Girl Who Never Was Page 6

  “Hello,” Will says to me pleasantly, as if it is perfectly expected that he should show up at my front door. He looks beyond me to Ben, and he smiles, looking amused.

  “Benedict,” he says. “You’re looking challenged.” He looks back at me. “Are you being challenging? Excellent, Benedict can always use a bit of that.”

  Ben crinkles his nose, looking annoyed. “I’m running away from the entire Seelie Court with the fay of the autumnal equinox; I am quite sufficiently challenged, thank you,” he grumbles.

  “Oh, stop being so melodramatic; everything’s going according to plan,” Will scolds him.

  “What plan?” I demand hotly. I look between them. “Why do you have a plan about me? You don’t even know me.”

  Will’s face turns hard. “I have known you since you were born, my dear. I have known you since before that.”

  “Then how come I’ve never seen you before?”

  “Because no one sees me unless I want them to,” snaps Will.

  “Oh,” I say sarcastically. “Are you a special invisibility faerie?”

  Will sputters a bit, starts to say something several times before cutting himself off in indignation.

  I look at Ben, who is unexpectedly smiling, looking at me with eyes flashing silver with laughter, and for a moment, it’s as if all this craziness never happened. It could be a moment between us on the Common, a shared joke, and I want to smile back at him and have everything be normal again.

  “Will’s a wizard,” Ben says, and just like that, I am reminded that everything is as far from normal as possible.

  I step around Will, heading for my front door.

  “Oh,” says Will, turning to keep me in his sight. “I thought we might talk first.”

  “First?” I echo.

  “Before you go inside,” he clarifies.

  I am immediately suspicious. “No,” I say firmly. “I am going to see my aunts.”

  But I don’t have to say anything else. The door swings open and my aunts come barreling out, armed with a broom and a mop, and commence to enthusiastically whacking at Will.

  CHAPTER 7

  It takes Ben and me a while to break up the furious battle between my aunts and Will—longer than you’d think, considering that up until that moment I’d always thought my aunts to be too old to throw accurate right hooks (I am wrong about that, it turns out). Ben and I do a lot of dodging of blows, and we finally manage to shove everyone inside, and I call from the doorway to the passersby who have stopped to stare, “No worries! Got it covered!”

  The squabbling struggle has now moved into our front foyer, and I finally manage to get my aunts into the front parlor and Will into the dining room, and I stand in the foyer that separates the two rooms and shout, “What is going on?”

  “How dare you come into this house!” Aunt True spits across the foyer at Will. They are practically snarling with anger, my aunts, and I am truly terrified. What could possibly be happening here?

  “It’s too soon,” Aunt True shouts at him. “It is far too soon.”

  “It isn’t,” Will replies. “It is Selkie’s timeline, and Selkie’s the one who decided it was time. She was the one who started using the right words, asking the right questions.”

  “Benedict manipulated her,” Aunt True accuses, her voice low.

  Ben barks unamused laughter. “Trust me, I share your opinion of the timing of this. Will is the one who gave her the pages.”

  “Then it’s your fault,” spits Aunt True. “As usual.”

  “There’s nothing that can be done now,” says Will. “It’s all begun. She was the one who revealed her birth date.”

  “I’m right here, you know,” I point out. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about, and that needs to stop right now. Someone needs to tell me what’s going on. I want to know why you’re in history books, and I want to know who my mother is and why she’s looking for me and why, if she’s looking for me, I can’t let her find me. I want to know who Will is, and I want to know how Dad knows Ben and why Ben seems to think he’s a faerie who’s been enchanting me my whole life.”

  There is a moment of silence following my outburst.

  Will turns to my aunts. “You didn’t tell her any of this?” he asks in anguish.

  “We didn’t have time,” Aunt Virtue sniffs.

  Aunt True adds, “We didn’t know she’d begun asking the right questions. Benedict whisked her off to the Otherworld as soon as the enchantment broke.”

  Aunt Virtue glares at him.

  “She named me,” Ben snaps. “A lot. And then I was wet. I’ve been only a step or two ahead of the Seelies this entire time. They sent a Green Line train after us at Park Street. If she were with anyone else, she’d already be named.”

  “A Green Line train?” echoes Will. “In Boston?”

  “Well, we weren’t in Boston, because we got stuck in the portal when the enchantment dissolved. I have to say, I would have appreciated a little warning about her naming power.”

  “No one is criticizing the thoroughly magnificent job you’ve done getting her here safe,” says Will soothingly, and then, to me, “He really is very good at what he does.” Back to Ben, “We’re just saying that you could have done a much better job explaining all this when you were breaking the enchantment.”

  “I told you.” Ben scowls. “I didn’t break the enchantment.”

  “But how did she know your name?” asks Will.

  “Dad told me,” I answer, looking at my aunts.

  Will makes a noise of disgust and throws up his hands. “I warned you about him. Now everything’s spiraled out of control.”

  Ben crinkles his nose. “Exactly what I’ve been saying. But why should anyone listen to me? I’m just the one who’s been keeping her safe all this time.”

  “You,” shrieks Aunt Virtue. “Keeping her safe?”

  “What’s going on?” I shout, and they finally fall silent. “Ben says my mother is looking for me, but I can’t have her find me. Tell me why.”

  My aunts look nervous. They wring their hands in concern.

  And then Will suggests, “Maybe you should make some tea. You always did make exceptional tea—”

  “What do you know about it, Will Blaxton?” Aunt True snaps at him. “You stopped coming for tea, remember?”

  “Will you never get over that?” asks Will, sounding long-suffering.

  “No, I won’t get over that! You broke my heart! I was just a young girl!”

  “You were four hundred years old!” Will retorts, voice rising again.

  “But I was young in the ways of love!” Aunt True exclaims.

  We’re off topic again but off topic in a different sort of way. “Wait a second,” I interject, looking between the two of them. “You two…”

  “Not really,” Will responds stiffly.

  This causes Aunt True to burst into loud tears, burying her face in her hands, while Aunt Virtue rubs her back soothingly and shoots deadly glares at Will.

  “Oh, for the love of…” says Will. “It was a very long time ago.”

  “The wound is still fresh,” Aunt Virtue proclaims grandiosely. “The heart does not heal at the same rate as the rest of the body. But I would not expect you to know that, as you do not possess a heart at all.”

  Aunt True’s wails begin anew.

  Will looks very awkward and uncomfortable in the dining room doorway, an incongruous black eye making him look much more rakish than his professorial attire would have predicted. “True,” he pleads across the foyer, “it was never going to work out, love. You know that. I’m a wizard, you’re an ogre; these things don’t work.”

  Aunt True sniffles and lifts up her head to look at him, hiccupping, her frazzled dark hair sticking out all around her head. “I know,” she says, her voice very small
and unlike her and, unexpectedly to me, young.

  Will moves hesitantly across the hallway, like he is approaching a skittish horse. He reaches Aunt True, and she closes her hands into the sweater he is wearing and turns her head into his chest.

  “There, there,” he says and pats her head uncertainly. “Let’s focus on your…” He glances at me and gestures lamely. “Whatever she is.”

  Apparently, these are the magic words of reconciliation. Aunt True straightens away from him and wipes her eyes and says, “Fine. I’ll make tea.”

  CHAPTER 8

  This whole thing is so strange, but everyone is behaving as if it’s not. I sit, stunned, at the kitchen table while Will and my aunts make tea, chatting amiably about people with names that sound like faerie tales, as if there had been no odd scene at all, as if none of this was the very height of oddness. I am frustrated beyond belief—so frustrated I feel tongue-tied.

  Ben comes to sit next to me. He seems uncomfortable, a bit fidgety, and I think how strange it is that he is in my house after all this time. He really does look like he’s out of his natural habitat. I stare at him, my mind so full that it’s blank.

  He says to me, “There’s something I’ve realized you need to know and probably don’t know: nobody can force you to do anything.”

  I feel dazed and try to process this. It sounds like an after-school special, and unlike Ben, and I don’t know how to react. “Okay,” I decide slowly.

  “No, I mean it. Nobody can make you do anything that you don’t want to do. Just remember that if somebody tries to…hurt you or…just think, ‘I don’t want this,’ and the charm will kick in, as long as you’re wearing this.” He reaches out, brushes his fingertips over the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

  “My sweatshirt?”

  He nods. “That’s the talisman of the protective enchantment.”

  “That’s the enchantment?” I ask.

  He just looks at me solemnly. Why do I need a protective enchantment? Somehow, it’s clear everyone thinks I’m in grave danger. Ben has been keeping me safe my entire life. I resent all the secrets and mysteries, everything I haven’t been told, but everyone has been working so hard to keep me safe, it seems.

  “Why does everyone think I’m in danger?” I ask.

  Ben glances toward Will and my aunts. “It’s…Your mother…”

  “If you’ve known this all along, why didn’t you tell me? Any of it?” I am numb with hurt. My entire life is in upheaval, but it’s Ben’s betrayal that hurts me the most. I can understand my aunts and father holding some deep, dark secret back on me—I’d suspected it for so long—but for Ben to be involved, Ben who I’d considered…well, so much more. Everything. Ben who has been more than a crush, Ben who I’ve been in love with—was it all just a lie? An enchantment, as he would call it?

  “Tell you that your mother was looking for you, but I didn’t want you to find her, I needed you to stay with us instead?”

  “You didn’t think I’d listen,” I conclude.

  “You didn’t when your aunts begged you to drop it, did you?”

  “But you would have been different,” I say desperately. “You’re you.”

  Ben looks at me for a second, then drops his eyes to the table. “I didn’t know my mother either,” he says, and I blink at the revelation. “I was trying to decide, if I heard that my mother was looking for me, whether my curiosity wouldn’t…” He clears his throat.

  I don’t know what to say to that. I’d like to ask Ben more about his mother, but Ben’s voice is reluctant, and I do not think he is eager to open the topic. And anyway, the focus now is on my mother. “You’re going to explain everything to me now, right?”

  My aunts set cups of tea carefully on the table—sugar, milk, a plate of cookies. I don’t want any of this, but my aunts and Will set about preparing their tea as if nothing is happening. Will grabs two cookies and pops them in his mouth in quick succession.

  Aunt True looks at Ben. “It’s not going to rain inside. You can take off some of your layers,” she says.

  “Thank you, but it is always on the verge of raining here,” he replies politely. “The very air is too moist for me to function correctly.” He seems to reconsider his statement and adds, “Except in winter. It’s not bad in the wintertime.”

  “Plus, it’s an ogre house,” says Will. “Benedict feels ogre magic like a scratchy wool sweater. The layers are protection.” Will looks at me confidentially. “Water is Benedict’s special affliction, especially if it’s flowing. He doesn’t work right if he’s wet.”

  This would all be very fascinating to me, except… “Ogre house?” I echo and look at my aunts.

  “How is it they have told you absolutely nothing?” Will demands in disbelief.

  “It wasn’t time,” Aunt True says.

  “It was time. She told Benedict her birth date.”

  “I agree with them,” Ben interjects. “It wasn’t time. We weren’t ready.”

  “It was time, Benedict.” Will turns his frown from him to me. “This is not a good idea,” he announces.

  “What isn’t?” Aunt True asks.

  “Benedict has a soft spot for her,” Will flings out, sounding disgusted. “The two of you having a soft spot for her”—Will waggles his fingers at my aunts—“that we expected. But Benedict wasn’t supposed to get emotionally attached.” He drawls it mockingly.

  I look at Ben, complete with a ridiculous little flutter in my heart.

  Ben is scowling at Will. “I disagree with you about the issue of timing. We needed more time than this. You know we did.”

  “You needed more time; you weren’t ready because of how you feel about her. But it was never for us to dictate the timing of things. It was for her.” He indicates me. “She told you the date of her birth, Benedict. That was the omen.”

  “I’ve had enough,” I interrupt abruptly, and everyone looks at me in surprise, as if they had forgotten that I was there and that I’m angry. “I want someone to explain to me what is going on here, and I want that explanation now. You tell me the story, or I let my mother find me and I hear it from her. Your choice.”

  There is a moment of silence.

  “We might as well get settled,” says Will wearily, taking another cookie. “We’ll be here for a while. Now, my dear.” He looks at me kindly. “What do you know about your birth?”

  CHAPTER 9

  “One day my father walked into his Back Bay apartment to find a blond woman asleep on his couch,” I say to Will.

  “Yes.” Will looks delighted by this story. “True enough.” He looks at my aunts. “What a lovely, clever way to put it.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Who?”

  “The blond woman asleep on the couch.”

  “Your mother.”

  “I know that,” I say impatiently. “But who is my mother?”

  Will looks about to answer but Aunt True interjects, “Let us tell her.” She looks at me and takes a deep breath. “Your mother is a bean shìth of the Seelie Court.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I say.

  “She’s a faerie,” says Aunt Virtue.

  “Not just a faerie,” says Will, “one of the most powerful ones. The Seelie Court rules the Otherworld.”

  “My mother is a faerie?”

  “Yes,” says Aunt True.

  “A faerie queen,” corrects Will.

  I stare at him for a moment. Then I say skeptically, “You’re telling me I’m a faerie princess?”

  Ben chuckles—such a normal sound out of him that I am momentarily startled. I look at Ben, and he grins at me.

  “Yes,” he says, “he’s telling you you’re a faerie princess.”

  “Faye Blaxton is a faerie queen?” I clarify.

  “That’s not her name,” says Will.

/>   “What’s her name?” I ask.

  “Oh, no one knows.” Will shakes his head. “No one will ever know. That is one of the most precious secrets, the names of the faeries in the Seelie Court. Names are powerful things.”

  “I know your names,” I point out. I remember Ben, complaining about the way I was using his name.

  “You know what I have told you to be my name, which is not quite the same thing,” says Will. “As for Benedict, he has the misfortune not to be faerie royalty. Names of mere plebeian faeries are required to be revealed under faerie law. Must keep the population in line, you know.”

  “How does that keep the population in line?”

  “Say a faerie’s name the right way, you can dissolve his or her enchantments, weaken him or her.”

  I look at Ben. “That’s what happened when I said your name.”

  Ben nods.

  “What was this enchantment?” I demand.

  “To keep you safe,” says Aunt True.

  “Safe from what? Why do I need to be kept alive? I don’t get it. Why am I in danger of dying?”

  “Not dying,” Aunt True says somberly, anxiously. “Being killed.”

  “Being killed by who?”

  Aunt True and Aunt Virtue wring their hands together fretfully.

  Will explains, “The members of the Seelie Court do not have children. There was a prophecy, so many years ago that nobody can even estimate the age of this prophecy any longer—”

  “Or just the other day,” interjects Ben.

  “Don’t be confusing,” complains Will.

  Ben shrugs.

  “A prophecy,” Will continues firmly, “that there would be four fays born of the seasons and, according to the Seelie Court, that these four fays would be the reason that the Unseelie Court would rise and take power in the Otherworld.”

  “What’s the Unseelie Court?” I ask.

  “They’re our greater of two evils,” answers Ben grimly.