Our wings were hidden, but much to the Gardener’s delight, I still had some wings showing. The black tribal butterfly I’d gotten with the girls in the apartment was still stark and fresh on my right ankle. As long as our wings were hidden anyway, we were even allowed to wear our hair however we liked. Bliss left hers down in a riot of curls that got tangled in everything, while I wore mine back in a simple braid. It felt remarkably self-indulgent.

The Desmond of the first two weeks was his father’s shadow, polite and respectful, mindful of his questions so as not to strain his father’s patience. We were all carefully coached in our responses. If he asked anything about our lives before, we were to cast our eyes down and murmur something about painful things being best forgotten. It wasn’t until the fifth or sixth time he heard this that something struck him as odd.

That it struck him at all made me revise my initial estimation of his intelligence.

Only a little, though. After all, he was still buying into his father’s story.

He came in the evenings for a few hours, not every evening but most of them. After classes were done, and if he didn’t have too much homework. During that introduction, Avery was banned from the Garden completely and the Gardener didn’t touch any of us while Desmond was there. He touched us later, of course, or before, but not where his son could see. The walls stayed down over the girls in glass, not just from the outside but the sidewalls in the rooms as well. We went weeks without seeing any dead girls, and though there was guilt at wanting to forget or ignore them, it was glorious to not have that constant reminder of our impending mortality and immortality.

Desmond’s introduction was like the way Lyonette brought girls into the Garden. First you make them feel better. Then you show them, tell them, a piece at a time. You don’t bring the markings up right away, you don’t bring up the sex right away. You acclimate them to one aspect and then, when they didn’t balk at that anymore, you introduced another.

One of the many reasons my introductions weren’t nearly as graceful as Lyonette’s.

I mostly kept to my routine whether Desmond was in the Garden or not. I spent the mornings talking to girls in the cave, ran my laps before lunch, and spent my afternoons either reading up on the cliff or playing games down on the ground. Wherever he and his father started in the afternoon, they usually ended conversing with me up on the cliff. Bliss was sometimes there for that.

More often, she saw them coming up the path and climbed down the face to avoid them.

As much as he liked Bliss’s temper and spirit, the Gardener was all right with that. It meant less of a risk that his son would discover the truth before his father had adequately prepared him.

That last evening of direct supervision, the Gardener started the conversation with me and Desmond, then left it in our hands as he made his way down the path and into the hallways. The display cases had been covered, after all, and I think he missed them. But the conversation petered out not long after he left, and when Desmond couldn’t find a way to continue it—because it was certainly not my responsibility to do so—I turned back to my book.

“Antigone?” Eddison asks.

“Lysistrata,” she corrects with a small smile. “I needed something a little lighter.”

“Can’t say I’ve read that one.”

“Doesn’t surprise me; it’s the kind of thing you appreciate more when you’ve got a steady woman in your life.”

“How—”

“Really? The way you snap and snarl, the graceless way you interact, and you want to try to tell me you have a wife or girlfriend?”

An ugly flush stains his cheeks but—he’s learning. He doesn’t rise to the bait.

She flashes him a grin. “Spoilsport.”

“Some of us have jobs to do,” he retorts. “You try dating when your job can call you in at any time.”

“Hanoverian is married.”

“He got married in college.”

“Eddison was too busy getting arrested in college,” Victor remarks. A flush mottles the back of his partner’s neck.

Inara perks up. “Drunk and disorderly? Lewd and lascivious?”

“Assault.”

“Vic—”

But Victor cuts him off. “Campus and local cops bungled the investigation into a series of rapes across campus. Possibly on purpose—the suspect was the police chief’s son. No charges were filed. The school imposed no discipline.”

“And Eddison went after the boy.”

Both men nod.

“A vigilante.” She settles back in her chair, a thoughtful expression on her face. “When you don’t receive justice, you make it.”

“That was a long time ago,” mutters Eddison.

“Was it?”

“I uphold the law. It isn’t perfect but it’s the law, and it’s what we have. Without justice, we have no order and no hope.”

Victor watches the girl absorb that, turn it over.

“I like your idea of justice,” she says finally. “I’m just not sure it really exists.”

“This,” Eddison says, and taps the table, “this is part of justice too. This is where we start to find truth.”

She smiles slightly.

And shrugs.

We sat in silence for long enough that he grew uncomfortable, fidgeting on the rock and tugging off his sweater in the reflected heat from the glass roof. I mostly ignored him, until his cleared throat indicated his desire to finally speak. I closed the book on a finger and gave him my attention.

He shrank back. “You’re, uh . . . a very direct person, aren’t you?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No . . .” he said slowly, like he wasn’t entirely sure. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “How much of what my father is telling me is complete shit?”

That was worth finding the bookmark. I slid it between the pages and set the book carefully on the rock behind me. “What makes you think any of it is?”

“He’s trying too hard. And . . . well, that whole thing with it being private. When I was little, he took me into his office, showed me around, and explained that he worked very hard there and needed me to never come in there to interrupt him. He showed me. He never did with this place, so I knew it had to be different.”

I turned to face him more fully, cross-legged on the sun-warmed rock as I arranged my skirt to cover everything important. “Different in what way?”

He followed my example, so close that our knees touched. “Is he really rescuing you?”

“Don’t you think that’s a question you should put to your father?”

“I’d rather put it to someone who might tell me the truth.”

“And you think that’s me?”

“Why not? You’re a very direct sort of person.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Direct doesn’t mean honest. It could just mean that I’m very direct and straightforward with my lies.”

“So you plan to lie to me?”

“I plan to tell you to ask your father.”

“Maya, what is my father really doing here?”

“Desmond, if you thought your father was doing anything inappropriate, what would you do?” Did he have any idea how important his answer could be?

“I would . . . well, I would . . .” He shakes his head, scratching at his slightly overgrown hair. “I guess it would depend on what that inappropriate thing was.”

“Then what do you think he’s doing?”

“Besides cheating on my mother?”

Point.

He takes another deep breath. “I think he comes to you all for sex.”

“And if he is?”

“He’s cheating on my mother.”

“Which would be your mother’s concern, not yours.”

“He’s my father.”

“Not your spouse.”

“Why aren’t you giving me a direct answer?”

“Why are you asking me, instead of him?”

“Because I’m not sure I can trust what he says.” He blushed, like questioning the word of his father was somehow shameful.

“And you think you can trust me?”

“All the others do.” His gesture took in the whole of the Garden, the handful of girls allowed out of their rooms when Desmond was there.

But all the walls were down on the girls who used to suck up in hopes of release, their second sets of wings displayed on their faces. They were down on the weepers and the listless and—except for Bliss—the chronically bitchy. They were down over all those dozens of girls in glass, and the scattering of empty cases that weren’t enough to hold the current generations, and no one knew what he was going to do when he ran out.

“You’re not one of us,” I said flatly. “Because of who you are, what you are, you never will be.”