Girl Who Read the Stars Page 11

  I also don’t look up at the stars. I look beyond them. I half close my eyes and look through my lashes and watch them dance above me.

  When the door opens behind me, I know it is Trow. He comes to stand next to me, not touching, but I edge closer until he gets the hint, until he opens his arms and I settle into them.

  “How are they?” I ask.

  “Oh, they’re dealing,” he says. “They’re champs. They always just roll with the punches, take what gets thrown at us.”

  “You’re like that too,” I tell him, aware that we see ourselves least clearly of all.

  Trow makes a noise that is half-skeptical, half-accepting. It’s a cute noise. I lean my head back against his shoulder and say, “Do you think any of this would have happened if I hadn’t met you? Do you think I dragged all of you into this?” Is all of this my fault? I add silently.

  Trow shifts so that his nose presses in behind my ear. His nose is cold, but I don’t flinch away. I stay focused on every point of contact, grounded here in this world that’s mine, while the Otherworld winks just beyond the stars. He says, “Nah, I think this was all always meant to be. You tell me, Merrow. What do the stars say?”

  I think of how many tarot cards I’ve dealt for myself and how the message was never clear, how nothing about Trow would come into focus. I turn suddenly in his arms and say, “I don’t care,” and kiss him, kiss him until stardust swirls, snaps, and sparkles around us.

  Trow leans back and looks around him in bemusement. “And what does that say?”

  “That sometimes we make the stars read exactly what we want them to,” I answer.

  “Rewrite the story,” Trow says.

  “Exactly.”

  “So let’s do it. Let’s find these other two fays and fix our worlds, and this Otherworld place too, I guess. Any ideas where to start?”

  I tip my head to the side, look at the night sky out of the corner of my eye, and breathe. “Boston,” I say.

  Read on for a sneak peek at

  The Boy With the Hidden Name

  December 2014

  Buy it now!

  CHAPTER 1

  “You don’t understand, miss,” says a little man in an old-fashioned bowler hat who is crawling out from underneath the bench I’m sitting on. “We just really need the book.”

  To say that I am annoyed is to put it mildly. All I want to do is sit and eat my ice cream cone, and instead I’m getting stalked by supernatural creatures who keep literally crawling out of the woodwork. I mean that: the other day, a carving on a balustrade at Trinity Church started talking to me. We were there on a field trip, and it was difficult to hide.

  This is what happens when you find out you are half-faerie princess and half-ogre and then try to pretend it never happened and go back to leading a normal life.

  “She doesn’t have the book,” Kelsey tells the little man, who is now sprawled on his back on Boston Common, legs still hidden under the bench. “How many times do we have to keep telling you? She doesn’t have the book.”

  The man scowls. “She stole the book.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I snap. “I didn’t steal the book. Will Blaxton and Benedict Le Fay stole the book. I just happened to be there.” And then I wince at my slip. I have to stop giving up the names of people I care about. There’s power in a name.

  The man points at me. “Will Blaxton is always trying to steal books. This is nothing new. He only succeeded because he has you now.”

  I bristle. “He doesn’t ‘have’ me. And it was Ben. Ben made the difference.”

  “Well, where’s Ben then?” asks the man politely.

  The question of the hour, day, week. And if I knew the answer to it, I’d…well, I don’t know what I’d do, because I’m angry at Ben for abandoning me on Boston Common after promising never to leave me, all so he could go in search of the missing mother who might or might not be someone we can trust. I know a lot about missing mothers who might be incredibly untrustworthy, since mine is the same way. Not that Ben listened to me about that.

  “I have no idea where he is,” I snap. “He’s a magical faerie who can jump effortlessly between worlds and into enchantments. How am I supposed to have any idea where he went? And I don’t know where Will is, although you ought to try Salem. That’s where I was always able to find him. And I don’t know where the book is. I’m just trying to eat my ice cream and complain about unreliable faerie quasi-boyfriends like a normal teenager.”

  The man frowns at me, his eyes narrow in displeasure. “You’re not a normal teenager. You’re the fay of the autumnal equinox. You’re trouble.”

  Don’t I know it, I think.

  The man burrows his way into the ground beneath our feet.

  Kelsey, because she’s a good best friend who doesn’t let herself be fazed when supernatural creatures appear and disappear all around us, licks her ice cream cone and says, “They’re persistent, aren’t they?”

  • • •

  “Here’s what I think,” Kelsey says the next day at school.

  “That Emerson makes no sense?”

  “That we should celebrate your birthday.” Kelsey looks like she is bouncing with excitement over this.

  I stare at her. “Celebrate my birthday? Now? But it’s not really my birthday anymore.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but have you ever celebrated your birthday before?”

  “No,” I admit.

  “So then I think we should celebrate it.”

  “My birthday triggered the dissolution of the enchantment that had kept me hidden from evil faeries,” I point out. “Doesn’t really seem like something to celebrate.”

  “I think we should do something totally normal,” Kelsey says as if she didn’t hear me at all.

  “Like what?” I sigh, resigned, because I don’t even know what normal people do. I fail at being normal, and it’s so frustrating.

  “I don’t know. How about a movie?”

  A movie. I am astonished by how normal a movie seems. And so simple. Like being normal can really be that simple. “A movie could be fun,” I say, because it sounds almost seductively indulgent to do this really normal, simple thing.

  “Great.” Kelsey beams at me, pleased with herself. “What do you want to see?”

  I have no idea what’s out. “Flip a coin?” I suggest.

  “Great idea if we had a coin,” Kelsey says with a grin.

  “Oh, I’ve got a coin.” I dig my hand into my pocket, pulling out a dime. “Picked it up this morning on the way to—” I cut myself off, looking at the coin in my hand and thinking of how I picked it up this morning, for no reason, so that it could come in handy at this point. All of the normality comes tumbling down around my ears. How can I pretend to be normal when I do things like this?

  Kelsey takes the dime out of my hand, leans forward, and puts it on the empty desk off to the side. And then she says, “No coin toss. We’ll do eenie-meenie-miney-moe when we get to the theater.”

  • • •

  I am walking through Boston Common at dusk, on my way to meet Kelsey at the theater, when another little man in a bowler hat falls into step beside me. Why are there suddenly so many little men in bowler hats in Boston?

  “About the book,” the man says.

  “For the last time,” I grit out, frustrated, “I do not have the book.”

  “But you do have a black button, do you not?”

  I do. And I hate that I do. I grabbed it the other day on my way through the Common, where it had fallen under a bench.

  I don’t say anything, but he looks at me meaningfully because clearly he knows that I have a button.

  “Exactly,” he says, as if it proves I am so special that I must have the book. And then he holds up his sleeve cuff, which is quite obviously missing a little black button.


  Again with my stupid pack-rat tendencies. I walk on, absolutely refusing to give the little man the satisfaction of getting his button back.

  Kelsey is waiting for me at the movie theater, and she notices immediately that I’m irritated.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks me.

  “The usual,” I tell her, and try to shake it off. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s just be normal and go to a movie.”

  We do eenie-meenie-miney-moe as planned and end up with a random romantic comedy. Kelsey orders popcorn and soda. I don’t feel like popcorn, so I stand a short distance away, playing with a napkin that was left on the counter. When Kelsey’s ready, I go to crumple it into my pocket and then pause, realizing what I’m doing, and deliberately leave it on the counter exactly where I found it.

  Which means, of course, that when we get settled in our seats, Kelsey promptly spills soda on herself.

  “Damn it. I wish I had a napkin,” she complains.

  I say nothing.

  CHAPTER 2

  When the past few days of your life involve escaping from a faerie prison, stealing a magical book of power from the Boston Public Library, and being abandoned by the slippery faerie you’ve been inconveniently in love with for most of your life, getting ready for school actually starts to seem adventurous. Doing what would be normal for other people becomes a change of pace for you that is weirdly exciting. I’m being stalked by supernatural creatures. I can’t even take the subway anymore, I feel like I’m so closely and viciously watched. Pretending that I’m just a normal teenager who goes to school is a fun bit of playacting for me.

  I choose an outfit with care and do my makeup to accentuate my light blue eyes and brush my long white-blond hair until it gleams almost silver in the sunlight slanting through our lavender windowpanes. And then I look at the result. Yes, I think. I look absolutely put together and on top of things and not at all like I’m falling apart and heartbroken and refusing to acknowledge my destiny of leading some faerie coup d’état.

  I take a deep breath and walk out of my bedroom—stepping over the enchanted sweatshirt Ben gave me that I’ve left crumpled on my bedroom floor—and down the stairs. The grandfather clock on the landing chimes 2:15. Which is not at all the actual human time, but the grandfather clock doesn’t keep that sort of time.

  My aunts, True and Virtue, are knitting, working on the same enormous pair of socks they have been steadily working on my whole life. They barely look up at me as I pass through the room into the kitchen, looking for something that could serve as breakfast.

  “Are you off to school?” Aunt True calls.

  “Have a nice day!” Aunt Virtue adds.

  I open the refrigerator door and stare at the contents, trying not to think about how my aunts are actually ogres who have raised me since birth because my homicidal faerie mother abandoned me on my father’s doorstep. Oh, and then, for good measure, drove my father insane. We’re ignoring all of that now. Because back before I knew any of that, my life was so simple and straightforward, and that’s what I want back.

  Unfortunately, as soon as I straighten and close the refrigerator, giving up on the idea of food, the sun goes out.

  That is what it feels like at least. The room plunges into a darkness as severe as night. My aunts look up, confused. I tip my head and walk over to the window and look out. Where the sun had just been shining on us, there are now dense, black clouds roiling overhead.

  I stare at them because those clouds are not of this world.

  I look at my aunts, hesitate, and then say, “What—”

  My aunts have gone back to knitting, even more furiously than before.

  “You’re going to be late for school,” Aunt True says, and that is the end of that attempt at conversation.

  My aunts hate it when I ask questions. It tends to destroy the world.

  • • •

  Kelsey is waiting for me when I open the front door. Going to school together is part of our routine. What is not part of our routine is the redheaded faerie standing next to her.

  “Safford,” I say in surprise, because I haven’t seen him since Ben disappeared last week and Will disbanded our little band of revolutionaries, saying there was no point anymore.

  “That’s not good,” Safford says, not taking his eyes off the clouds overhead. All of the regular humans going about their days on Beacon Street seem to think this is just a sudden weather phenomenon, but Safford is from the Otherworld and knows better.

  “Where did you come from?” I ask.

  Kelsey looks at me and blushes a little bit. “He just showed up.” Kelsey and Safford have some sort of thing going on. If you can call it a “thing” when one half is a faerie. I know from personal experience that trying to have a relationship with a faerie is tricky at the best of times.

  “I think you’re going to need help,” Safford says into the dark sky. “Lots and lots of help.”

  Annoyed, I look up and down Beacon Street for a break in the traffic so we can cross. “I’m not doing the prophecy anymore. I can’t do the prophecy. We don’t have the other three fays and we don’t have Ben and you heard what Will said.” Finally we cross the street together.

  Safford says, “I think Will’s wrong. I don’t think this is out of your control.”

  “Safford,” I say in exasperation as we walk down Boston Common toward Park Street, “I hate to break it to you, but this was never in my control.”

  “Of course it was. Is,” Safford replies. “You’re the fay of the autumnal equinox. It’s your prophecy.”

  “It doesn’t feel like my prophecy,” I say. “It feels like all that happens is that I get violently pushed around by everyone and everything when I just want to live my li—”

  The bell from the Park Street church tower suddenly flies out of its confines, wood splintering all around it, and lands with a heavy, dull impact only a few feet away, with one last clang of protest that rings deep vibrations through my bones.

  After a moment of stunned silence, panicked commuters start behaving as if bells are suddenly going to fall from the sky all over the place.

  “Exhibit A,” Safford says. “They’re getting rid of the church bells before they attack.”

  “Who?” I say, even though I already know.

  “The Seelies. They can’t get into Boston. It’s protected. By an enchantment created by a faerie who’s left,” Safford points out frankly.

  Ben. I glare at Safford, who is Ben’s cousin and therefore probably on his side, but still. “Thanks for that reminder.”

  “I’m just saying I think we need to do something.”

  Commuters spill around us, desperate to get away from the bell sinking incrementally into the Common’s concrete pathway. On our left, Park Street Church sits silent, its ruined bell tower splintering still. Off in front of us, the church bell at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul smashes its way through the rooftop, provoking more panic as it arcs over the Common and lands in the middle of a group of fleeing commuters. None of them seem hurt, but that’s just a bit of luck. These bells could have easily killed people. And there are churches positioned like that all over Boston, clustered close together, all within throwing distance of each other. Church bells are going to be flying into crowds on every block of this city.

  And I can’t deny it anymore. Apparently trying to be normal means turning Boston into some kind of dangerous war zone. “We need to find Will,” I say.

  • • •

  The T station is chaos. The subways are clogged in all directions, and compounding the problem, it seems like everyone on Boston Common has decided to take shelter in the station. We give up before we even reach the turnstiles, turning back and struggling against the crowd, up onto the Common.

  “What now?” asks Kelsey. “The ferry?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” I agree.


  “Why can’t he have a cell phone?” Kelsey complains. “Supernatural creatures could really be a lot easier to get in touch with.”

  I start to respond but then hear someone calling my name, not really with intent but firmly enough that it slices through the chaos all around us. We all stop walking and look around, and it’s Will, an absentminded professor type with graying brown hair, parting the crowd around us.

  When he gets closer, I realize that he looks furious. “What are you doing out in this?” he snaps.

  “We were going to look for you,” I snap back. I gesture to the nearest church bell on the Common. “Look—”

  “Yes, yes,” he cuts me off, “and the sun has gone out. Both not-good things, but we can’t stand out here talking about them, since who knows what’s coming next. We’re going to get inside, and you’re going to get your sweatshirt.”

  I hate being ordered around like this. “No, I’m not. What does my sweatshirt have to do with any of this?”

  “You and I are going to get this prophecy back on track,” Will announces grimly.

  CHAPTER 3

  My aunts are annoyed to see Will. When we get there, they have every light in the house blazing in an attempt to fend off the unnatural darkness of the day.

  “Oh no,” Aunt Virtue complains. “What now?”

  “We need to get the prophecy back on track,” Will says.

  This is an abrupt turnaround from the despairing and depressed Will who said that Ben had destroyed the prophecy when he left.