The Boy with the Hidden Name (34 page)

Beacon Street. The street is paved smooth. In fact, it is smoother than I have ever seen it, clear of potholes. There are tourists

taking photos of the lavender windowpanes in my house, and

there are besuited businesspeople hurrying past. I think that

one of them, a particularly attractive one, pauses and salutes at me, a funny little half wave, half bow. I blink at him.

“Selkie,” a voice calls to me from the staircase, and I turn

away from the doorway.

“Dad,” I say in shock, because there he is, looking
wonder-

ful
, descending the staircase toward me. “You’re here!”

“Of course I’m here,” he tells me. “Where else would I be?”

He hugs me, and he whispers in my ear, “Well done.”

“But what happened?” I ask, bewildered.

He draws back a bit and cups his hand onto my cheek.

“We won,” he answers simply. “Thank you. Now.” He drops

his hand. “Your aunts are going to pretend nothing ever hap-

pened. We can let them do that. In the meantime, Arawn

and I are going for a drink.”

“Who?” I turn as my father walks past me, pausing by the

open doorway to pull a bowler hat off the coat stand by the

door. That bowler hat has always been on that coat stand. I

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have never seen anyone wear it before. I never even thought

about the fact that it must have been my father’s. Just the

sight of him in it makes me want to cry.

“Your faerie godfather,” my father says, as if this makes

total sense. “I’ll be back later.”

“My…what?” But my father winks at me and, whistling,

steps out onto the doorstep and then down the street.

“Aunt True?” I call. “Aunt Virtue?”

“Yes, dear?” Aunt Virtue calls back.

“I’m going to the Common,” I tell them and step out and

close the door behind me.

Ben is not on the Common. I stand in the middle of

the swirling crowds in and around Park Street and feel lost

and bereft.
We
won
, I think. I got my father back, and the Otherworld is presumably much better off. I wrote the story

I wanted. But my story had Ben. And I can’t find Ben.

I turn away from Park Street, walking up and over to a

patch of sunny grass, where I sit.

And as if on cue, Kelsey and Merrow and Trow are there.

I’m not sure where they came from.

They don’t seem to know where they came from either.

Kelsey says dazedly, “What
happened
?”

“I have no idea,” I answer.

“But you were the one who told us to do this!” she points

out.

“But I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was just

making things up as I went along.”

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“We rewrote the story,” Merrow says. “I’ve been reading

prophecy after prophecy and…we won. We made the world

we wanted. Everything is the way it always was. Only every-

thing is
better
. We saved
everyone
.”

“We won,” I say and look out over Boston Common. I

want to know how to find the rest of the Otherworld crea-

tures. Where are the Erlking and his goblin army? If I snuck

my way into a subway tunnel, would I be able to find him?

Or are we cut off now? Is that part of my life over? Is the rest of my life just going to be…normal? Was that the story I

wrote for myself? I feel like I didn’t get that far.

And where is Ben? When I saved the world, did I send him

back into the Otherworld? Will he just stay there now that his

job is over, now that he doesn’t need to protect me anymore?

“So the Seelies are gone?” I say.

“Seems so. I don’t know. You were the only one of us who

ever actually got to go over to the Otherworld.”

“Kelsey did, too,” I tell her. “And it’s not really something

to be jealous of. Trust me.”

“Agreed,” says Kelsey, nodding emphatically.

“I don’t know.” Merrow shrugs. “Maybe now it will be.

Now that we’ve fixed everything. Maybe we can ask your

traveler boyfriend if he’ll take us.”

“I’m not going to run
tours
,” says Ben good- naturedly from behind us, and I whirl around.

He smiles at me. His eyes are green like the new grass all

around him and blue like the bright sky above us. I want to

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fling myself into his arms, but I am aware of the audience and

I am also aware that I don’t know where we stand. Not quite.

“We are third, fourth, and fifth wheels,” Merrow remarks.

“I’m always the third wheel when it comes to all of you,”

says Kelsey.

“I’m sure you won’t be single long,” Merrow tells her. “I

mean, us faeries are pretty irresistible. Right, Trow?”

“Being a faerie myself, I wholeheartedly endorse that,”

replies Trow.

“Know a good ice cream place?” Merrow asks.

“Do I ever,” says Kelsey, and they all pick themselves up

from the grass.

I sit, awkward, trying to decide if I’m supposed to go

with them.

“You’re supposed to stay here,” Kelsey says. “But later,

you and I are going to have a long discussion about my

being
supernatural
.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I say. “I don’t know

anything about being supernatural.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job with it,” Kelsey replies.

“I’m not.” And then I say honestly, “I’m just trying to

be me.”

Kelsey smiles at me, and then she moves off with Merrow

and Trow, and they are laughing about something. I think

how maybe saving the world together is kind of a huge bond-

ing experience.

I watch them go, and then I look at Ben. Ben walks over to

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me and stands with his hands in his pockets, looking down

at me.

He
is
so
dazzlingly
beautiful
, I think. It’s been a while since I thought that, in the middle of all the running for our lives

we’ve been doing. In the middle of how angry I’ve been with

him, how betrayed I’ve felt by him. It almost hurts to look

at him, he’s so gorgeous. I squint up at the cloudless sky

then look back at him. “You’re the only person on Boston

Common wearing a raincoat today.”

He doesn’t smile. “Glockenspiel,” he says.

“What?” I ask, wondering if he’s started speaking another

language.

“It’s Glockenspiel,” he repeats.

He’s not making any sense. “What is?”

He sighs and sits beside me on the grass. Next to me, closer

to me, I can see he looks tired, smudges of exhaustion under

his eyes.

“Are you okay?” I ask in concern.

“In my time, everything happened two minutes ago.”

“In my time too.”

“Not really. It just seems that way to you.” He lies down on

his back on the grass and looks up at the sky. “It’s been a very long day, Selkie.”

I think of his mother, and I say again, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Just tired.”

“So we won?”

“We won,” he confirms.

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“And what happened? How are things in the Otherworld?”

“Wonderful, actually. Safford sends his gratitude.”

“So that worked,” I realize. “Writing him back in. What

about Will?”

“Ah,” says Ben and almost smirks. “You should ask your

Aunt True about that one.”

I wince. “Stop it,” I tell him.

He looks at me, abruptly serious. “Speaking of the

Otherworld. I could, if you wanted, spend, you know, a lot

more time
here
.”

I swallow thickly, my pulse racing wildly. “More time than

you spend now?”

“I could spend forever here.”

My heart feels too full for me to talk. “Forever’s a long

time,” I tell him.

“It’s the blink of an eye,” he counters.

“I don’t want to just stay in Boston. I want to see every-

thing. I want to see it all without being afraid for our lives

the whole time.”

“I will take you anywhere you would like to go. Say

the word.”

I don’t know how to respond to that. I take a deep breath.

It’s exactly what I wanted Ben to say, and yet at the same

time, it’s all too much.

“So she loved you,” I say abruptly. “Your mother. She was

protecting you all along, helping you, in a convoluted, faerie

way. Right?”

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“She was protecting all of us. By making it look as if she

wasn’t. But she found the way to get the prophecy to be ful-

filled in exactly the way she wanted it to be fulfilled, and she saved all of us in the end.”

“She also caused a lot of problems,” I say, thinking of the

cursed coat.

“She was a faerie,” Ben says and looks at me. “We always

cause more problems than we intend to.”

“Why didn’t she just
help
us at the Unseelie Court? It would have saved us so much trouble.”

Ben says after a moment, “I wasn’t…I wasn’t trying to

manipulate you.”

“When?” I ask, confused. I have no idea how that answers

my question.

“When I asked you to kiss me to escape from Avalon. It’s

what my mother was talking about. Giving enchantment

the ultimate strength: love. It has never been the weakness

the Seelies have always presumed it to be. It has always been

the source of the Le Fay strength. That’s why she didn’t help

us at the Unseelie Court. Because you still could have been

manipulated away to Avalon through love of your father.

Everything still could have fallen apart. But if she sealed

the whole thing with
love
, if she took the power of that love and turned it against the Seelies, against
their
prophecy and toward
ours
, then she would seal the prophecy forever. That was why I had you kiss me. I could get us out of there, but I

needed you to
love
me to do it.”

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I look down at him on the grass and I say it out loud. “I

always love you.”

“I know you do.” He sits up. “And you trust me. You said

you did.”

And I shouldn’t. And yet. “I do. I trust you.”

“And I trust you. That’s why I’m telling you. Glockenspiel.”

“I don’t know what you mean when you say that, Ben,” I

tell him. “Is it some kind of faerie vow?”

“No. It’s my hidden name.”

My breath stalls in my chest. He says it so simply, as if it’s

nothing at all. “It’s your what?” I whisper when I can form

words again.

“My hidden name.” He smiles at me, looking delighted

with himself.

“Why would you tell me that?” I ask, astonished.

“Because I trust you.” He leans forward and brushes a kiss

over my lips. “Also because someday you might need to know

my whole name to save me. I do foolish things sometimes,

you know.”

I feel like this is the equivalent of a marriage proposal, this

knowledge he has given me. I tremble with the power of it,

with how matter- of- factly he is placing himself in my hands.

I clench my hands into the front of his raincoat. “Ben…” I

say shakily.

“Shh. I gave you my whole name. You should say it. Say it

the way you love me.”

“Benedict,” I whisper and brush a kiss over his left eyelid

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as it flutters beneath my touch. “Will o’ the Wisp.” I brush

a kiss over his right eyelid. “Celador.” I kiss the bridge of his nose. “Glockenspiel.” I kiss the tip of his nose. “Le Fay,” I

finish. I linger close to him, our noses brushing together. “It’s a beautiful name.”

“Only when you say it. I give you the power of my hidden

name, Selkie Stewart. And I seal it with love.”

Benedict Will o’ the Wisp Celador Glockenspiel Le Fay

kisses me into oblivion. Metaphorically speaking, this time.

Because he’s the best kisser in the Otherworld.

Faerie tales end with
happily
ever
after
. But that’s just where our tale of faeries is beginning.

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aCknOwledgMenTs

As usual, many thanks to the small army of people that make

a book possible:

My agent, Andrea Somberg, whose cheerleading has been

invaluable and who also understands that breakfast is the best

meal of the day.

My editor, Aubrey Poole, who made this book so much

better and did it with aplomb and flair and infinite patience

and made this all so much incredible fun.

The rest of the team at Sourcebooks, including Katy Lynch

and Derry Wilkens, who perform publicist wizardry on

a regular basis, Jillian Bergsma, Cat Clyne, Kay Mitchell,

Valerie Pierce, Katherine Prosswimmer, Jennifer Sterkowitz,

Brittany Vibbert, and Christina Wilson.