The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1)(76)

The girl finally regained consciousness around two in the morning, groaning as she started to feel all the various aches and pains. I sat on the bed and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Keep your eyes closed,” I said softly, pitching my voice low and comforting as Lyonette had taught me. I’d pretty much never done it before, but this girl needed me to be softer to her, fiercer for her. Sophia, I thought, would have recognized that distinction. “I’m going to put a damp cloth over your face to help take away some of that pain.”

Danelle wrung out the washcloth and handed it to me.

“Where—what?”

“We’ll get to that in a bit, I promise. Can you swallow pills?”

She started crying. “Please don’t drug me! I’ll be good, I promise, I won’t fight anymore!”

“It’s aspirin, nothing more. I promise you that. It’s only to help the pain a little.”

She let me sit her up enough to put the pills on her tongue and drink some water. “Who are you?”

“My name is Maya. I was taken by the same people who took you, but I’m not going to let them hurt you anymore. They won’t be able to touch you.”

“I want to go home.”

“I know,” I whispered, adjusting the cloth over her eyes. “I know you do. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want to be blind anymore, please let me see!”

I shielded her eyes and slid away the cloth, watching her blink against even that much light. Her eyes were different colors, one blue and one grey, and the blue one had two freckles in the iris. I angled my hand so she could see my face without staring directly into the overhead light. “Better?”

“I hurt,” she whimpered. Tears spilled from the corner of her eyes into her hair.

“I know you do, sweetheart. I know.”

She rolled over and pressed her face into my lap, her skinny arms wrapping around my hips. “I want my mom!”

“I know, sweetheart.” I curled over her, my hair spilling around her like that was any kind of shield, and held her as tightly as I could without causing pain. “I’m sorry.” Sophia’s Jillie would be eleven by now; this girl seemed around the same age, maybe a year older. But thinking of Jillie hurt just then. This child just looked so young and fragile, so broken. I didn’t want to think of bold little Jillie like that.

She cried herself back to sleep, and when she woke again a few hours later, Bliss brought us all fruit. “Lorraine didn’t make breakfast,” she whispered to me and Danelle. “She’s been sitting in the kitchen staring at the wall all night, according to Zulema and Willa.”

I nodded and took one of the bananas, taking my seat next to the child. “Here, you must be hungry.”

“Not really,” she said miserably.

“Part of that is shock, but try to eat anyway. The potassium will help your muscles, help them not be so tight and painful.”

She gave a quivering sigh, but took the banana and bit into it.

“This is Bliss,” I said, pointing to my tiny friend. “And this is Danelle. Can you tell us your name?”

“Keely Rudolph,” she answered. “I live in Sharpsburg, Maryland.”

Forever and a half ago, Guilian had said something about Maryland.

“Keely, do you think you can be brave for me?”

Tears welled up in her eyes again, but God love her, she nodded.

“Keely, this place is called the Garden. There’s a man and his two sons who take us and keep us here. They make sure we have food and clothing, that we have what we need, but they don’t let us go. I am so sorry that you were kidnapped and brought here, but I can’t change that. I can’t promise that you’ll ever see your home or family again.”

She sniffled and I slid my arm around her shoulders, hugging her against my side.

“I know it’s hard. I’m not just saying that, I really do know. But I promise you that I will take care of you. I won’t let them hurt you. Those of us who are kept here form a kind of family. We argue sometimes, and we don’t always like each other, but we’re a family, and family looks out for each other.”

Bliss gave me a crooked smile; even though she didn’t know much, she knew that wasn’t how I’d been raised.

But I’d gotten a taste of that in the apartment, and I’d learned the rest of it here. We were a fucked-up family, but a family nonetheless.

Keely looked at Danelle and shrank against me. “Why does she have a tattoo on her face?” she whispered.

Danelle knelt down in front of the bed, taking both of Keely’s hands in hers. “This is another thing you have to be brave for,” she said gently. “Do you want to hear it now, or do you want to wait for a little bit?”

Biting her lip, the child gave me an uncertain look.

“It’s your choice,” I told her. “Now or later, you can choose. If it makes it easier, I promise that it’s not going to happen to you.”

With a deep, shaky breath, she nodded. “Now then.”

“The man who keeps us? We call him the Gardener,” Danelle said simply. “He likes to think of us as Butterflies in his Garden, and he tattoos wings on our backs because it helps him pretend. When I was first brought here, I thought that if I made him like me more than anyone else, he’d let me go and I could go home. I was wrong, but I didn’t learn that quickly enough, and he did the wings on my face to show others that he thought I was happy with what he did.”