The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1)(70)

“So things went back to normal.”

“Such as it was.”

“But something had to change.”

“Something did. Its name was Keely.”




Or, more properly, its name was Avery, and its victim was Keely.

I saw a lot less of Desmond once the semester started. It was his senior year and he was carrying a full course load, but he came in the evenings and brought his textbooks so he could study, and just like I’d helped Whitney, Amber, and Noémie study once upon a time in the apartment, I helped him. Without booze. Bliss helped too, by making fun of him whenever he got something wrong.

Or even just not completely right.

Bliss seized on any opportunity to make fun of him, really.

Avery’s mood went from foul to worse as he watched his brother be such a part of the Garden. Like I said, most of the Butterflies liked Desmond. He didn’t ask anything of them. Well, he asked them questions, and left it to them whether or not to answer.

He asked their names sometimes, but it had somehow become a tradition in the Garden that you only gave your name as your goodbye. But we told him that Simone had once been Rachel Young, that Lyonette had been Cassidy Lawrence. Any of the ones we knew who couldn’t be hurt by the reminder.

Desmond wasn’t a threat to them.

Avery, on the other hand, savaged Zara so badly during sex that his father banned him for a full month, then had to drug him to avoid the hissy fit that tried to follow. Zara could barely walk after that, and every part of her was bruised. Someone stayed with her at all times just to help her with basic functions like showering, getting to the toilet, and eating.

Lorraine was a competent enough nurse—if hardly a compassionate one—but she wasn’t a miracle worker.

Infection set into Zara’s hip, and it was either take her to a hospital or put her in glass.

I think you can safely guess which one the Gardener chose.

For the first time, he told us that morning, so we could have a full day with her to make our goodbyes.

I gave him a sideways look when he told me that, which was met with a lopsided smile and a kiss to the temple. “Even when it’s just a swift embrace and a stolen whisper, you share things with each other in those moments. If it can provide Zara—and the rest of you—any comfort, I’d like to see that you get it.”

I said thank you because he seemed to expect it, but part of me wondered if it was better to just have it happen all at once, rather than dragging it out over the day.

Before he left for class, Desmond brought us a wheelbarrow so we could maneuver Zara through the Garden. He smiled when he brought it, smiled as he kissed my cheek and left for school, and Bliss swore so fluently that Tereza blushed.

“He doesn’t know, does he?” she panted when she could speak a language other than Obscenity. “He really has no clue.”

“He knows Zara is ill; he thinks he’s doing something nice.”

“That—that . . .”

Some things don’t need a translator.

That afternoon, while the Gardener walked with his wife in that other greenhouse that was so much closer than it seemed, Zara pushed herself up to sitting on her bed, sweat matting her fiery orange hair. “Maya? Bliss? Can you wheel me around for a bit?”

We folded a blanket into the wheelbarrow and arranged a few pillows under and around her, stabilizing her hip as much as possible. It wasn’t her only broken bone, but it was decidedly the most painful. “Just in a lap through the hallway,” she instructed.

“Looking for real estate?” Bliss asked, and Zara nodded.

It was something you couldn’t help but wonder about. When you died, which case would you be in? I was pretty sure I knew which one the Gardener had picked out for me; it was right beside Lyonette, and positioned in such a way that you could see it from the cave. Bliss thought she’d be on my other side, just the three of us, hanging out forever in the fucking wall for future generations of Butterflies to wonder about and fear.

We walked slowly through the hall, me pushing the barrow and Bliss doing her best to stabilize the front. Zara stopped us near the front entrance, where the scent of honeysuckle filled the air and mixed with a more chemical smell from one of the rooms we never, ever saw open. Like the tattoo room, Lorraine’s room, and Avery’s former playroom, the walls were opaque and solid, with a punch pad beside an honest-to-God door. We weren’t supposed to be here.

And I’d still never seen Des put in his main door code.

“Do you think if I asked for this one, he’d give it to me?”

“For the honeysuckle?”

“No, because we all avoid this part. Then I wouldn’t be seen as much.”

“Ask him. Worst he can do at that point is say no.”

“If I asked you right now to kill me, would you?”

I studied the empty glass case because I didn’t want to see if she was serious or not. Zara could be cruel, mocking the other girls until they cried, but she didn’t have much of a sense of humor. “I guess I’m not that good a friend,” I said finally.

Bliss said nothing.

“Do you think it hurts?”

“He says it doesn’t.”

“And you believe him?”

“No,” I sighed, leaning against the doorway into the plant life. “I don’t think he knows one way or the other. I think he wants to believe there’s no pain.”