The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1)(5)

“Why does he want me sleeping at night?”

“Precautionary measures. There’s a cliff right outside, after all.”

Which made me wonder how many girls had thrown themselves over before he implemented those precautionary measures. I tried to gauge the height of the man-made monstrosity. Twenty-five, maybe thirty feet? Was that high enough to kill someone on impact?

I’d grown accustomed to waking up in that empty room when the drugs wore off, Lyonette sitting on a stool beside the bed. But, at the end of the first week, I woke up on my stomach on a bench with hard padding and the astringent smell of antiseptic thick in the air. It was a different room, larger, with metal walls rather than glass.

And it had someone else in it.

I couldn’t see at first, not with the drugged sleep still seaming my eyelids together, but I could feel someone else there. I kept my breathing slow and even, straining to hear, but a hand settled on my bare calf. “I know you’re awake.”

It was a man’s voice, midrange and cultured with a Mid-Atlantic cast to it. A pleasant voice. The hand smoothed up my leg, over my ass, and along the curve of my back. Goose bumps prickled in its wake, despite the warmth of the room.

“I’d prefer for you to lie very still, otherwise we’ll both have cause to regret it.” When I tried to turn my head toward his voice, the hand moved to the back of my skull to keep me still. “I would prefer not to bind you for this; it ruins the line of the work. If you feel you cannot remain motionless, I will give you something that will guarantee it. Again, I would prefer not to. Can you be still?”

“For?” I asked, almost in a whisper.

He tucked a glossy-smooth piece of paper into my hand.

I tried to open my eyes but sleep meds always made them gunk up more than usual in the morning. “If you’re not going to start right now, may I please sit up?”

The hand stroked my hair, the fingernails scraping lightly against my scalp. “You may,” he said, sounding startled. He did, however, help me sit up on the bench. I rubbed the crystals from my eyes and looked down at the picture in my hand, aware of how his hand kept caressing my hair. I thought of Lyonette, of the other girls I’d seen from a distance, and I couldn’t say I was surprised.

Creeped out, but not surprised.

He stood behind me, the air around him filled with a spicy cologne. Understated, probably pricy. In front of me was a full tattooist’s setup, the inks arrayed on a standing tray. “It won’t be the full design today.”

“Why do you mark us?”

“Because a garden must have its butterflies.”

“Any chance we could leave that metaphorical?”

He laughed, a full, easy sound. This was a man who loved to laugh and didn’t find as much cause to do it as he’d like, and was therefore always delighted by the opportunity. You learn things over time, and that was one of the biggest things I learned about him. He wanted to find more joy in life than he did. “Small wonder my Lyonette likes you. You are a fierce spirit, much like she is.”

I didn’t have an answer to that, nothing that made sense to say.

He carefully hooked his fingers through my hair, pulling it back over my shoulders, and picked up a brush. He worked it through my hair until there wasn’t a single knot to be found, and even after. I think he enjoyed it as much as anything else, really. It’s a simple pleasure, brushing someone else’s hair. Being allowed to. Eventually he pulled it into a ponytail and wrapped it with an elastic, then coiled it into a heavy bun and secured it with a scrunchie and rubber-tipped pins.

“Back onto your stomach now, please.”

I obeyed, and as he moved away I caught a glimpse of pressed khakis and a button-down shirt. He turned my head to face away from him, my cheek pressed against the black leather, and placed my arms loosely at my sides. It wasn’t quite comfortable, but wasn’t direly uncomfortable either. When I steeled myself not to jump or flinch, he lightly slapped my rear. “Relax,” he instructed. “If you tense, it will hurt more and take longer to heal.”

I took a deep breath and forced my muscles to unclench. I curled and uncurled my fists, and with each uncurl I released a bit more tension from my back. Sophia taught us that, mainly to keep Whitney from her periodic breakdowns, and—




“Sophia? Whitney? These are some of the girls?” Eddison interrupts.

“They’re girls, yes. Well, Sophia probably counts as a woman.” The girl takes another sip, eyes the quantity left in the bottle. “Actually, Whitney would too, I guess. So they’re women.”

“What do they look like? We can match their names to—”

“They’re not from the Garden.” It’s hard to interpret the look she gives the younger agent, equal parts pity, amusement, and derision. “I had a life before, you know. Life didn’t begin at the Garden. Well, not this Garden anyway.”

Victor turns the photo over, trying to calculate how long such a thing must have taken. So large, so much detail.

“It wasn’t all at once,” the girl tells him, following his eyes to the pattern. “He started with the outlines. Then he went back in over the course of two weeks to add in all the color and detail. And when it was done, there I was, just another one of the Butterflies in his Garden. God creating his own little world.”