The Boy with the Hidden Name: Otherworld Book Two Read online

  And then I kneel next to the couch.

  Ben opens his eyes. They are the color of the mullioned windowpanes behind the couch. We look at each other for a long moment. He is still frowning.

  “How do you feel?” he asks eventually.

  “Fine,” I answer honestly.

  And it happens then. His brow unfurrows, he relaxes, and his lips curve into a smile. His eyes flutter back closed, and he seems to nestle more deeply into the couch, as if settling himself back into sleep. “Good,” he murmurs. “You look wonderful.”

  I hesitate. “Ben,” I venture.

  “Mmm,” he says.

  It is clear to me he is on the verge of falling asleep. I am torn between letting him and needing to know. “What did you do?” I whisper.

  “I saved your life,” he responds, sounding pleased.

  “How?” I ask in another whisper.

  There is a pause. He opens his eyes and looks at me for a very, very long moment. “By saving your life,” he whispers back.

  “Ben…”

  “You’ve been talking to Will.” He closes his eyes again and speaks slowly, evenly, matter-of-factly. “You came into Tir na nOg, where your death seemed certain and assured. You went there for me, and you wouldn’t leave without me. And you followed me into the Unseelie Court when you shouldn’t have, when I’d just betrayed you. You’ve allied with goblins, stared down Seelies, endured church bells, tumbled into a dragon pit, and been cursed. And you did it all for me. I saved your life. We leave it there, you and I. That is all that must be said: I love you, and I’ll always save you. Don’t worry.”

  I watch him as he falls back asleep. I love you, and I’ll always save you. Don’t worry. The words sound vaguely familiar to me, like words said in a dream, or words I learned once to a song whose tune I’ve forgotten, or words in a book whose plot I’ve lost. I love you, and I’ll always save you. Don’t worry.

  And Benedict Le Fay will betray you. And then he will die, I think. Has Ben fixed that by saving my life here? Is the betrayal no longer as sharp, as deadly?

  I have no idea what to think.

  I lay my head on the couch next to his, because I can’t seem to help it. Even though I thought he was sleeping, he murmurs, “Oh,” sounding both surprised and delighted. He snuggles his head closer to me, forehead against mine.

  “You’re burning up,” I say in alarm, because he is, now that I can feel him. His skin is scorching hot, and that is not normally how his skin feels. I almost shrink away from him.

  He makes a noncommittal noise.

  “Ben.” I sit up and look down at him, worried. He doesn’t look feverish or flushed—he’s as pale as always. Maybe more so. “Ben, are you sick?”

  “Just tired,” he replies. “Very, very tired.”

  I lean over him. It is more than that, but I feel he will never admit that to me. I settle for a question I think he may answer. “Will you be okay?”

  He looks up at me, his eyes very clear. He really doesn’t look feverish; he looks more…heightened. “Say my name,” he says to me. “Say it now, without being angry with me. Say it now, just now that you like me.”

  “I always like you,” I protest.

  “You always love me,” he corrects. “There is an important difference.”

  I feel that I shouldn’t let him think that’s true. And then I feel that it’s ridiculous of me to deny it. I push back the hair on his forehead—he is blisteringly warm—and I say instead, gently, tenderly, “Benedict Le Fay.”

  He smiles at me, a brilliant, blinding smile. I don’t think I have ever seen him smile just like that. It takes my breath away. “Everything is quite perfect,” he tells me.

  “You ridiculous faerie,” I respond around a stupid lump in my throat.

  He hums in evident agreement and closes his eyes and snakes a hand out of the cocoon of his blankets to tug at me. I put my head back next to his, listening to him sigh in contentment.

  “I don’t trust you, you know,” I say, because it’s true. I love him, but I don’t trust him. I’m not sure if I ever will again. I wonder if I will live every day tense, bracing for the moment when he breaks my heart.

  “Mmm,” he says and pulls me closer. “That just means you’re learning.” There is a beat of silence. “I’m going to work on the trust thing when I get better,” he adds.

  “I thought you weren’t sick,” I point out.

  He snores in my ear.

  CHAPTER 14

  I leave Ben sleeping in the study and move back out into the house. It is silent, everyone still sleeping. I don’t know where the Erlking has gone or where Will is. Safford is sprawled on the couch in the living room, and Kelsey is on the bed in the spare room where she and I used to have sleepovers a lifetime ago. I assume that my aunts are in their rooms.

  I stand in the front foyer and I look at the front door and I think of my father.

  And then I open the door and step outside.

  Boston seems so perfectly normal to me. I mean, granted, the day is gray and hazy, but it just seems like a cloudy day. The earliest part of rush hour is underway, commuters heading briskly along the sidewalks, dodging each other and darting out to cross the street between cars. I am seized by a fierce, sudden fondness for this place that I have called home all of my life. I have no desire to lose it or to see it destroyed. Honestly, I love it here.

  I swallow back all the emotion, because it’s not going to do me any good right now, and I cross Beacon Street and walk onto the Common, heading toward Park Street. I glance over my shoulder every so often, convinced that someone is going to step out of the house and shout at me to come back inside, that this is a stupid thing for me to be doing. But I can’t help it: I know that people tried to get my father and failed, but I didn’t try, and I’ve been a little bit successful with rescues lately. (Even if the last rescue was apparently a really close call, and even if I’ve always had help with my rescues; best to ignore those little facts.) And anyway, my father is the only parent I have who isn’t trying to kill me, and he literally went insane because he wanted me so much, demanded me against all wisdom. How am I supposed to abandon him now?

  I keep expecting something—anything—to happen. But nothing does. I get on the Red Line at Park Street and I take it all the way to the end at Alewife and leave the confines of Boston. The T doesn’t stall. Goblins don’t appear and neither do Seelies. Everyone bustles past me as if I am completely unremarkable. I wonder wildly if I should start asking them questions: Do you think you might be a supernatural creature? When is your birthday? What is your name? The idea makes me want to laugh hysterically. What is my life?

  I am so keyed up by the time I reach the small, nondescript, charming-looking building where my father has lived all my life that I am practically jumping out of my skin at every movement. But I’m almost there now, and all I have to do is figure out how to get my father out and back into Boston…

  I have not one inkling of a plan. I guess this is very faerie of me.

  The nurse at the front desk is one I know, who has greeted me for countless visits to my father. Her name is Deb and she has two kids who are around my age and both play soccer in the autumn.

  But when I go up to the front desk and smile at her, she just looks at me blankly in response. “Can I help you?” she says.

  Fear begins to close around me, but I don’t let it. I fight off the dark raggedness of its edges. “Is my father here?” I ask. I force myself to keep smiling.

  “Who is your father, dear?” she responds. She looks mildly concerned, as if she thinks I might be the one who needs to be institutionalized.

  “Etherington Stewart,” I whisper. I clear my throat and repeat his name more clearly.

  She frowns. “I don’t think we have a patient here by that name.” She taps on her keyboard and frowns some more at the co
mputer screen. “No. No one here by that name. Are you sure you have the right place?” She looks up at me.

  I look around at the vestibule I have stood in more times than I would ever be able to remember, from when I was a toddler taking my first steps to the day I had shown up asking about the possibility of having immortal aunts and was warned not to tell Benedict Le Fay my birth date. It is almost worse than hearing that my father has died, to hear that he seems to never have existed at all, that he is lost somewhere between this world and the Otherworld.

  I move through the shock of the sorrow and coalesce into rage. Wherever my mother is, I hope she can feel that I will not rest until I make her tell me what she has done with my father.

  “I’m not even sure this is the right world,” I tell Deb honestly with a bright and frigid smile. Then I turn and march out into the human world. I walk to the T station, dodging all the other pedestrians automatically, my mind on the Otherworld, on wherever my mother is, on how soon we can assemble an army that will attack her.

  I swipe my T pass and get on the train that pulls up as soon as I enter. I sit and look out the window opposite me, at the darkness of the tunnel as it whizzes by. We are through Porter and almost to Harvard when the subway car begins to flicker. At first, I don’t know what I’m seeing, and then I place it: the dance of flames in a fireplace out of the corner of my eye that disappears when I turn my head; the sensation that I am sitting in a cozy rocking chair, even though, when I look down, it’s just the regular no-nonsense subway seat.

  It’s the Otherworld, I realize. The Otherworld is bleeding through. Or I’m somehow sliding into it. I don’t know which.

  I stand up hurriedly. We are between Harvard and Central, not yet at a stop, so I get some curious looks from people. The truth is I have no idea what I’m going to do. Can I get it to stop? Should I get it to stop?

  I feel like I am driving in a car, trying to get reception on a radio station just out of range. Sometimes it feels like I’m standing fully in an Otherworld train, and then I blink and the static of the human world T reasserts itself. The T squeals to a stop at Central, and normal, everyday people all around me get on and get off, and I stand where I am, trying to keep my balance as the world swerves all around me.

  The human T pulls away from Central, but I am no longer on it. I am now standing firmly on an Otherworld train, and across from me is my mother. She looks furious.

  Which is good, because so am I.

  “Where’s Dad?” I demand.

  “Where is Benedict Le Fay?” she demands. I don’t even think she hears my question.

  “What’s the matter?” I drawl. “Can’t you find him?”

  She looks even more furious and waves her hand, which sends the china tea set on the marble end table next to the fireplace whirling through the air at me. It tumbles to the ground just before reaching me, shattering with a terrific noise that is nothing compared to the roar of frustration that my mother lets out.

  I look down at the ruined remains of the tea set. “Ah,” I remark. “Ben’s enchantment. Of course. And you can’t do anything about it, because you can’t find him, so you can’t name him.” I look up at my mother and smile. I hope it is a perfect anti-smile. “What did you do with Dad? Where is he?”

  My mother’s expression shifts from rage to satisfaction. She sends me one of her own anti-smiles. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Yes,” I snap. “Yes, I would. Give him back.”

  My mother smirks some more and walks toward me. I swallow and hold my ground, thinking about how she cannot touch me. I do not want her to touch me. She stops just in front of me. She does not try to touch me.

  She says, “You can come and get him.”

  “Come and get him where?”

  “With me.” She lifts her hand, offering it, as if I am supposed to reach out and take it. “You can come with me. I will take you to your father.”

  I stare at her hand. The thing is that I know she knows where he is. And she probably won’t take me to him. And I remember that there is a warring prophecy, one about a fay going to Avalon and cementing the Seelie power forever, and if I go with her…But she might bring me to my father. She might. And if she might, if there’s even the slightest chance that I can try to—

  There is an explosion of white light. My mother whirls away from me, her mouth a round o of surprise, and the train splinters around us, sliding away in a dizzying confusion. I scramble for purchase, thrown off balance, and find myself on the cold concrete floor of a subway station. I watch as my mother, on the opposite side, across the tracks from me, slams hard into the tile wall lining the station.

  I sit, stunned, on the floor, trying to figure out what happened, until Ben steps in front of me. And then I realize what happened: Ben happened.

  “Hello,” he calls across to my mother, who is holding her head in her hands. I’m guessing that she cracked it against the tile wall. “There’s a rumor you’re looking for me.”

  My mother roars again, and Ben ducks, grabbing my hand and pulling us out of the way. A gaping crater appears in the place where we had just been standing.

  “Get out of this station,” Ben gasps at me. “Do not take the T. Get in a cab and get yourself home and lock all the doors.”

  “What? What will you be doing?”

  He shoves me away, shaking his head as if that’s an answer, and sends fire licking over the train tracks toward my mother.

  She dowses it with water, some of which she sends Ben’s way, although he pushes it away with a burst of magic.

  “Where are all of your friends, Benedict?” He winces at the name and leaps away from the lightning strike she aims at him. “No one to rush in to save you now? Just a girl who was on the verge of betraying you? All of that effort to keep her alive and safe, and she would have come with me if you’d been just a pig’s whisper later, Benedict Le Fay.”

  Ben winces again, and he gathers some effort to do something. I can feel the charge of it in the air around us, but I’m no longer paying attention to them, because I am looking around for a weapon, anything I can use, as ridiculous as it might seem. Why can’t I do amazing things like fling tea sets through the air and throw fire and make bursts of blinding, explosive, destructive light? I don’t care what nonsense the Erlking and Will said about the importance of being me—being me is useless. I hate them for having me raised human so that I never developed any faerie powers.

  “Is that the best you can do?” I hear my mother taunt Ben. “Really? Is this really what you will use to fulfill your prophecy?”

  Some scraps of litter, I think desperately, looking around on the floor. That’s all I have. What am I going to do with that?

  “Benedict,” I hear my mother say behind me. She pauses for effect. “Will o’ the Wisp.”

  Names, I realize. I have names.

  “Cel—” she begins, but I don’t let her get it out.

  I whirl toward her, intent flowing through me in a wave I can feel. “Mother,” I say scathingly.

  She gasps, and then Ben collides with me, knocking me down. I feel the rush of air over us, and the wall behind us explodes, showering us with pinpricks of concrete and ceramic tile.

  “I told you to go,” Ben snaps into my ear.

  But I am not listening to him. I have fallen onto my side, farther up the platform than I was, and I am staring at the art installation that runs through the center of Kendall Station. We are in Kendall, I realize, and those metallic tubes that look like elaborate decoration, I know what those are: they are bells. Not chiming bells. Deep, gonging, Seelie-hating bells.

  “Ben,” I say, shoving at him, wriggling and squirming about.

  “You have to go,” he insists.

  “I’m going,” I lie breathlessly. “I’m going.” He releases me and I stumble to my feet, throwing myself at the gear crank o
n the wall that rings the bells.

  “How dare you name me!” my mother shrieks behind me.

  I ignore her, grabbing the crank and pulling at it.

  “Selkie,” she says, and I gasp with the pain of it, but I don’t let go of the crank. I pull it harder.

  Behind me, the bells start to ring. I hear my mother scream, and I feel myself start to fall, dizziness spreading through me, the bells vibrating in my skull.

  Someone pushes at me. Ben, I realize. Catching me as I fall. Always catching me as I fall. I rest my cheek against the fleece he’s wearing.

  “You’re a genius,” he tells me. “And now, I’m sorry for this, but you’ve found me church bells. I’ve got to use them.”

  He reaches past me, and he turns the crank. The bells ring louder.

  CHAPTER 15

  I wake in a bed with the sensation of being watched. This, I think, is getting old. When I open my eyes, I am in my own bed, and I am being watched, by Ben, who is stretched out next to me, his eyes steady on me.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks me.

  “Okay,” I tell him, which is true. Tired, but okay.

  “You found us bells.”

  “I did.”

  “I’m going to overlook the fact that you snuck out of the house and focus on the fact that you found us bells.”

  “Ben,” I say, frustrated. “You don’t understand. I had to—”

  “We’ll find your father. You can’t go off on your own. We’ll find him together.”

  “She has him somewhere, Ben, and it’s all my fault—”

  “It isn’t your fault. Stop that. And there is no place she could hide him that we wouldn’t find him.” He ducks his head down, forcing me to meet his eyes, pale as tears. “We are Selkie Stewart and Benedict Le Fay. Try and stop us. Right?”

  I wish I felt like he was right about that. “Until you decide we’re not anymore,” I point out scathingly.