Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (3 page)

“And now, wilt thou waltz with thy new husband, my Cassandra?”

It was said not as a request but as a command. His claw-like hands grasped my shoulder and fingers. He led me into a stiff dance, his breath hot and dead on my neck, the only sound the swish of my wedding dress—its brittle train of lace dragging along the floor.

Minutes passed, the stygian darkness of Balthazar’s chambers eating into my soul. My mind moved out of my body and drifted above. I could see a frozen bride in an aged bridal gown and a mottled, misshapen groom moving together in an endless waltz.

“
Je dis bonsoir, ma belle
.” His words scuttled across me like insects.

“Each midnight,” he told me, “thou may go unto the ocean passage, to take sea air into thy human lungs. Alas, the air in my chambers hath proved poisonous to some of my brides. But before dawn thou must return. If thou dost not return, I shalt be woken. And my fury shalt rage like ocean storms.”

Taking my hand, he led me to the bed and pulled back the curtain. “Thou wilt take rest here, beside me, until I pass into slumber.”

He laid himself down, crossing his arms over his torso—in exactly the same way that Jessamine used to do, in the same way she had insisted we all should sleep.

Panic rattled through me as I moved onto the bed and placed my arms across my chest.

Desperation pricked my skin. How would I even know when it was dark or light outside? I gazed to the side. All types of rusted, fantastical devices stood about the spaces of the cavern. But no clock.

Would Balthazar wake if I left the marriage bed? He had said I could leave here at midnight each night, and the time had to be close to midnight now. But I needed to wait and ensure he was deep in sleep before I left.

I looked to the right and left of me. There was nowhere to sit and rest, nowhere to sleep—except to sit on the chair where he had just been—or lie on the bed next to him. I could not bear to sleep beside him each day. I would sleep in the chair, on the other side of the chambers.

Lying along the furthest edge of the bed, I stared into the dim light.

This is my life now. Every second of my seventeen years ticking down to this. And this was my future. My mind moved out of my body—and drifted above. I could see a frozen, aged bride in a bridal gown and a mottled, misshapen groom lying on the bed together.

I forced my eyes to close.

C
ASSIE

I woke with a gasp, back into the nightmare, sensing the figure of Balthazar so close beside me.

Fingers brushed my arm. My body sprung into a sitting position, my heart thudding.

A small beetle-like man stood at my bedside, his deeply hooded eyelids almost hiding his needling eyes. “Your skin is cool like the walnut trees in the orchards.”

I recognized him—he was the old man who was making the marionettes in the dungeon room. He was the man who had made the wooden casings for all the skeletons in the cabinet.

“I doth have a beauteous walnut tree for thee. I hath nurtured it, kept it free from borers and insects. It is ready to be cut.”

I inched back toward the head board, glancing sideways toward the deformed figure of Balthazar lying beside me.

“Do not concern thyself with the monseigneur,” he told me. “He will not stir. Lest thou give him reason to. Now you wilt come with me.”

“I cannot,” I whispered.

“I am afraid I must insist. The monseigneur gave me his instructions after the marriage. My name is Voulo the artisan. Thee were to spend thy wedding night in the monseigneur’s bed. In the morn, he instructed that I paint thee, just like the others.”

“It cannot be morning yet.”

“It is close enough. It is the fourth hour. I hast been watching thee and waiting for thee to wake. Now, thee must come.”

Quavering, I shook my head.

“I am to paint thee on canvas, and thee wilt model for me. If thou doth refuse, I shalt be forced to wake thy husband.” He bade me follow him.

I stepped behind him across the chambers and through a hallway so narrow the sides scraped my arms. The hallway opened into a dimly-lit room—the walls crowded with paintings—all young girls, stiffly-posed in their bridal gowns, their eyes telling a story of frozen horror. My mouth fell open.

In spite of myself, words formed in my throat. “What happened to all of them...?” I whispered.

He drew his eyebrows apart in a nonchalant expression. “The buds on the rose bush doth burst into bloom, yet doth they wither.”

“But they... they were all just my age when they....”

“
Oui
. They hath scarcely come to bloom when taken by the affliction.”

“Affliction?”

“A curse—a witches’ curse. The rose bush doth bear an affliction, covered as it be in black spots that cause it to wither and die. And so doth the brides wither on the rose bush. The master doth hath need of progeny, to disperse and carry on the wind, to all corners of the earths. Glorious kingdoms of the Batiste name wilt then reign over all else. Yet, his blooms doth not produce. There is devilment afoot.”

Stepping over to the end wall, Voulo pulled back a black curtain that hung over a painting.

I gasped. The girl in the picture had black growths crawling over her face and neck—the growths eating into her skin. Her fair hair hung limply over glazed blue eyes. The artist had drawn in sly-faced demons behind her.

I jerked my head away as he let the curtain drop. My breath remained trapped in my chest. That was what the girls had been afflicted with? The curse was real?

My thoughts scattered away, incoherent.

Voulo threw back an oily, paint-splattered burlap from an easel. He ran his fingers over a set of paints, then picked up one of the canvases from against the wall and fitted it to the easel. “Pray thee to stand beneath the lamp.”

“I don’t want to be painted.”

“I hath painted each of the master’s brides. As I wilt paint thee. Thou wilt stand where thou be directed to stand. And thou must remain still—control thy breath.”

Air strained in my lungs as I obeyed him.

He selected a paintbrush, his eyes of black stone regarding me coolly. There was no light in his eyes, no trace of human compassion. I realized he was a ghost, like Balthazar.

I posed like a statue, like I was already one of Balthazar’s past wives, captured forever in a framed painting. I remembered Lacey’s words—how she worried that she would not be remembered because there would not even be a photograph or painting left behind of her. I would rather be buried in an unmarked grave than preserved for eternity like this.

Hour upon hour passed. He was a spirit and he never tired. His nimble hand worked the paintbrush in small strokes on the canvas. My back and legs ached, and I could barely contain their trembling.

Finally, he was done. He turned his easel around so that I could see his work. I was unrecognizable. The cheekbones, the hair and the face shape were mine—but the stiff set of the lips, the frozen expression of the eyes, the old lace of the wedding gown were as though they belonged to someone else. I looked no different to the paintings of the other girls. This picture of me could have been painted in another era, in another century.

“I must complete the background and the rest of thy bridal gown before it is ready to hang upon the wall.”

My limbs relaxed a little. “I can leave now. The monseigneur said that I could take walks out in the ocean passage between midnight and dawn each night.”

He lifted heavy-lidded eyes to me. “But it is now after dawn and thee art forbidden to be outside at such an hour.”

“But I need to go out of here....”

He sighed. “Need is a human creation. Thou need for nothing in the realm of Balthazar. Thou art his and that is all.” He inclined his head. “But thee may go retire now to thy waiting place.”

“Waiting place?”

“Yes, where thee are to wait and sleep each day.”

“I will sleep on the chair,” I said quickly.

“There be another place for thee.” He gestured to me. “Come.”

He stepped out to the chambers and over to the cabinets. Bending his squat neck back, he surveyed the girls standing forever frozen in their compartments. He reached a hand toward a compartment to the left of the middle row, beside Etiennette. “Yes. This is the one for thee.” He turned to me with his eager gaze and squirming, pursing lips.

Every muscle in my body went rigid as he made his way to the nearby sets of keys. Surely, I had misunderstood him. His accent was thick and his voice low. He could not have meant he had selected a compartment for me.

He selected a large brass key and then pushed a small step ladder over to the cabinet.

“Thou wilt take thy place now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Thou must take thy place with the others. We must have order while the monseigneur rests.”

Fear crawled through my intestines. “You... you cannot put me in there. I’ll suffocate.”

“Thou wilt survive, if thou dost measure out her breaths. Every night, at the midnight hour, I wilt come and unlock your door, and thee canst stretch your limbs. But thou must returneth before the dawn.” He turned his head toward Balthazar. “If thou wish, thou may wake him so thee may protest thy confinement. But know thee that the monseigneur desired this, and should you wake him, thee wilt knowst the nature of an angered beast.” He glanced purposely back at the torture devices occupying the spaces of the chamber.

My mind closed in. Shaking, I stepped inside the compartment. My elbows knocked against the sides. A wooden ledge behind me was barely large enough to sit upon. Voulo closed the door and pushed the key into the lock. He stopped to admire his placement of me in the cabinet before ambling from the room. Pressing my hands against the thick glass, my mind screamed over and over and over. There was not enough room to kick or elbow the glass—and even if I did manage to crack it, a diamond-patterned metal grid secured the door.

What if Voulo did not return
?

What if I died here? Of every kind of death that had rushed through my mind this night, every one of them had set me free of the castle. But this death, this death would hold me here forever.

Breaths stuttered through my chest. Voulo had told me to steady my breathing. But he had most probably never been inside such a thing as this himself. I slowed my breathing, trying to find a center of calm, anything to stop the madness that spiraled through my head. I pushed my fingers in the join between the door and the walls of my tiny prison. There was a gap—enough for a small amount of air to come through. Stale, underground air.

On the wall opposite, the board holding the myriad keys mocked me. Each key was large and of a dark metal, but every one of them was different. If a key was lost, the matching compartment could not be opened. If the key to my door were to be lost, I would remain here forever.

Stop
, I told myself. Stop thinking such thoughts.

My head grew heavy.

If I slept and never woke, then so be it.

~.~

I snapped my eyes open to the rattle of metal.

Voulo stood there, staring upward, key ring in hand. He’d been watching me sleep. Every one of my muscles tensed as he scraped the stool over to the cabinets. But the door he pushed the key into was not mine. Nor the next, or the next. When he reached the compartment beside mine—Etiennette’s—he reached for a key he had on a chain around his neck.

My nerves jangled into a twisted knot by the time he reached my door. Was it a game he was playing with me? But his eyes were mirthless.

He inserted the key into the lock and turned it.

Stiffly, I rose and pushed myself out. I would have fallen had he not caught me. He eased me to the ground.

“
Non
! Thou canst not move so in such haste. Thou must take care.” He eyed the girls in the cabinet. “Just like wood. Thou limbs must not be forced. Thou must stretch and work the flesh first. Yes, work the flesh.”

With a gasping cry I moved away from him. I’d been promised the air of the ocean and the terror struck me that he might push me back in there again before I’d had a chance to get out of here.

He brushed a hand across the air. “The cabinets—I doth crafted them at the master’s request. But they were never meant to be made for the... living.” He eyed me distastefully. “The beauty of the butterfly is better preserved in death than in life.”

Revulsion washed through me at his words. I turned my head. The door of the chambers was open. Wordlessly, I stumbled toward it.

Like a starving man, I raced out and along the corridor. Wind blew across my face and I gulped it down into my lungs. The night sky beyond the ocean passage was black, but not the colorless black of Balthazar’s chambers. The sky was rich and velvety.

Voulo appeared at my side, almost out of my line of sight. “I wilt return for thee just before the dawn.”

Staring directly ahead, I gave a rigid nod.

Balthazar gained pleasure in looking at all his past wives, while Voulo viewed us all as butterflies skewered in a glass case. I sensed he couldn’t wait for his latest butterfly to stop uselessly fluttering her wings.

I stepped alongside the balcony wall, my hands scraping over the weather-roughened stone work, trying to move as far away from Voulo as possible. But when I turned my head, he was gone.

I dropped to my hands and knees, seeking solace in the cold floor.

Moments slipped away while my mind moved into a grayness, into a void. Into insanity.

Willfully, I let it happen. Insanity would be my best defense against my life as it was now. To become as Emerson had been—catatonic, unthinking.

But underneath everything—a place that only Ethan had seen—something refused to give me that peace. It was the drumbeat I’d heard in the dollhouse when I’d tried to die, that distant heartbeat urging me to seek life.

Rising, I let the fresh night air seep through me, let it wash the foul air of Balthazar’s chambers away. I would live for the nights out here in the ocean passage.

I walked to the antechamber where Zach and Parker’s fathers had taken me. As they had said it would, a meal waited for me there. At every bite, my stomach twisted, but I forced the food down. To stay strong, I had to eat.