago had been Ethan’s girlfriend. It seemed right that his face should be the first that she saw.

~.~

Heavy boots clattered on the stair landing outside the basement. Ethan turned back to Sophronia and me. Like Molly, Aisha had fallen back into sleep.

We headed out of the basement rooms—Mr. Calhoun and a few of the guards were making their way down the stairs. Sister Bettina stood piously at the top railing.

“Sister,” called Ethan, “call off your troops.”

She gazed down at him with hard eyes. “We allowed you a certain amount of time with the... bodies. But we must make preparations for a proper burial now.”

“Unless you wish to bury live persons, there will be no burials,” Sophronia told her.

She tilted her head slightly, as though she hadn’t heard correctly, or didn’t want to hear Sophronia’s words. “Excuse me?”

“She said they’re alive.” Ethan’s voice was sharp and accusing. “They both woke—just then when we were in the room.”

“No. Damned. Way.” Mr. Calhoun crossed his beefy arms.

“Yes,” Sister Bettina, “there’s little point in trying to make us feel neglectful in relation to turning the machines off. For those girls to survive would be a miracle.”

Pain raged through me. I had escaped Balthazar and the castle’s grip, only to be faced with the prim coldness of Sister Bettina. “You, more than anyone, should believe in miracles.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness that I felt inside from escaping into my voice.

My limbs shook, my body both chilled and hot.

Her eyes bored into me as my mind started to fuzz and gray out.

Ethan caught me under the arms as I stumbled. “She’s not well. She’s been kept in an underground prison for months, she’s just escaped through an ocean and come out into freezing temperatures. At least let her change into some dry clothes.”

She laced her long fingers together, a strange look visiting her eyes. “You may both go and change. Perhaps I was indeed too hasty on deciding your future here. We will revisit our discussion on your future here in a few days.”