Free Paper Dolls by Anya Allyn Page A

on my arm, giving it a light squeeze. “Yeah, they’re all okay. Recovering well. All in different hospitals.”
    “Have you spoken to them?”
    He scratched his head. “Aisha and little Frances, yes. Sophronia won’t speak to us.”
    My forehead drew in tight. “What did they tell you?”
    “It’s best that I don’t go into that right now. I hope you’ll understand. And Frances is understandably experiencing nightmares at the moment—we couldn’t stay and talk with her for more than a minute.”
    “She was brave in the underground—Frances.” It physically hurt me to think of her trying to process everything that had happened to her. She was just a little kid. It hurt me also that Molly didn’t live to see Frances escape from the underground. Molly would have given anything to see that day. I drew a long breath. “When will… when will Molly’s funeral be? I want to go.”
    He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. That’s not going to be possible. There’s a private family matter that I can’t explain at this time.
    Tears misted my eyes. “I didn’t get a proper chance to say… goodbye.”
    “I know.” He raised his eyes to me. “I know.”
    He leant his tall frame back in the chair. “Now, we have a few questions for you, but we’ll try not to overstay our welcome.”
    “I’ll make sure of that,” said mom, casting her stern look around at the detectives.
    The men and women were introduced, but their names flew past me. I was still drowsy from the sleeping tablets, still reeling from the newspaper article about Ethan and his grandfather. The only name I caught was Sarah Bryant—the detective who had been at the site of the rescue that night with Detective Kalassi.
    A dark-eyed man with thin, pinched cheeks breathed outwards loudly. “Okay, so we know the basics, as awful as they are. I’d like to focus for a moment on the makeup you all had to wear—a rather special makeup. Can you tell us more about that?”
    I steeled myself.
Just answer the questions. Don’t think
. “We had to wear makeup every day. Makeup that made us look like dolls.”
    “Can you say why you had to wear this?”
    I went to answer
Jessamine
, but stopped myself. “I don’t know.”
    “Who required that you wear it? Henry Fiveash?”
    “I guess. All the girls knew they had to wear it.”
    “What happened if you didn’t?”
    “If we disobeyed any orders, we were starved of food.”
    The detectives busily wrote in their notebooks.
    “So you were rationed?” said the thin-cheeked man. “How were the rations supervised? What would happen if you’d taken more than your allowed ration?”
    I closed my eyes. “We were forced into a secret cave, to spend time in complete darkness.”
    My mother gasped, placing her hand over her mouth.
    “You were put in isolation?” he said.
    “Yes.” I closed my eyes.
    I had to wear Audette’s black dress that swarmed over me like insects and then other people’s dreams ran through my head and I found myself in endless black tunnels and I didn’t know how I’d got there and I sensed the shadow coming for me….
    “Cassie, are you okay?” asked Detective Kalassi. I opened my eyes into the detective’s concerned face.
    “I’m okay,” I breathed.
    The thin-cheeked detective steepled his fingers. “I want to ask about Ethan McAllister. I understand he was put in a cell within the underground—for almost the entire duration that you were there.”
    “Yeah, he was.”
    “Why is that?” he asked.
    Because he took a knife to Jessamine. To a ghost.
“Because he was violent.”
    “Violent to whom?”
    “He was just… very angry. Angry at those who were keeping us in the underground. He threatened to kill our captors.”
    The detectives scribbled in their notebooks again.
    Detective Bryant gave me a sympathetic smile. She had pale eyes that drooped at the corners and messy auburn hair. “I’d like to ask about Lacey Dougherty now. I hope that’s all right.”
    I