Chapter 1
Birdie
My mind claws awake first. Then my lungs. For a moment, I don’t know if I’m breathing or drowning or being buried alive. My sense of smell hits. Salt, wet earth, varnish, chemicals and dust. Mocking relief. I’m very much not dead…yet.
Panic peels my eyelids open, grainy with grit.
Where the hell am I? I blink until shapes gather in the dark.
Memory crashes in through fog. He was there, in my house.
He was wearing Butterfly Man’s mask. He called me a little butterfly, and then he hit me.
Everything went black afterward, and I woke up here.
A ceiling swims above me. Damp, hairline cracks snake across it. A single bulb dangles overhead. The weak glow throws a sickly circle of light over timber-lined walls.
Where the fuck did you take me? I bolt—try to bolt—upright, but nothing happens. My back is a log against a cold surface. My fingers don’t belong to me. My wrists don’t answer. My legs don’t exist. “What?” My voice scrapes out.
I will my neck to turn. It obeys shakily, while my shoulders remain locked.
It seems I can feel everything. My body is in one piece, but my breath is shallow and I can’t move from the neck down.
I look down at my body. Straps bite into wrists, chest and ankles.
A gasp gets stuck in my throat when I realize I’m naked, my limbs spread wide.
A breath of ocean sneaks in through some hidden vent, mixing with the sour bite of chemicals.
The smell is wrong, half seaside, half funeral.
Color tickles my vision. Glass glints at the edges of the room.
I twist my head and see rows of cases. Butterflies, tens of them, frozen in glass coffins.
Their stillness is absolute, more final than death.
Air trembles out of my lips. “What the fuck?”
Footsteps slide out of the shadows. My heart dips.
Then it steps into the cone of light. The butterfly mask.
“Easy, little butterfly,” it murmurs. I say it because the mask seems to be floating by itself.
The voice coming from it is metallic, synthetic.
Is this a tech gimmick or is the real Butterfly Man standing there in the flesh?
“The serum wears off in pieces,” it adds.
“Mind first, then body. I need you awake enough to appreciate where you are.”
“Where the fuck am I? Where did you take me, you sick fuck?”
The mask tilts, and the head behind it appears, then the hoodie, the whole body. He’s here, not a crazy machine. Butterfly Man is standing before me, and I’m tied to a table like a specimen, like one of his helpless bugs.
“Such sharp language for such delicate wings.” He drifts closer, steps unhurried. “Please don’t swear, Reagan, not here. This place is sacred. I made it just for you.” The mask tips forward until it hovers a breath from my face. “Do you feel it yet? That thin line between flight and stillness?”
I fight to flex my hands, even a knuckle. Nothing. Heat crawls up my neck, trapped under skin I can’t command.
“Don’t rush,” he whispers, almost tender. “Wings tear so easily, and thrashing only bruises the colors.”
You crazy motherfucker. I’m not a butterfly. I’m a person. “What’s with the voice distorter? You didn’t use one when you paid me that visit in my bedroom…or the woods.”
He chuckles as he moves away.
“Who was paying me those visits, you or Blake, or did you and your old partner take turns, Jacob?”
“I’ve always loved your brain, my queen, and your way with words.
You always craft the right questions to find the truth.
” He sets a small wooden case on a bench close to the table where I’m displayed.
“But it’s not time for my truth, darling.
” The lid opens with a soft click, revealing neat rows of long, polished silver pins.
They gleam like slivers of ice when they catch the light. “It’s time for yours.”
My heart lurches hard enough to hurt. I try to drag in air, to will blood back into my arms, but my body stays stubborn and heavy. “What do you mean… What are you going to do with those pins?”
“I need you very still for this.”
“For what?”
He selects one pin and holds it up. The light slides along its sharp length.
The distorted voice softens into something reverent.
“For the moment you finally understand all that running was never going to work. It just made the hunt sweeter.” His gloved hand glides along my jaw and my collarbone, feather-light yet obscene.
“You were always meant for this, Reagan. You were always meant for me.”
He rearranges my hair, aligning it in a certain way with my right arm. I jerk every part of me that can move and yell as loud as I can.
“Really? I’m sure you’ve gathered by now that no one can hear you here, Reagan. You’re just wasting your energy…and ruining my mood.” He pinches the flesh of my shoulder. “If you stay still, it won’t hurt that much.”
“Get away from me.”
Shaking his head, he tsks. Then he stares at me for what seems like an eternity before driving the pin into my shoulder, nailing me to the table.
I scream my heart out.
The back of his glove brushes my forehead. “One down.”