Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) (31 page)

My thoughts raced. My spirit ached for Ethan. I wanted to go to him. But every ticking second brought us closer to the return of the people of the castle—and we almost had the object that Balthazar had sought for centuries in our grasp.

Every inch of me revolted at the thought of the book being in his possession.

I couldn’t wait. I needed to get to the bottom of the bay and get Tobias’s puzzle box. There was diving gear in a storeroom at the museum—Ethan and Derrick had taken the equipment from an abandoned surf store in Miami and brought it there. Ethan had told me that he, Derrick and Zoe used to put the diving gear on and go spear fishing in the bay. I had to hope that it was still there and hadn’t been destroyed.

Frowning, Nabaasa placed a hand on my shoulder, her gaze centering on me. “Child, you have no intention of resting, do you?”

~.~

I stood at the edge of the frozen bay, next to the stone barge of Vizcaya—with a dozen others from the museum. Wind blustered through the night. Four of the men chipped a hole through the thick ice, while Derrick, Zoe and I prepared ourselves. Derrick and Zoe would help me look for the box while three of the guards would protect us as best they could with the spear guns. The people above the ice would keep watch for castle dwellers.

Zoe fitted the mask to my face. I’d been given twenty minutes worth of instructions on how to breathe underwater—already the mask felt suffocating. Reaching for my gloved hand, Molly squeezed it tightly. I gave her a nod, trying not to give away how terrified I was. Sophronia, Aisha, Ben, Raif, Lacey and Mr. McAllister stood watching anxiously.

Zoe gestured to me. She and Derrick and the other guards were ready. The others attached ropes around our middles.

Stepping to the edge of the hole that had been made, we crouched and let ourselves tumble backward into the dark water. Cold bit into my limbs. So, so dark down here—like falling at night into a plot of earth reserved for a coffin. The face mask felt like a tomb. Derrick and Zoe switched their underwater lights on, but the lights didn’t penetrate far—and it wouldn’t be long before the serpents sensed our lights and followed them to us.

Fear gripped me, almost paralyzing my limbs. I had to keep moving. Steadying my breathing, I kicked downward.

A mass of silver flashed above me. My shoulder jerked as I raised my head. A school of fish streamed past.

I swam down and around the footholds of the barge. If there ever had been sea grasses here, there were none now—the bottom floor of the bay was devoid of life. The thick layer of ice had killed everything. At least the barren landscape made everything easier to see. Derrick and Zoe swam in opposite directions around the barge—we had to cover as much ground as possible in the shortest amount of time. If the serpents came, we had to leave quickly and try again later—and hope they didn’t guess why we were down here.

I moved rocks aside, not finding anything. Derrick and Zoe came up alongside me, shaking their heads. A thread of panic pulled my spine tight. Was I wrong? Or had Tobias returned here and collected the box?

I sucked in a too-rapid breath. Had I really believed the shiny puzzle box would just be sitting here for any diver to see and find? Tobias had wanted to keep the box hidden. I remembered seeing Tobias pouring a cement cast in his garage. Could that cement cast be connected to the fate of the copper box?

Turning, I headed for the waters beneath the winged mermaid on the bow of the stone ship. I pulled away rocks, looking for a rock large enough to house something a bit smaller than a milk crate. There was a rock that didn’t look like the others—it was covered in old barnacles but the color was light—like cement. Training my headlight on it, I could just make out a seam. I pulled a knife from my belt and pushed it into the seam. Wriggling the knife back and forwards, I tried cracking the seam open.

Derrick and Zoe swum up to me, taking their knives out to help. The seam gave way—silt pouring out. Inside, I saw a square metal object. A hard lump catching in my throat, I raised my eyes to Derrick and Zoe and nodded.

Someone shook my shoulder—one of the guards. She pointed behind us. Enormous shapes moved swiftly through the water, coming toward us. My intestines turned to ice water. There were dozens of serpents. I sensed their collective rage at their invaded space, at what we’d done to them just hours before. I tried to send out the shadow from within me, but failed—I couldn’t gather a center of strength. Here, underwater, I couldn’t stand on firm ground and concentrate.

The serpents surged closer. If they guessed what it was that caused us to take such a tremendous risk, they would do anything to stop us.

Taking the box from its watery grave, I tugged on the rope. After an anxious second, the people on the other end of the rope responded and I was pulled upward through the black water.

As I broke the surface, hands reached down to haul me and the box up. Derrick, Zoe and the other guards splashed through the water after me.

Serpents smashed through the ice, rearing up. They howled with injured rage, their cries swooping through the air. Seeing their immense bodies rise up from their territory—the water—was terrifying. We backed away as the ice cracked from beneath us. Silvery eyes gazed at us with alien hatred.

A child’s scream pierced the night.

“Frances!” Molly cried in alarm. “What are you doing here?”

Frances’s body was racked with sobs, her face swollen with tears. “You can’t leave me again,” she screamed at Molly in a voice raspy with fear and cold. “You can’t leave me!”

A shadow crept from the water, stealing toward Frances. She was the easiest target.

Yelling, I hurled my shadow from me—sending the other shadow back into the bay.

The shadows would kill all of us if we had our backs to them, fleeing back to the museum. We had to stop and fight—and it would take all of us.

Running to Frances, I handed her the box. “Listen to me! I want you to take this back to the museum. Run and don’t stop until you see Nabaasa. If you want to help Missy, then do this—else we’ll all get hurt.”

“Yes, please Frances,” breathed Molly.

Frances nodded somberly. She took off like a rabbit across the snow.

Behind me, the battle had already begun.

~.~

The puzzle box sat on a table made of a wooden sign and two short filing cabinets, Nabaasa polishing the intricate decorations around it with a cloth.

We’d banished the shadows again, but they were attacking with greater fury. We hadn’t lost anyone this time, but I didn’t know if any of us could survive another attack. We’d quickly dried off and changed into dry clothing, and re-joined the others.

I crept over to the box, seeing it clearly for the first time. The metal was a deep, burnished brown, each of the six sides of the box featuring mermaids and mermen swimming atop wavy currents of water. There was no latch, no keyhole, not even a discernible seam. Jessamine was right—it was a puzzle box without any way in.

“So this is it,” said Dr. Sharma with wonder in her voice. “This contains a book that is thousands of years old....”

“I hope so.” I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I’d searched for this book ever since finding out about its existence. And now, it was here before us.

“But how do we open the thing?” questioned Derrick. “We’d need a grinder to get through that. We have the tools—just no electricity anymore to work them.”

“You must destroy it! Destroy it!” Sister Bettina flung her hands around in agitation.

Another of the guards nodded. “Look, if the stuff inside the book is that damned dangerous, then we should take it out on the ice, put dynamite around it and explode the thing to smithereens.”

“No.” Sophronia snapped her head around, staring at him with cool brown eyes. “My family and ancestors guarded the first of the books for centuries. They knew what it was, yet they did not destroy it. We should not destroy knowledge, no matter how dangerous that knowledge may be.”

Sister Bettina stiffened. “You would have the books fall into the wrong hands, and have all of humanity, on every world, subject to the dark overlords that take power? My Order has faithfully kept the castle from getting their hands on such power. But now that protection is gone. We cannot keep the book safe—and we must rid the world of it!”

Anger boiled inside me. “You—you are the ones who allowed the castle in,” I railed at Sister Bettina. “You let them take Ethan. You’re the reason the museum is ripped to pieces.”

The sister’s face pinched. “To err is human. We are not God.”

Sophronia slammed a hand on the table. “I cannot let you convince the others to destroy this book. The books exist on other worlds—worlds that we and the castle cannot reach. They cannot be destroyed. And even if we could, should we destroy the knowledge that tells us how to reach every corner of every universe?”

“That is God’s knowledge, not ours.”

“How do we know what God wishes us to know?” persisted Sophronia. “And do we even know what we are, or who we are? You and me and everyone standing here is made of the same material as the stars. We do not understand ourselves, let alone the universes.”

Sister Bettina primly folded one hand over the other. “You’ve been brainwashed—raised in a temple from the moment of your birth—to do the devil’s work, to keep safe his instructions to ruin everything in creation.”

Sophronia inhaled deeply. “Then you tell me, Sister Bettina, you tell me where it is written that we should not explore more than just this earth. And please, do not quote those Bible phrases about wandering stars. I have been taught the religious texts of books from all religions, and you are using that quote out of context.”

“I used my own interpretation, guided by my relationship with the Lord,” she said.

Sophronia marched toward her, from around the table. “Before, when the Order was the only thing keeping the castle at bay, we were forced to accept your ruling. But what makes you and your Order any different from the dark overlords you spoke of, if you were forcing your ideals onto all of us? We were forced to keep the families and children here, because you wouldn’t allow them to go to another earth. You allowed children to die, rather than keep them safe. I was taught to know the right time to read the book, and that time is now.”

Sister Bettina clutched at the high neck of her coat. “We did what we thought best, and we will be judged in the next life.”

“As I will be judged,” said Sophronia, holding Sister Bettina’s gaze.

Dr. Blakeney scratched his temple, seeming to be uncomfortable with the altercation between Sister Bettina and Sophronia. He picked up the box, weighing it between his hands. “It’s heavy. Solid copper on the outside I’d say, and maybe steel on the inside.”

Molly bent her face down to the box, running a finger over a mermaid’s tail. I was reminded of the otherworld Molly, touching the roots of the tree on the wall carving in Tobias Fiveash’s house. When Molly had fitted Jessamine’s locket into the matching indentation, the roots and branches had moved across each other to reveal the hidden drawer.

Gently, I took the box from Dr. Blakeney. Turning it over, and over again, I followed the long, unbroken line of the sea currents around the box.  The currents were all made of copper, from one long, flattened and hollow tube, beginning with a small disc-shaped opening at the top of one side. I frowned deeply. “What if... what if something else is meant to open the box? Like, does something go in here?” I pointed to the opening.

Lacey gasped. “Remember the riddle? A puzzle for a penny. Could it be that a penny goes in there? It’s the right shape.”

Zoe fished in her pocket and pulled out a penny.

“You carry around pennies?” Derrick stared at her.

“It’s my lucky penny,” she told him. “Where I go, it goes. Hasn’t failed me yet.”

Taking the penny, I inserted it into the opening. It rolled inside, but nothing happened. I emptied the coin back out again.

Dr. Blakeney bent his head. “Ocean current... electric current... I wonder.”

Zoe screwed her face up. “Do you want to share with us?”

Adjusting his glasses, Dr. Blakeney tapped the box. “Well, these wavy cylinders are meant to be ocean currents. But there is of course, another kind of current—an electrical one. The box is made of a solid copper. We can create an electrical current by passing a magnet through the tube—it’s basic science.”

Derrick folded his arms. “What good would that do us?”

“I don’t know,” the scientist conceded. “But maybe, the person who owned this box had a special penny that was actually a magnet—a trick penny. It is a puzzle box, after all. Perhaps the only thing that opens it is an electric current running through it.”

“So where are we going to find a magnet to try this out with?” asked Derrick.

Zoe fished in her pocket and produced a key ring. “I got a magnet on this. It’s the keys to my pickup truck. I keep a magnet on the key ring to hang them up on the fridge at home—so’s I don’t keep losing them.”

“Okay,” said Derrick, “so you carry your keys around too? Damn, girl.”

She shrugged. “There’s always hope I’m going to drive my pick-up again one day, hey?”

Dr. Blakeney inspected the key ring that she proffered. “I’m afraid this one isn’t any good. It’s the right shape, but not nearly strong enough. We need a rare-earth magnet, a neodymium or samarium-cobalt magnet.”

She stared at him frowning.

“In other words,” the scientist said, “something strong enough to crush your bones, should you have two of them.”

She made a whistling gesture. “So we’d have a snowflake’s chance of finding one.”

“Oh, they’re not actually rare,” he said. “If we had the time to raid every kid’s bedroom in Miami, we’d eventually find some neodymium magnets—though maybe not as strong as what we need.”

Sophronia straightened. “I remember a children’s exhibit on the second floor—not long after I came out of the coma. It was a collection of small robots and trains and things—all held together just with magnets.”

Dr. Blakeney nodded. “Ok, someone go get it. But do take care. If they turn out to be the ones we want, they’re dangerous.”