Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (17 page)

She sounded as though she’d had a complete change of heart, but there was no softening of her eyes.

“I will go sit with the girls,” said Sophronia. I knew she didn’t trust the Order or Mr. Calhoun any more than I did.

~.~

Molly and Aisha sat gazing out of one of the few upper-level windows that hadn’t been smashed and boarded over—in what used to be one of the museum eateries—eyeing the wintery view over the frozen lake in alarm and awe. Sophronia and Ethan and I sat with them, trying to give them some space and allow them room to adjust.

It had taken three hours for the girls to wake again, and another two hours for Nabaasa to hydrate them and for us to orient them to the museum and fill them in on all that had happened during their long, long sleep in the basement. We’d told them everything—from my escape, to Ethan bringing the comatose girls to the museum, to Tobias’s old house here in Miami, to the people of the castle and the books of the
Speculum Nemus
. And Prudence—I’d told them about Prudence, each word catching in my throat.

We’d tried to tell them everything gently, but there wasn’t time to give them days or weeks to recover before telling them the truth about the past two years. We were in a deadly race.

The weight of our words was evident in the way they both sat silently in their chairs, hands grasping the table tops as though to assure themselves they were really here—their eyes still shaded with confusion—still unable to process any of the past two years. I understood the strangeness they felt at knowing they had absorbed otherworld doubles of themselves—I didn’t know that I had completely accepted having absorbed the life of another.

Looking back, it was almost as if Molly and Aisha and I and everyone else were all part of some kaleidoscope—with all the pieces changing positions and colors, but all bound together, all depending on each other for the ability to move. All part of some pattern. But I was inside the kaleidoscope, and I couldn’t see the whole pattern, couldn’t figure out how the pieces all fit together.

Molly’s full lips formed a smile that was half irony and half sorrow. “Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “Except to keep going. As we did in the dollhouse—you more than anyone.”

Her eyes grew round. “Calliope... I mean, Cassie... do you still know me?”

“Of course I know you.”

“What was she like—the other Molly?”

My eyes grew wet, but I felt a smile tug at the edges of my mouth. “She was just like you.”

“Really just like me?”

“In every way. I’ll tell you, one day soon, about all she did, and about how she never gave up.”

The loss of the Molly I’d known for the past year undercut everything with a sharp blade. Loss and gain, gain and loss—no one stayed forever, no one remained the same or even in the same place.

Breathe, breathe. You can change nothing. You can’t bring anyone back who is gone. Even if you find the identical person, in the identical world, you still can’t bring them back, or be with them again in the same way. Because you are already changed by their loss.

Molly bent her head, staring fixedly at her fingers. The freckles on her face contrasted with her pale skin. Detective Kalassi had arranged for those freckles to be lasered off the skin of the otherworld Molly—to help conceal her identity when she came to live with Mom and me in Miami. I remembered the first time I’d seen those freckles clearly, when she’d run up to Ethan and me in the dollhouse and begged us to attend Jessamine’s tea party. She’d seemed like some strange, underground creature—but she wasn’t. She was just a girl, like me, forced to remain in the worst of places.

Aisha’s green-blue eyes were troubled. “So tell me, tell me who the Aisha of the other earth was. I don’t seem to have been much... in the story.”

I inhaled deeply. When we told Aisha and Molly what had happened, we’d left out much of what Aisha had done. The Aisha sitting before us might have chosen a very different path.

Ethan pressed his lips together in a smile. “Aish, are you okay to walk? Maybe we can take a walk together and we can talk about everything.”

Aisha nodded but her expression was hesitant and questioning. “I’m okay to walk.” She rose from the table.

Ethan slung an arm around her and helped her step from the eatery into the corridor. I saw uncertainty in the rigid posture of Aisha’s back—she had to know that Ethan had some difficult things to say to her. I felt sorry for both of them and the discussion they were about to have. But I knew Ethan, and I knew he would say it in the best way possible. And I knew now that when we were all at school, in the normal world, that Aisha had never really wanted him—because back then, she’d only seen herself and her own ambition.

A small girl tore through the eatery, honey-brown hair flying and eyes popping from her head. She stopped just before reaching Molly, eyeing her shyly. Molly held her arms out wide. Frances ran to her and climbed up into her lap, hugging her like she’d never let go. Frances had been kept with the other children of the museum while Molly and Aisha recovered and were told of the events of the past two years.

Nabaasa stepped behind, smiling at Frances. “She waited a long time for you to wake, Molly.”

Above Frances’ head, Molly gazed up at Nabaasa. “I heard your voice, when I was sleeping, but I thought I was dreaming.”

Nabaasa shook her head thoughtfully. “It’s incredible to see you awake and talking to us.” Her dark eyes clouded. “Frances, would you mind getting a glass of water for Missy? She needs lots of water to help her get better.”

Reluctantly leaving Molly’s lap, Frances ran out to the eatery kitchen.

Breathing in sharply, Nabaasa looked at us each in turn. “Others are saying that the recoveries were not natural, and they are of course correct. Patients do not recover from comas in the way that Molly and Aisha did. We must be extremely careful.” She rubbed her forehead. “I suspect the Order believes that some power of the castle was invoked in that basement room. I’m not sure that it is safe for any of you to stay.”

“They cannot force us to leave,’ said Sophronia. “They need us. And Ethan has done more for them than anyone else here. Certainly more than that tiresome Mr. Calhoun. They know that.”

“That is true,” Nabaasa agreed. “But the Order are fanatical—they see only their own narrow beliefs. We cannot operate on logic where they are concerned. I’ll have the guards that I trust watching over you.”

“I’m the one they want gone from here,” I told Nabaasa. “And the Order will get their wish. I don’t want to leave any of you, but I have to go—I have something I need to do.”

“Child,” said Nabaasa, “You won’t be going anywhere for days. That leg of yours is infected—you need rest and antibiotics. We have none left right now. We need yet another raid on the medical stocks of the rangers.”

A figure strode up behind Nabaasa. “I’m on my way.”

Nabaasa turned, concern in her face as she eyed Ethan. “Not you. You need rest yourself—you’re looking the worse for wear.”

“No, Ethan, don’t you go anywhere,” I agreed. “Anyway, I’ll be fine.”

“Where’s Angeline, I mean, Aisha?” Molly asked Ethan.

Ethan gave a drawn-out, regretful sigh. “She said she needed some time on her own. She’s hurting right now. Wish there was something I could say to make it easier on her, but there isn’t.”

Nabaasa nodded. “It’s a terrible load, to wake from a long coma and have all this put on your shoulders. But she’ll find her way.”

Frances returned with the water for Molly. She climbed back into her lap and promptly went to sleep—just as she’d done in the days of the dollhouse.

~.~

Ethan didn’t stay and rest. He headed out with two other guards to go and fetch medical supplies. Nabaasa told me it could take days for him and the guards to be back. Getting through the rangers’ defenses was a difficult task.

I couldn’t wait around here any longer. Now that I was away from the castle, I had to keep going—to discover all that I could. I had to go and talk to Jessamine—and ask her what her grandfather’s riddle meant. It’s was a fool’s errand. Jessamine could kill me, or trap me there. But I hoped I could get there and back before Ethan even returned.

After otherworld Molly and I had found the letter with the riddle behind the wall in Tobias’s house, we’d planned to take it to Jessamine together. But the castle had had other plans for us. There was no one who could come with me now. Molly and Aisha were only just beginning to recover. Sophronia was needed here at the museum. And Jessamine despised Ethan so much she’d probably refuse to see me at all if I went there with him—that was if Ethan would even let me go. He’d insist upon going himself, which could only be a disaster.

The riddle was the only lead I had. And I would go alone.

I looked everywhere for Sophronia in the massive museum. I knew she’d worked tirelessly on so many different jobs each day—checking the makeshift windmills on the roof that ran the electricity, feeding the rabbits and watering the plants that were food for the museum population, and a dozen other things. I found her on level three, rocking a newborn infant to sleep for his exhausted mother.

“Soph,” I said, “Do you remember months back, when the otherworld Molly and I came here and gave you a letter for safekeeping? I’d really like to see that letter again.”

Sophronia’s dark eyes narrowed slightly as she lifted the baby onto her shoulder, patting his tiny back. “I do remember and I have it. It was Tobias’s letter. What do you mean to do with it?”

“I just want to read it again.”

“It’s in the first drawer of the filing cabinet in my room,” she answered.

The mother of the baby shuffled up, holding her stomach. She cupped a hand around her baby’s head, kissing his forehead.

Sophronia’s room was an office within the museum that she shared with others, with a makeshift bed. No one had proper bedrooms here. Some had beds salvaged from abandoned homes and stores, while the rest slept on sofas and cushions.

I retrieved the letter, and pushed it securely into my pocket. Then wrote a quick note, slipping it under the pillow in Ethan’s bed.

The day was unusually still as I made my way across the broad expanse of ice and through the serpent tunnels that led to the bay. The refraction shimmered in the air—my passage away from here.

A hand lightly grabbed my shoulder. I turned with a sharp intake of breath. In that brief moment, the thought had shot through me that this couldn’t be a ranger—they would more likely put a knife in you than grab you.

Aisha’s cool aqua eyes stared back at me. She had her hair back in a knot, with loose wisps hanging about her thin face. “Are you going to look for Ethan? Sophronia’s looking for you—she’s worried for some reason.”

I returned her level gaze. “No. I’m not going to look for him.”

“But you’re going somewhere?” she persisted.

At first I was going to deny my plans, but I changed my mind and nodded.

“Are you going because of me? I know I’ve been a bit... hostile.”

“Aish, I don’t blame you for that. You went to sleep and your whole world changed.”

“My world was hardly good at the time I went to sleep. I wanted to die. I’m having trouble figuring out my world as it is now, but I want to.”

“I wish you’d woken in a normal world.”

Her mouth twisted wryly. “It’s kind of ironic to be rescued from certain death, only to end up in a whole world that’s dying.”

It struck me then, at just how much she’d had to take on board in the past three days. In the dollhouse, we’d accepted that even if we never got out, the world outside would still go on. But the world had stopped. It had frozen solid. Soon, every last living person would be gone—except for those of the castle.

Her eyes caught the reflection of the sky outside the tunnel. “Cassie... I’m okay... about you and Ethan.” She dug her hands deep into the pockets of her woolly coat. “I guess I never—I mean, I never appreciated him when I had him. I deserved to lose him.” She breathed out a stream of condensed air. “In the beginning, I wanted him so desperately because... he wanted
you
.”

“I know...” I said softly.

“You know? Did Ethan—?”

“No, it was you—the otherworld you.”

She eyed me in surprise for a moment, then tilted her head back and stared at the silvery ceiling of serpent skin. “Then you know the whole story. About Lacey’s party and how I went after Ethan, and how—”

“Yeah, but Aish, it’s all over now. All of us have to keep finding ways to start again.”

The whites of her eyes were intense in the stark light. “Wherever you’re going, I want to come. I want to help.”

I shook my head. “You’re still recovering.”

“And you have a bad leg. That’s not stopping you.” Her arms crept around her torso. “It’s because you don’t trust me, isn’t it? I know enough about what the otherworld Aisha did to know that she and you weren’t friends.”

I hugged her. “I trust you.”

Two figures stepped through the tunnel behind us.

Molly and Sophronia eyed us questioningly.

“Just sorting out some things.” I wiped wetness from the corner of my eye.

“I am glad.” Sophronia’s gaze was steady. A frown indented her forehead. “Cassandra, you are going somewhere, are you not? I suspected something when you asked for Tobias’s letter.”

Sophronia often called me by my full name. In her melodic Indian accent, my name sounded so different—exotic even. It gave me comfort to hear it said that way. One of the few other people to call me by my full name was Balthazar, and the memory of the way he hissed my name sent fingers clawing down the back of my neck.

I bent my head slightly. “I hoped to leave without any fuss. I left a note in Ethan’s bed so that no one would worry.”

Sophronia’s eyes opened wide. “Please tell me you are thinking of taking that letter to Jessamine? I do remember that was what you and the otherworld Molly planned to do.”

“Yes....”

I heard a sharp intake of air from Molly and Aisha.

Sophronia shook her head, her deep brown eyes surveying me. “You were going to do this on your own? And what is it you hope to achieve by giving her this letter from her grandfather?”