The Butterfly Garden (2 page)

“So you’ve done this a few times before,” I croaked.

She handed me the glass of water.

Even folded over on herself, on a stool beside the bed, it was easy to see that she was tall. Tall and sinewy with long legs and lean muscles like an Amazon. Or a lioness, really, because she slumped bonelessly like a cat. Tawny gold hair was piled atop her head in some fancy nonsense, revealing a face with strong architecture and deep brown eyes with flecks of gold. She wore a silky, black dress that tied high around her neck.

She accepted my frank appraisal with something like relief. I suppose it was better than shrieking hysterics, which she’d probably gotten before.

“I’m called Lyonette,” she said when I’d looked my fill and given my attention back to the water. “Don’t bother telling me your name because I won’t be able to use it. Best to forget it, if you can.”

“Where are we?”

“The Garden.”

“The Garden?”

She shrugged, and even that was a fluid gesture, something graceful rather than inelegant. “It’s as good a name for it as any. Do you want to see it?”

“I don’t suppose you know a shortcut to a way out of here?”

She just looked at me.

Right. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, planted my fists on the mattress, and realized I could see every bit of me there was to see. “Clothing?”

“Here.” She handed me a piece of silky, black something that proved to be a slinky, knee-length dress that came high around the neck and low on the back. Really low. If I’d had dimples on my ass, she’d’ve been seeing them. She helped me tie the ropy sash around my hips, then gave me a gentle push toward the doorway.

The room was plain, severely so, with nothing in it but the bed and a small toilet and sink in one corner. In another corner was what seemed to be a tiny open shower. The walls were made of thick glass, with a doorway in place of a door, and there was a track on either side of the glass.

Lyonette saw me looking at the track marks and scowled. “Solid walls come down to keep us in our rooms and out of sight,” she explained.

“Often?”

“Sometimes.”

The doorway opened into a narrow hallway, running along to my right, but only a short way on my left before it hit a corner. Almost directly across from the doorway was another entryway with more of that tracking—it led into a cave, damp and cool. An open arch on the far side of the cave brought breezes running through the dark stone space, bits of light catching in the waterfall that babbled and churned just outside. Lyonette led me out from behind the curtain of water into a garden so beautiful it nearly hurt to look at it. Brilliant flowers of every conceivable color bloomed in a riotous profusion of leaves and trees, clouds of butterflies drifting through them. A man-made cliff rose above us, more greenery and trees alive on its flat top, and the trees on the edges just brushed the sides of the glass roof that loomed impossibly far away. I could see tall black walls through the lower-level greenery, too tall to see what was beyond, and little pockets of open space surrounded by vines. I thought they might be doorways to halls like the one we’d been in.

The atrium was massive, almost overwhelming in its sheer size before you even looked at the riot of color. The waterfall fed into a narrow stream that meandered down to a small pond decked in water lilies, white sand paths tracking through the greenery to those other doors.

The light through the ceiling was deep lavender and streaked through with rose and indigo—evening. It had been bright afternoon when I was taken, but somehow I didn’t think it was the same day. I turned in a slow circle, trying to take it all in, but it was too much. My eyes couldn’t see half of what was there, and my brain couldn’t process half of what I saw.

“The fuck?”

Lyonette actually laughed, a hard sound that abruptly cut short as though she were afraid anyone might hear it. “We call him the Gardener,” she said dryly. “Apt, no?”

“What is this place?”

“Welcome to the Butterfly Garden.”

I turned to ask her what that meant, but then I saw it.

She takes a long sip of water, rolling the bottle across her palms. When she shows no signs of continuing, Victor gently taps the table to get her attention. “It?” he prompts.

She doesn’t answer.

Victor pulls the photo from his jacket pocket, laying it on the table between them. “It?” he asks again.

“See, asking me questions to which you already know the answer doesn’t make me inclined to trust you.” But her shoulders relax and she leans back into the seat, on familiar footing.

“We’re the FBI; usually people think we’re the good guys.”

“And Hitler thought he was evil?”

Eddison lurches to the very edge of his seat. “You’re comparing the FBI to Hitler?”

“No, I’m engaging in a discussion about perspective and moral relativity.”

When they got the call, Ramirez went straight to the hospital, and Victor came here to coordinate the deluge of incoming information. Eddison was the one to tour the property. Eddison always reacts to horror with temper. And with that thought, Victor flicks his eyes back to the girl on the other side of the table. “Did it hurt?”

“Like hell,” she answers, tracing the lines on the photo.

“The hospital says it’s a few years old?”

“You make that sound like a question.”

“A statement seeking confirmation,” he clarifies, and this time the smile creeps out.

Eddison scowls at him.

“Hospitals are many things, but completely incompetent doesn’t tend to be one of them.”

“And what the hell does that mean?” snaps Eddison.

“Yes, it’s a few years old.”

He recognizes the patterns now from years of asking his daughters about report cards and tests and boyfriends. He lets the silence hang for a minute, then two, and watches the girl carefully flip the photo over. The shrinks on the larger team would probably have a thing or three to say about that. “Who did he have do it?”

“The one person in the world he could trust without reservation.”

“Multi-talented man.”

“Vic—”

Without taking his eyes from the girl, Victor kicks the leg of his partner’s chair, jarring him. He’s rewarded with that suggestion of a smile. Not the real thing, not even a ghost of it really, but something like it.

The girl peeks under the edge of the gauze taped around her fingers, fashioned like gloves rather than mitts. “The needles make a hell of a sound, don’t they? When it’s not what you choose? But it is a choice, because there
is
the alternative.”

“Death,” Victor guesses.

“Worse.”

“Worse than death?”

But Eddison pales and the girl sees, and rather than mocking him for it, she gives him a solemn nod. “He knows. But then, you haven’t been there, have you? Reading about it isn’t the same.”

“What’s worse than death, Maya?”

She scrapes a nail under one of the fresh scabs on her index finger, peeling it away so dots of blood blossom against the gauze. “You’d be amazed at how easy it is to get tattoo equipment.”

For the first week, there was something slipped into my dinner each night to make me docile. Lyonette stayed with me during the days, but the other girls—of which there were apparently more than a few—stayed away. This was normal, she told me when I remarked on it over lunch.

“The weeping thing stresses everyone out,” she said around a mouthful of salad. Whatever else could be said of the mysterious Gardener, he provided excellent meals. “Most prefer to stay out of it until we know how a girl’s going to settle in.”

“Except for you.”

“Someone has to do it. I can put up with the tears if I have to.”

“Then how grateful you must be that I haven’t provided you with any.”

“About that.” Lyonette stabbed a strip of grilled chicken and twirled her fork. “Have you cried at all?”

“Would there be a point to doing so?”

“I’m either going to love you or hate you.”

“Let me know, I’ll try to behave accordingly.”

She gave me a fierce smile, all her teeth showing. “Keep that attitude, but don’t do it with him.”

“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—