PROLOGUE
Birdie
What is blood?
A color. A thickness. A type. A family.
A fear.
An ecstasy.
A life.
A death.
As my blood trickles down to yours, and both streams hug in a growing circle, all I see is a bond that can never be broken.
Beyond time, beyond breath and heartbeat.
Beyond broken lullabies.
But when blood stills, will it be mine or his that tells this story?
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 atthe 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 sayitbecause 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.”
