Dollhouse

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2012  Anya Allyn All rights reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced without prior written permission, excepting quotes not greater than four paragraphs used for review purposes.

ISBN-13: 978-1475034721

ISBN-10:1475034725

Third Edition September 2012

1. ETHAN
2. AISHA
3. RAIF
4. LADIES WELL
5. QUESTIONS & LIES
6. LACEY
7. BLACK WINDS
8. THE DECISION
9. TRACKING
10. TRAITOR
11. WHEEL OF DEATH
12. NOCTURNE
13. WAKE ONCE AGAIN
14. JESSAMINE
15. ON A WHIM, ON A WISH
16. EMPTINESS IS A PLACE
17. DARKEST WAY
18. LORD OF MISRULE
19. CONFESSIONS
20. AEOLIAN HARPS
21. STARFISH IN THE SKY
22. THE LOCKET
23. ROSE PETALS
24. STRIKES OF THE SERPENT
25. SHRINE
26. SOPHRONIA'S SIGHT
27. ALL MY BLOOD
28. REQUIEM

Night.

I hated night. I'd had night terrors since I was a little kid. I'm not a screamer, but I would have screamed the neighborhood down had he not clamped a hand over my mouth.

He crouched on the floorboards like a fugitive. "Cassie, I need to stay here tonight. I'll be gone before daybreak."

I nodded, not understanding, struck by the strangeness of Ethan McAllister here in my room. Mutely, I breathed him in. Breathed in that warm scent of earth and trees and the faint tang of wood fires. He always smelled of the forest. He lived with his grandfather in a ramshackle cottage right at the base of the mountains.

Outside my window, the mountains of Barrington Tops were far away, so far they were just black teeth edging towards the moon.

His face fell into shadows beneath the faint yellow of my desk lamp. Stupidly, I wondered if he guessed I slept with the touch lamp on all night.

"They're coming for me," he said.

"Who... ?" But the next second, I knew.

He cast his eyes downwards. "The police are saying it was murder."

I shivered in my thin pajama pants and singlet. "How can they know that for sure? She ran off. She got lost...."

He shook his head into my shoulder, dark hair brushing my shoulder, forests scents thickening in the air—so thick I could barely breathe. "They're saying it's not possible for someone to just disappear like that. And they're right. Aisha's footsteps just... stop."

There had been light rain on the morning of our trek through the mountains. Enough to see our footsteps in places. And the police dogs had been able to track Ethan, Lacey and me all the way off the mountains. But not Aisha. Aisha had somehow been swallowed up, devoured. That's how it had seemed. We'd searched for half an hour before calling the police, but none of us had found so much as a trace of her.

"You know I'll always be on your side." It wasn't much, but it was all I had to offer.

"You're about the only one left in this town who still is."

"And Lacey. She was there too that day. She knows you didn't do anything."

It seemed a lifetime ago now, the four of us out on a day's hike for that stupid school assignment.

"Lacey's dad is a cop. She won't side with me for long."

I swung my legs out of bed and sat beside him on the floor. "Ethan, how are you so sure the police are looking for you?"

He gave a short, derisive snort. "I was outside—getting wood for the fire—when they came to talk to granddad. They didn't see me, but I heard what they said. Seems someone claims to have seen Granddad in the woods that day. It's a dirty lie. Granddad can't walk further than the letterbox these days."

"But why would it matter if he
had
been there?"

He eyed me with a direct gaze. "Now that it's a murder investigation, police are pretty anxious to pin down a culprit...."

"Oh God...."

 "And if they think Granddad is involved, for sure they think I am too."

I shook my head against that thought, shutting it out. How could Ethan and a frail old man be accused of Aisha's murder?

He turned his face slightly. A dark bruise curved from his temple to his cheek.

"Who did that?" I gasped.

"Doesn't matter."

"Raif...  right?"

Aisha's brother had been pushing Ethan around ever since Aisha disappeared, demanding to know
what he did to her
.

"Forget it."

The smell of cold sweat hung in the air as Ethan shrugged a backpack from his shoulders. I realized he must have run here all the way from his grandfather's house.

I eyed the heavily-laden backpack. "That's camping gear. You're not heading back into the mountains...  are you?"

No answer came.

"You can't go back there. If the police are looking for you, their dogs will track you no matter where you go."

He shrugged uneasily. "I know how to dodge being tracked."

"How long can you live out there? It's crazy."

"I'm going to find out what happened to Aisha, no matter what. For granddad's sake. And for Aisha's." The muscles around his jaw clenched.

I toyed numbly with the ties of my pajama pants. "But who's going to look after your grandfather? He's been sick a lot lately, yeah?"

"Yeah. But if I don't fix this, maybe both me and granddad will end up in jail. He'll die in there. I can't let that happen."

I knew Ethan had a close relationship with his grandfather. Aisha had told me he'd first come to live with him when he was nine, the year his parents died in a car crash. Ethan often missed school to look after his grandfather, but he refused to tell anyone what was wrong with the old man.

"Cassie, I need to trust you. You can't tell anyone I was here. And you can't tell anyone where I'm going."

His eyes were fathomless. I'd do whatever he asked, even if I ended up wading in so deep I drowned myself. And I knew with all certainty that something had began, like an invisible stream pulling me adrift.

He settled back against the scatter cushions on the floor. He nodded gratefully as I pulled a spare blanket from the end of my bed and gave it him. Sitting cross-legged beside him, I watched as he fell into a troubled sleep. My bedroom felt suddenly small, too small to have the long, wiry frame of Ethan lying there.

I should have gone straight back to bed. But a ball of pain sat low in my stomach.

I'd been dragged from my home seven months ago by my mother and her new boyfriend. After the non-stop parties and crowded beaches of Miami, this deeply forested part of Australia had seemed the end of the world. But on the first day at my new school, I'd laid eyes on Ethan, and I'd glimpsed a piece of home—not any home I'd ever known before, but just
home
.

Too bad he and Aisha had become an item. I'd had to stay content having Ethan as a friend.

I'd never wanted any boy before him.

And now, I might never see him again.

A crushing guilt closed over me as a single thought invaded my head—the thought of Ethan being free to love again. Maybe in a couple of months, when this was all over....

No, it was wrong to feel...
this
. Ethan was Aisha's boyfriend. Even if... she really was dead.

If I could go back to the day of the hike, I wouldn't let myself notice the exact hue of Ethan's sepia eyes, or wouldn't allow myself to stand so close to him that we breathed the same honeyed square inches of air.

Because Aisha noticed everything. Every detail. Every moment.

No one knows that but me.

I'm the reason she ran off that day.

Ethan walked ahead with the sun touching his shoulders. Misting rain made the hair on the back of his neck moisten into curlicues. Everything about him was off-kilter, from the wiry slant of his back—where his backpack swung from one shoulder—to the carelessness of his voice.

He was the most real person I’d ever known.

Aisha and Lacey strode behind Ethan in their butt-length drill shorts—Lacey with her match-sticks for legs and Aisha with legs that were really too big for clothing like that. Spots of cellulite dimpled the very tops of Aisha's thighs—tiny spots, but still, they were there. Did Ethan even notice that?

Ethan took a step back to let Aisha catch up to him, his mouth flicking upwards in that familiar grin—holding the expression in a way that made her cheek flush. I knew it was meant to be a private moment, but I couldn’t help staring.

The green fractals of the forest and the eons of faint star clusters above—my math teacher’s order in the universe—were nothing like the thoughts that jumped at me like thieves. When your friend has a boyfriend, you are supposed to back off. But I'd liked Ethan before he and Aisha had hooked up, which had only been in March, at Lacey's fifteenth. And Aisha was so moody—sooner or later she’d drive him nuts. Maybe it was just a waiting game.

Finally, we reached Devils Hole lookout. We had the bulk of the assignment done already.
The 'Tops
had the distinction of being one of the few places in the world where you could walk through such a range of forest types in a single day—everything from sub-alpine to sub-tropical.

I traced my finger along a dirt-encrusted metal plaque:

Devil’s Hole lookout

1450 metres above sea level