Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) Read Online Free Page B

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.
    There was a bowl of water, to freshen up with, and two clean dresses. I changed out of the wedding dress, casting it aside like a disease-laden cloth.
    At the first dim light just before sunrise, Voulo returned. I walked ahead, trying not to show my fear.
    My day locked away in the cabinet became days. Days of staring out at the last place Etiennette had known before she died. The sight of the empty cradles of her babies haunted me whether I slept or remained awake. Sometimes I imagined the cradles rocking, or imagined the flame of the candles on the nearby set of drawers flickering as though someone had brushed past them.
    My mind was a shattered mirror. I saw only parts of the whole. I saw only what was reflected back to me, not what was really all around me. I imagined that if I could see past the broken pieces of mirror of my mind, I would see everything.
    Balthazar slept on. I knew that part of him never slept. I sensed his hunger roaming the chambers like a caged lion.
    At midnight, Voulo came to unlock the cabinet. As he did every time, he unlocked a series of cabinets before mine. This time, I watched his movements closely. He unlocked six cabinets before mine, then remained behind and rapidly locked them again after I was out. Voulo was a strange man, and perhaps it was part of some ritual in his deranged head that made no sense.
    Out in the ocean passage, I ate the food left for me, and spent my time running as fast as I could to the end of the passage and back again. The passage was only around two hundred feet in length, but enough to build up pace. I would not allow myself to wither and waste.
    Each morning, at first light, my mind rebelled as Voulo led me back to my prison. Each time, I had to calm the mounting fear that threatened to envelop every one of my senses. I learned to sleep in that strange half-sitting half-standing position, learned to measure out my breaths. I learned to start flexing and loosening my muscles as soon as I heard Voulo in the chambers.
    The jangle of the keys wakened me yet again. Voulo carried out his unlocking ritual. He unlocked the doors in exactly the same pattern as he had done the night before—the same pattern as every night.
    I moved out from my compartment as he unlocked my door. As always, he hurried to lock the other doors. In exactly the same pattern, but in reverse.
    I stretched my back. Pain shot through it like a vice. The hours I spent out of the compartment were not enough.
    Voulo noticed my wincing expression. “Yes, it is not a place for live flesh. I didst not construct it for the living.” His quick eyes moved over me. “Come. I have something to show thee.” He gestured toward the room where he had painted my picture.
    I shook my head. “I-I want to go out of here now.”
    “In time. But thou must see.”
    Reluctantly, I followed him into the room of the paintings.
    As before, dozens of sets of eyes pierced me with their terror. My heart raced, knowing the fear these girls had suffered. It was overwhelming,