The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1)(25)

“She’ll stay here. We’ll get some blankets, see if we can find a cot, and in the morning we’ll resume.”

“You really think that’s a good idea?”

“A better idea than letting her go. If we keep her here, rather than moving her to a holding cell, it’s still an active interrogation session. Even Senator Kingsley isn’t going to butt in during an active interrogation.”

“Are we holding our breath on that?” He gathers the trash from dinner, stuffing everything into one of the bags until the paper splits and bursts around the strain, and heads to the door. “I’ll hunt down a cot.” He yanks open the door, scowls at the returning Inara and Yvonne, and stalks away. Yvonne nods to Victor and returns to the observation room.

“What a pleasant man,” Inara notes dryly, and slides into her seat on the far side of the table. The soot streaks and dirt are gone from her face, her hair neatened into a heavy twisted bun.

“He has his uses.”

“Please tell me talking to damaged children isn’t one of them.”

“He’s better with suspects,” he allows, and wins a hint of a smile. He looks for something to occupy his hands, but Eddison’s compulsiveness straightened everything on the table. “Tell us about being in the Garden.”

“Meaning?”

“Day to day, when nothing out of the ordinary was happening. What was it like?”

“Boring as all fuck,” she answers succinctly.

Victor pinches the bridge of his nose.




No, but seriously, it was boring.

There were usually twenty to twenty-five of us in the Garden at any given point, not counting Lorraine, because really, why would she have counted for anything? Unless he was out of town, the Gardener “visited” at least one of us a day, sometimes two or three if he didn’t have to work or spend time with his family or friends, which meant he still didn’t spend time with all of us within a single week. After what Avery did to me and Giselle, he was only allowed in the Garden once a week, and only under his father’s supervision, though he defied that as often as he thought he could get away with. It didn’t last long, anyway.

Breakfast was served in the kitchen at seven-thirty, and we had until eight o’clock to eat so Lorraine could get everything cleaned up. You couldn’t get away with skipping meals—she watched us eat and reported it to the Gardener—but one meal in a day you were allowed to be “not as hungry.” If you did it twice, she’d show up in your room to do a checkup.

After breakfast—except those two mornings of maintenance, when we were stuck behind walls—we were free until twelve, when lunch was served in another half-hour window. Half the girls went back to bed, like they thought sleeping through the days would make them go faster. I usually followed Lyonette’s example, even after she was in the glass, and made my mornings available for any girls who needed to talk. The cave under the waterfall became an office of sorts. There were cameras everywhere, and mics, but the crash of even such a small waterfall made it too difficult for conversation to come across clearly.




“And he allowed this?” Victor asks incredulously.

“Once I explained it to him, sure.”

“Explained it to him?”

“Yes. He sat me down to dinner one evening in his suite to ask about it, I suppose to make sure we weren’t fomenting rebellion or something.”

“And how did you explain it?”

“That girls needed some semblance of privacy for mental well-being, and as long as those conversations kept the Butterflies healthy and whole, why the fuck did it matter? Well, I expressed it a little more eloquently than that. The Gardener liked elegance.”

“Those conversations with the girls—what were they like?”




With some of them it was just venting. They were restless and scared and pissed off and needed someone to talk all that feeling from them. They’d pace and rage and pound the walls, but at the end, if their hands and hearts were sore, they were at least a little further from breaking. These were the girls like Bliss, only they lacked her courage.

Bliss said whatever she wanted, wherever and whenever she wanted. Like she said the first time I met her, the Gardener never asked us to love him. He wanted us to, I think, but he never asked us to. I think he valued her honesty, just as he came to value my straightforwardness.

Some of the girls needed comfort, something I was not especially good at. I could have patience with the occasional tears, or the tears that came of that first month in the Garden, but when it went on and on and on, for weeks and months and even years . . . well, that was generally when I lost patience and told them to get over it.

Or, if I was feeling magnanimous that day, I sent them on to Evita.

Evita was an American Lady, her back inked in faded oranges and dull yellows before the wingtips spread to intricate black patterns. Evita was sweet, but not quite bright. I don’t say that to be mean, but because it’s true. She had the understanding of a six-year-old, so the Garden was a daily source of wonder for her. The Gardener only came to her once or twice a month because she always got so confused and scared by what he wanted from her, and Avery wasn’t allowed to go near her at all. Every time the Gardener came, we all worried that she’d end up in glass, but that simple sweetness was something he seemed to treasure.