Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (21 page)

Devlin squinted. “What? There’s another one of ’em? Shoot her before she gets away.”

A girl stood near the tree line, silently watching us. She began running straight toward us, her long scarf flapping. She wasn’t the teenage girl we’d seen with the group of Eaters before. This girl was smaller, with white hair flying loose from beneath her ski cap.

The sergeant’s eyes grew large. “Hold your fire, Devlin!”

Lacey stepped through the snow, bundled in thick winter clothing. My legs weakened. This was the Lacey I had known before my escape from the Dollhouse.

She made her way over to her father. “Why are you going to shoot my friends, Daddy?” She tilted her head.

His arm grew slack, the rifle dropping down. “Lacey... What are you doing in the forest?”

A small smile flittered across her face. “I like it in the forest. I’m never alone here.”

He glanced over his shoulder nervously. “What do you mean, never alone? Who else is here?”

“Never mind, it’s just me, Daddy. No one else.”

“I didn’t know... you were still alive,” he told her.

“You thought I died just like Mum and my sisters? No, I didn’t die. But I found out something. I found out what you were doing out here all the time. Not looking for food and keeping us safe from the people eaters. Oh no. You were out here trying to dig up buried treasure. You let the people eaters get your family.”

His face crushed. “I didn’t mean for any of you to die. That wasn’t my fault.”

“I kept Amy and Jacinta safe for years, Daddy. I kept a secret, to save their lives. Do you know what the secret was?” She paused for a moment, her blue eyes widening at her father. “The secret was that Henry Fiveash was keeping missing girls in the dollhouse under that very house that’s behind us. Do you know what he said he’d do if I didn’t keep his secret? He said he’d get my sisters and feed them to the serpent. He made me find girls for him, so he could keep them deep underground.” Her face saddened. “But all those terrible things that I did didn’t save my sisters in the end.”

The sergeant’s face and hands trembled. “You’re telling tales, Lacey. Henry Fiveash did no such thing.”

“Am I?” She wound a lock of hair around her finger. “Don’t you get it, Daddy? He was using you, all along. I found out that you knew about the girls in the dollhouse, a few weeks ago. The Henry that lives inside that house was drunk, as usual, and talking about his miserable life—and about you, Daddy. Henry was stringing you along all those years, promising you a cut of the inheritance, just so that when girls went missing, you’d make sure no one would find the secret place that led down to the dollhouse.” She placed a finger on her lips. “And there’s another secret that Henry was hiding from you. He’s a ghost, Daddy. He hasn’t been alive since 1920. That man inside the house is not the same Henry you’ve been speaking to all those years. You were shortchanged by a ghost.”

Lacey’s father stared at her like he’d never seen her before.

Devlin’s fist curled around his gun. “This is getting ridiculous. She’s spilling even worse crap than the others. Don’t get soft now, Dougherty. You have to do what you have to do. There’s eight of ’em now—that’s four each for us to take out.”

“Not my daughter,” said the sergeant.

“Think of it as a mercy killing,” said Devlin. “Her brain’s as fried as a toad on a hot highway. She’ll only get picked up by the Eaters and you don’t want that.”

Lacey’s father fixed his gaze to the ground and nodded.

A scream fled my lips as Devlin aimed at Lacey and shot her.

She dropped to the icy ground, her blood spilling red onto the snow—blood that darkened the front of her white parka. Her unseeing eyes faced the wintry sky.

With a desolate cry, Ben raced to her side.

Lacey’s father’s eyes bulged as he stared at his dead daughter, his mouth quavering.

Devlin pointed his gun at the kneeling Ben.

“No!” Raif yelled.

Turning sharply, Devlin pointed the gun at Raif. “You just bought yourself the next bullet.” Devlin took a shot—missing as Raif leapt sideways.

In the distance, a girl screamed. She ran to us from the side of the house. Devlin frowned, his hand freezing on the gun. I gasped. Her pale hair hung limply over her shoulders, her thin body dressed in nothing more than a short, antique black dress and torn white stockings.

Lacey.

The otherworld Lacey from the castle.

“You hurt my friend,” she said simply.

Every muscle in the sergeant’s face clenched, disbelief etched in his eyes. He went to speak but no words came, as though his throat was caught up and choking.

She cast him a look of pure hate. “You made your own daughter die. You’re a bad daddy. I gave her something you never did. I made her happy. You always said she was too weird to have friends. But I’ve been coming to see her, here in the forest, for months now. Oh, we talk about everything. No one understands us better than each other.”

She stared up at each of us in turn. “I must go—there isn’t time to talk... Please don’t judge me too harshly.”

Kneeling, her fingers curled around the hand of her twin from the other world. “Now she’ll have a friend with her always.”

And then she was gone.

Ben knelt back on his heels, his face in mute shock.

Devlin hung his jaw open. “What is this—some kind of dumb arse trick?”

The dead Lacey’s eyes snapped open.

Struggling, she rose to her feet.

She stared with a glazed expression at her father and Devlin. Black tendrils of smoke began to wind and drift from her eyes. Smoke poured from between her pale pink lips.

“Are you scared of me now, Daddy?” said Lacey. “Did you like it better when I was scared of
you
?”

The black shadow curled through the air, its fingers reaching toward the sergeant.

“I don’t know what the hell you are, but you’re not my daughter.” He swallowed hard, stumbling back.

Devlin’s eyes were wide and staring. He raised his arm straight and robot-like, as though his mind were half-gone, and aimed his gun at Lacey.

Aisha screamed as a shot shattered the air.

Devlin’s head twisted, and he fell heavily to the ground, his jaw slack against the ice.

For a moment, I didn’t understand. Then I saw Molly standing with her gun pointed at arm’s length.

Lacey’s father gaze moved in an arc from Devlin to Lacey, his breaths loud and gasping. With a shaking hand, he raised his gun at his daughter.

But as he tried to shoot her, Sophronia silently, deftly moved behind him—and forced his knees to buckle from under him. He shot a bullet erratically into the air instead. With a shout, she rained two sharp and fast blows on his neck and shoulder.

Raif charged at Sergeant Dougherty with a roar, pushing him to the ground. Taking the sergeant’s gun, Raif tossed it to Sophronia. Then he turned back to the sergeant and brought down a smacking punch to his temple.

Lacey took measured steps over to her father, the blood on her parka already beginning to thicken and dry. “Don’t you know what the darkness is, Daddy? It’s the shadow of the serpent. It lives inside me. Every time I took someone into the dollhouse, it wrapped around me and a piece of it entered me. I did bad things, Daddy. Maybe I’m too much like you.”

“You’re a freak.” His gaze didn’t leave Lacey as he heaved Raif off himself. “You get away from me....”

Lacey shook her pale head. “I was always a freak to you. I never measured up. Too skinny, too dumb, too strange. And I was a girl. You wanted a boy. You wanted a son who would be a mini-you. But you got me. And then you got Amy and Jacinta. No sons. And you took it all out on me. The freak.”

Making unintelligible noises, Lacey’s father turned and loped away toward the trees.

“Shoot him!” Raif spoke from between gritted teeth, staring at the two people who were now holding guns—Molly and Sophronia.

“We don’t need to,” Sophronia told him. “He won’t be back.”

For a second, Raif eyed Sophronia with rage reddening on his face. Then his expression softened. “You’re right. Any sane person wouldn’t come near any of you lot—I can see that none of you are even surprised at what just happened here.” He tilted his head at her. “And hey, you’ve got some ridiculously lethal moves.”

“Didn’t I tell you that?” She smiled at him. “In any case, it is unfortunate for Lacey’s father, but he has run in the direction that those people eaters went. I am afraid things will not end well for him.”

“I don’t care,” said Lacey, her eyes deadening.

Rushing toward Frances, Molly scooped her up and hugged her tightly. Frances buried her head in Molly’s neck.

Hot tears formed in my eyes.

We were alive.

Lacey was dead.

Lacey was alive.

“Let’s get that wound bandaged,” Aisha cried, running to Lacey.

Aisha and I helped unzip Lacey’s parka and unbutton the layers of clothing underneath. A bullet hole marked the fair skin beneath her right ribcage. But it was more of a fresh scar than an injury. A small metal object glinted where the inside of her shirt was tucked into her jeans.

I picked the metal object up between two fingers. “God, the bullet was pushed straight out.”

Aisha shook her head in wonder, exhaling a stream of condensed air. “Lacey... you’re going to be okay.”

Lacey stood there stiff and numb. “I don’t deserve for you to care if I am okay or not.”

“You saved our lives.” I bit my lip, my eyes brimming.

“I’m my father’s daughter,” she replied. “I hurt people to save myself.”

Sophronia eyed Lacey with her cautious dark eyes. “There is always a point from which we can turn and go a different way. And do not worry about us. We should not keep hold of grudges, lest the grudges become us.”

Ben let the gun in his hand drop to the ground. He stared at Lacey with an expression I couldn’t read. Whatever thoughts were rushing through his mind, he was hiding them well.

Lacey drew her small mouth in, stealing a glance at Ben. “Don’t pretend you’re not freaked out by me.”

“I’m not freaked out,” he told her. He paused. “Okay... I’m freaked out. But now... you make sense. I’m just going to have to pretend I didn’t see that other Lacey and that I didn’t see that bullet Cassie’s holding.”

Raif kept looking at Lacey, then swiftly looking away. I knew he was having trouble accepting what he had just seen.

“Ben... and Raif,” I said softly. “There’s so much we have to tell you, but there isn’t time right now. Just know that this is the kind of lives we’ve been living—and for us, it’s normal. But don’t worry—if you go near Lacey, she’s not going to absorb you or anything. It doesn’t work like that.”

Ben gazed at me nervously. “Good to know. Although it’s true that I always have been absorbed by her.”

Lacey gave Ben a tight, questioning smile.

“We have to go now.” Molly stared at the slumped body of her uncle.

Raif put his arm around his sister. “Whatever comes next, Ben and I are ready.”

Ben nodded his fair head. “Today I’ve seen missing girls appear from nowhere, I’ve had guns pointed at me, I’ve seen an alien shadow pour from someone’s eyes, I’ve seen two girls become one... and I’ve seen the death and resurrection of someone that I... think more of than she knows.” He gazed away into the forest, embarrassed by his last words. “It can’t get any more intense than that.”

Lacey stared at him at though he were a stranger.

“Okay, you two,” said Molly. “If you come with us, you might see things you can’t begin to imagine. But you’re going to have to keep your head. I don’t know you, but from what I’ve seen so far—I think you can do that.”

Ben inhaled sharply. “Let’s head.”

C
ASSIE

We hurried across the wintry yard. The dogs were gone—I hoped they’d found somewhere to go—despite their chasing me down that day in the forest. I stepped inside the shed—the others following. Everything was exactly the same as I’d remembered. Only this time, thin layers of ice lay on the floor. The rainwater tank—being completely set into the ground—was iced over, its lid hard to even see.

Aisha tucked dark hair under her snow cap. “So what’s next—we find a pick?”

“What do we need a pick for sis?” Raif looked around at the old machinery and bookcases.

Aisha pointed at the rainwater tank. “We’re going down there.”

He raised his dark eyebrows, his aqua-colored eyes so similar to Aisha’s. “What in the hey now?”

“Just trust us,” she told him.

Molly glanced at the top of Frances’s head. “I don’t know that we should take Frances down there. She wasn’t supposed to be here.”

Frances gazed back at her with clear eyes. “Are we going down to where Jessamine is?”

Molly nodded, concern tightening her face.

“I want to see her,” said Frances.

Frowning, Molly bit down slowly on her lip, thinking. “I just... never could have imagined taking you back there if we ever got out.”

“Please.” Frances gave Molly a plaintive look. “We need to stick together, just like we did in the dollhouse.”

She sounded so much older than her six years.

Molly nodded, but she still looked uncertain.

Ben tugged his ear beneath his snow cap. “Did I just hear right? You’ve been down there before? You called it a... dollhouse?” A frown crossed his forehead. “That’s where you all were, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Lacey quietly. “That’s where they were.”

Raif plunged his fist deep into his pocket, eyeing his sister. “You were under my damned feet all that time I was searching for you here.”

Shaking his head, Ben smiled wryly. “Guess we’re about to see this dollhouse place. Did you say there’s still a girl down there? So, we’re heading down there to rescue her?”

“She needs rescuing,” Sophronia replied with a tinge of sorrow in her voice. “But there is nothing we can do to save her.”

Raif turned to Sophronia for clarification, but she told him,
do not ask
.

Molly raised troubled blue eyes to Raif. “You should know that if you go down there, there is a risk that she won’t let you out again.”