The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  But Chavi isn’t really her ashes. She’s more her photo in our chrysanthemum-and-candle shrine than she is her ashes, but it’s still not . . .

  “Is France going to be home?”

  “Ah. Now it takes shape.” Twisting around to face me, Mum wraps her arm around my ankles so she can comfortably rest her chin on my fuzzy socks. “We’ve had houses since Chavi died, but we haven’t really had home, have we?”

  “You’re home.”

  “And always will be,” she says easily. “But that’s a person. You’re talking about a place.”

  “Is it selfish?”

  “Oh, sweetheart, no.” Her thumb rubs the hollow behind my anklebone. “Losing Chavi was terrible. That wound will be with us, always. I know we’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern, with all the moves, but when we settle in France, can you even imagine how pissed she’ll be if we don’t make our home there? If we always make ourselves feel transient?” Her chin digs into the top of my foot. “Five years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a life without Chavi in it.”

  “But that’s our life now.”

  “But that’s our life now,” she agrees. “And once we’re in a place for longer than five months, once a place is ours, we owe it to ourselves and to your sister to really make it ours. To make it home. It’s a terrifying thought, isn’t it?”

  I nod, the world blurry.

  “We love her; that means that it isn’t possible for us to leave her behind.”

  I nod again.

  “There’s something else.” When I don’t answer immediately, Mum walks two fingers up my leg until she can poke the ticklish spot near my knee. “Priya.”

  “Another girl is going to die this spring,” I whisper, because it seems a terrible thing to say out loud. “He’ll kill again, because as long as they don’t catch him, there’s no reason for him not to keep going. So how do you make a man stop killing?”

  “Personally? String him up by his balls and skin him with a dull, rusty knife. I hear the police frown on that, though.”

  And maybe that’s the thing still niggling at me about Inara’s letter. Everything about the Garden is caught up in a media shit storm, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has a theory. Everyone has their own notion of what justice means. I used to think I wanted nothing more than to see Chavi’s murderer get arrested, but the older I get, the more I see the appeal of Mum’s more straightforward approach.

  So what does that make me?

  The morning of the funeral, Eddison picks Ramirez up from her tiny house (which she insists is properly called a cottage) and drives over to Vic’s place. It’s obscenely early, the sky not even grey yet, but it’s a long drive to the Kobiyashis’ home in North Carolina. He parks on the curb so he doesn’t block in Vic or either of the Mrs. Hanoverians.

  The front door opens before they even get to the porch. Mrs. Hanoverian the elder, Vic’s mother, steps back to let them inside. “Look at you two,” she sighs. “Crows, the both of you.”

  “It’s a funeral, Marlene,” Ramirez reminds her, dropping a kiss on her cheek.

  “When I eventually kick it, none of you are allowed to wear black. I’m writing it into my will.” She closes the door and tugs Eddison down by his coat so she can kiss his cheek. It’s only been an hour since he shaved, so for once he isn’t stubbled and scruffy. “Good morning, dear. Come into the kitchen and have some breakfast.”

  It’s on the tip of his tongue to say no—he doesn’t like eating this early; it just sits in his stomach and makes him feel ill—but Marlene Hanoverian had her own bakery until she decided to retire, and he’d have to be much more stupid than he is to turn away anything she’s made.

  They walk into the kitchen and he stops short, staring at the already occupied table. Two young women, both eighteen, look back at him. One of them twitches her lips in acknowledgment. The other grins and flips him the bird. Both have cinnamon rolls dripping with icing on small plates before them.

  He’s not sure why he’s shocked. Of course some of the other survivors might want to be present for the funeral. While it would be too traumatic for some, he can well imagine some might come purely to see their fellow former captive safely lowered into the ground, rather than preserved in glass and resin in the Garden’s hallways like most of the others had been.

  “Morning,” he says warily.

  “Vic offered us a ride,” says the taller one. Inara Morrissey—he seems to recall hearing that the name change is official now—wears a deep red dress that should probably clash with her golden-brown coloring but doesn’t. She looks elegant, and entirely too put together for this early in the morning. “We took the train down yesterday.”

  They live in New York now. Well, Inara did before she was kidnapped. Bliss lived in Atlanta, and moved in with Inara and the various other roommates as soon as she was out of custody. The rest of her family migrated to Paris for her father’s job, and if Eddison occasionally wonders whether or not that particular set of relationships is mending, he’s not going to poke the bear by asking.

  He knows he shouldn’t call her Bliss—that was the name the Gardener gave her, and it’s both painful and wildly inaccurate—but he can’t call her Chelsea. Chelsea is such a normal name, and Bliss is such a hellion. Until she tells him otherwise, she’s Bliss. She’s tiny, barely coming to Inara’s shoulder even when they’re seated. Her wild black curls are caught back in combs and she’s wearing a bold blue dress a few shades richer than her almost violet eyes.

  He’s not surprised that neither of them is wearing black. He knows they don’t avoid it in general. Both are fairly well-adjusted (though he sometimes has his doubts about Bliss) and both work at a restaurant that requires them to wear it. Their only clothing in the Garden, however, was black. Black, and open-backed to show their wings. To honor one of their own, they would never choose it. He just hopes the Kobiyashis won’t think it’s rude.

  But then, Bliss is rude. It’s not the first time she’s said hello by flipping him off.

  “Is anyone else coming?” he asks, exercising healthy caution by letting Ramirez slide in first on the curved bench seat. He can respect the hell out of both girls for coming through what they did more or less intact, but he’s never quite sure if he likes them. That ambiguity is entirely mutual. Any time he can keep at least one person between him and them, he does so, and doesn’t feel like a coward for it.

  “Danelle and Marenka might,” Inara answers, licking icing off one finger. Small remnants of discoloration on the backs of her hands mark the worst of the burns and gashes from the night the Garden exploded. “They hadn’t decided yet when we spoke to them on Wednesday.”

  “They’re worried the Kobiyashis will be assholes to them,” adds Bliss. When Ramirez glances at her, questioning, Bliss draws the shape of a butterfly over her face.

  Both agents shudder.

  Because somehow, the case kept getting worse. Some girls, either because they were already broken or because they thought it might help them escape, had cozened up to their captor, and he’d mark them with his favor by tattooing another set of wings on their faces, to match the ones on their backs. Everyone else could cover up their wings, once they were out of the Garden. Danelle and Marenka, the only survivors to have gotten that second set of wings, have to rely on a hell of a lot of good makeup.

  Even with the smaller sets on their faces covered, those who know they’re there treat the girls differently. Treat them worse, as if sucking up to try to stay alive longer makes them evil.

  He hopes they decide against coming. He actually likes Danelle and Marenka, both of them calm and steady and less sharp-edged than Inara and Bliss. Better for them to grieve Tereza—Amiko, he reminds himself, her name is Amiko—without her parents being hateful.

  Marlene sets plates before him and Ramirez, then pours out mugs of coffee. Despite the hour and the fact that she’s not going to the funeral, she’s fully dressed, a single str
and of pearls soft and prim against her dark green sweater set. “That poor girl,” she says. “At least she’s at peace now.”

  That rather depends on what you believe, doesn’t it? Ramirez touches the crucifix at her throat and doesn’t say anything. Inara and Bliss both take over-large bites of pastry, chewing to keep from speaking.

  Eddison’s not really sure what he believes when it comes to death or suicide or any of that.

  Vic comes into the kitchen then, adjusting the knot on his dark brown tie. Eddison and Ramirez are both dressed for a funeral; Vic is dressed for a Butterfly’s funeral, in brown and ivory somber enough to be respectful to grieving parents and far enough from black to be comforting to survivors. It’s exquisitely sensitive and intuitive and a number of other adjectives Eddison is decidedly not, even on his best days.

  “Sit down and eat, Victor,” his mother tells him.

  He kisses the top of her head, safely away from the tidy coils of silver hair that have been pinned in place. “We have to head out, Ma, it’s almost—”

  “Victor, you will sit and eat and start this terrible day off right.”

  He sits.

  Inara covers her mouth with one hand, but her pale brown eyes are bright. She’s a very contained young woman, restrained in expression around most. The survivors are somewhat exceptions, but he has a feeling she’s only truly relaxed around the girls she lives with. “Mrs. Hanoverian, please tell me you used to write notes in his school lunches.”

  “Let’s see, Mondays I told him to make good choices; Tuesdays I told him to make me proud; Wednesdays I told him . . .” But she trails off, smiling as the girls dissolve into almost silent laughter, leaning against each other.

  “And you doubted me,” Vic chides around a mouthful of cinnamon roll.

  It’s strange to be laughing before they head out to a seventeen-year-old’s funeral. Sixteen. Her birthday would have been in a few weeks.

  Inara catches his eye and shrugs. “You laugh or you cry. Which would you rather do?”

  “Yell,” he says succinctly.

  “Me too,” Bliss replies, teeth bared in a snarl. A bit of cinnamon-heavy bread is caught between two of her teeth.

  He figures Inara will eventually tell her about it.

  The seven-hour drive to North Carolina is quiet, but not silent. Ramirez stretches out in the very back seat, because if she’s a passenger without paperwork to keep her busy, she will fall asleep before the next exit, every time. Inara and Bliss sit in the middle, the radio turned down to allow conversation with Vic in the driver’s seat. Eddison listens but doesn’t particularly contribute. Most of his attention is on his phone, skimming through Google alerts for bodies found in churches. It’s a little early in the year yet for Chavi’s murderer to strike again, but he checks regularly, just in case.

  Bliss is taking classes, filling in gaps in her education so she can take her GED this summer. Neither she nor Inara has decided yet about college, it seems. He gets it. If they know what they want to do—and he doesn’t think they do—why throw themselves into it now when they know the eventual trial is going to take up so much time? They’re already down in D.C. fairly frequently to answer more questions in pretrial. They’ll both be called to testify if the case gets to the courtroom before they’re eighty, and Inara has already promised the other girls she’ll be there when they take their turns on the stand.

  No matter how often he hears proof of Inara as housemother, he still can’t wrap his brain around it. It’s like a pit bull in a tutu.

  A Butterfly with boxing gloves.

  After two stops for gas and a meal, they pull up to the church for the funeral. There aren’t many cars in the parking lot.

  “Are we early?” Ramirez asks groggily, reaching for her purse so she can fix her makeup.

  “A little,” Vic answers.

  Ramirez isn’t awake enough, but Eddison hears the layer tucked into the simple words: Vic doesn’t expect there to be many people.

  Bliss releases her seat belt with a click and a heavy thunk of the latch hitting the door. “Told you. The Kobiyashis are assholes. They probably wouldn’t hold a funeral at all if the suicide hadn’t hit the news.”

  Eddison glances back at Inara, who knew Tereza better than Bliss did, but she’s looking out the window at the white-boarded church.

  They all get out of the car and stretch, and Vic takes Bliss’s hand and hooks it around his elbow as they walk ahead to the double doors. Part of it is manners—Marlene raised a gentleman—but Eddison’s willing to bet a month’s pay that Vic’s hoping to keep a leash on Bliss’s idea of small talk. Ramirez double-checks her face in the tinted window and hurries after.

  Eddison’s in no hurry. He leans against the side of the car, looking up at the Baptist church. Except for the space in front of the doors, the building is lined with thick, dark shrubs in beds of reddish mulch. There’s extra space in front of the shrubs, a stretch of pine chips before the faded grass picks up. Flower beds? The church probably looks rather charming that way, all abloom, but that makes him think of the Garden, of how he’s told it looked before the explosions, and fuck, is there anything this case doesn’t touch?

  He’s gone to more funerals than he can count, and yet every single one is just . . .

  Inara settles next to him against the car, hands clasped at her waist. A black-and-gold wristlet dangles from her hooked pinky. “You don’t have to be here, you know.”

  “Yes, I—” But he stops, swallows back the reflexive indignation, because this is Inara. Inara, who always means what she says, but usually not in the way you first expect.

  And he realizes that no, he doesn’t have to be here. There’s no Bureau requirement, no order, no generally agreed guideline, nothing official that mandates his presence at the funeral of a girl who killed herself because the seams where she broke the first time were too fragile to stitch together a second time. It’s his personal code that has him here, his principle that keeps him facing terrible things because it’s the right thing to do.

  It’s his choice.

  He looks over at her, unsurprised to find her watching him, her thoughts on the matter neatly tucked away and impossible to read. That’s not something she learned in the Garden, or after. That’s always been her life. “Thank you.”

  “Careful, Eddison,” she teases, her hands lifting in mock surrender. “Someone might hear and think you almost like me.”

  “Almost,” he agrees, just to see her startled smile.

  He doesn’t offer her his arm, and she doesn’t expect it. They push off from the car and walk together into the church, shoulders tight with the shared awareness that this almost certainly won’t be the last Butterfly funeral, but it might be the worst.

  For Inara, it might be the worst funeral, full stop, but Eddison is far too aware that spring is coming. Whoever killed Chavi Sravasti and so many other girls will kill again, responding to triggers the FBI can’t name, and Eddison will stand next to Vic and Ramirez at yet another funeral and feel like a terrible person, because he’ll be grateful it isn’t Priya.

  I’ve had five years for the reality of Chavi’s death to seep into my bones, but that doesn’t keep the memories from bleeding sometimes, doesn’t prevent the nightmares that wake me in a sweat, throat raw from screaming. I don’t know that anything will ever actually stop them.

  Mum wakes me with a firm shake, her arms around me before I can open my eyes, before I can properly recall that I’m safe, in my bed in our rental house in Huntington, far away from the neighborhood church outside of Boston where I last saw my sister. The nightmares don’t fall into any sort of pattern—there’s no way to guess what will trigger one—but they happen often enough that we’ve developed a routine for dealing with them.

  While I take a cool shower, Mum strips my bed of sweat-damp sheets and heads downstairs to the laundry room. When she comes back, two mugs of tea in her hands, I’m already in fresh pajamas and settled in her bed. Neither of us wa
nts me alone after one of these dreams, but I won’t sleep again and I don’t want her to lose sleep staying up with me, so this is our compromise. We pop in a DVD and Mum is out cold halfway through the first episode of one of the BBC Nature programs.

  I brought my journal to Mum’s room, but I’m not really feeling it. There are years of nightmares across dozens of journals; telling Chavi about another one won’t help anything.

  Maybe telling someone else might.

  Inara’s letter sticks out from the top of the notebook, where it’s been living for the past week. Maybe I finally know how to answer it.

  Dear Inara,

  My sister Chavi died on a Monday, two days after my twelfth birthday. She was seventeen.

  We spent all weekend celebrating my birthday. Saturday we spent at the nearby park. Technically it was a churchyard, but the church was tangled in taxes and repossession, and our neighborhood just sort of . . . took it over. Everything was blooming, and the day was filled with laughter and games and food. Not everyone in the neighborhood got along, but most did. Sunday was for family, for favorite meals and movies. Our only trip out was when Mum and Chavi took me to the mall to get my nose pierced.

  Dad stayed behind in protest. My parents were both born in India and raised in London, and he always argued that leaving behind a community of culture meant giving up the signs of it, too.

  Monday, though, we were back to school. Usually, Chavi would bike from the senior high to the junior, and we’d head home together, but I had a yearbook meeting and she had a study group. Chavi had more freedom than a lot of her friends and classmates, mostly because she didn’t abuse it. She let Mum know when she arrived or left places, always updated her if plans, locations, or people changed. Always.

  When Chavi texted to say she’d be home by nine, we had every reason to expect she would be, but nine o’clock came and went, and Chavi didn’t.