The Boy with the Hidden Name (20 page)

hid them, but you said he should be able to recognize Le

Fay magic.”

Will is silent for a second, looking at me. Then he snaps,

“Possibly. Maybe. If we’re lucky. Which I’m not sure I’m will-

ing to count on anymore. And anyway, he can’t, can he?”

I blink in surprise. “Why not?”

“Because he’s
sleeping
,” Will spits out.

I don’t know what to make of that. “We can’t just…wake

him up?”

“Selkie. You need to understand that you should be dead.

You’re not, and we are all very grateful for that, but I don’t

know how Benedict accomplished that, and I don’t want to

know.” He seems furious, and I have no idea what to say in

reaction. “He’s sleeping. When he wakes, we can ask him

if he can help find the other fays, now that he knows his

mother has hidden them. But I don’t know when that’s going

to be, and it’s 11:32.”

“11:33,” the Erlking adds quietly.

Will swears and says, “You see? I think we need to get ready,

don’t you?” Then he stands up, scraping his chair back, and

marches out of the kitchen. Stomps, more like it.

I stare after him with no idea what just happened.

“You must forgive him,” the Erlking says to me, looking

awkward. “He was…worried.”

“We’re all worried,” I say, disinclined to allow Will to be

more worried than the rest of us.

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“When Benedict arrived here with you…it was bad. They

had an enormous disagreement.”

“Who did?” I ask, because I’m having a difficult time follow-

ing this conversation. Maybe it’s because I’ve just recovered

from what was apparently a severely life- threatening illness.

“Benedict and Will,” he answers.

“Over what? Over me?”

The Erlking looks at me, his navy blue eyes glittering hard.

“You were very bad off. You were absolutely delirious. Will

was furious with Benedict.”

“But why?” I’m bewildered by this. “Ben didn’t curse me.”

“He should have noticed, Selkie. It was inexcusable for him

not to have noticed until it was too late. His delay could have

killed you. It
should
have killed you.”

I know that I’ve been told this, but for the first time, it

really seems to sink in, as if it was all too much for me to

take in at first and only now can I start to comprehend it. I

think maybe I’d assumed people were exaggerating, the way

girls at school might say they were going to die upon finding

out their mascara had clumped their eyelashes together. I feel

myself turn cold, and the toast I’ve managed to eat sits uneas-

ily in my stomach. “Will really thought I was going to die?” I

say, unable to get my voice louder than a whisper.

The Erlking just looks at me until I have to drop my eyes

and look away, because you can’t truly absorb the news that

you almost died while staring at someone else. “Anyway,”

the Erlking continues after a moment, as if we are having

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a perfectly normal conversation. “Benedict finally slammed

shut your door and locked it, and then none of us could get

in until…well, until you woke up.”

“How long was I out?” I ask fearfully.

“Three days. And in the meantime, we’ve moved ever closer

to the twelve o’clock hour. And now we have to wait for

Benedict to recover on top of everything.”

We are silent for a moment. I look out the window, where

the light is still the color of a dawn without a sun. It reminds me of Ben’s eyes. I think of Ben sleeping, trying to recover

from saving my life. I think of the prophecy.

“We’re not going to survive the battle, are we.” It’s not

a question.

The Erlking answers me anyway. “Selkie. It’s a
battle
.”

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B en is sleeping on the couch in the study. We almost never

use the study, because it belonged to my father. My aunts

have always avoided it, and I have always followed their lead.

But now that Ben is in there, I have no choice but to go in.

I feel like I need to talk to him. Everything is such a blur in

my head, and we’re barreling toward a battle. We don’t know

where the other fays are, and my father is trapped outside of

the city. It’s 11:33 now— possibly 11:34, for all I know— and

Ben is prophesied to die, and I have to talk to him. I have

just always had to talk to Ben when life gets overwhelming,

and even after everything, apparently that hasn’t changed. Or

maybe I just have to wait until things calm down before I start

to break my Ben habit.

Then again, are things ever going to calm down?

Ben is nothing but a heap on the couch, covered with a blan-

ket and curled into a ball. I walk over and look down at him.

He looks both more boyish and more dangerously attractive

than I would have liked. He has the blankets tight around him,

and he looks surprisingly tense, his lips pursed tightly together, his brow furrowed, as if his sleep is taking effort. Some of

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the things I would like to do to Ben are things I’d rather not

admit, but I’d like to smooth the dark curls of his tumbled

hair off of his pale forehead. I’d like to kiss his mouth until

he forgot to frown and started smiling. I’d like to unfurrow

his brow with brushes of my lips and flutters of my eyelashes.

When I first fell in love with Ben, on Boston Common, he

was playful and charming. He laughed and made me laugh.

He brought me lemonade and sweatshirts and asked me

inconsequential questions. When I fell in love with Ben for

the second time, in Tir na nOg, he was sick and vulnerable.

He shivered and clung to me. I brought him blankets and the

power of my name, and the questions we should have asked

each other went mostly unsaid. When I fell in love with Ben

for the third time, in Cottingley, when he kissed me in a fake

ruin, he was focused and deliberate, seductive and seducing,

and I really thought I knew him, after all of that.

I stand and listen to his breaths, breaths that belong to Ben.

It occurs to me that I may never know Ben. It occurs to me

that I am never going to stop falling in love with him either.

That he will show up in an endless number of new guises,

new facets, new puzzles to solve in his personality, and I will

fall in love with every single one of them. And what will stay

constant about him will be his quicksilver, fickle nature. The

faerie
- ness of him. I will always be his, but I am not sure he will ever be entirely mine. I am not sure he is even capable of

it. I am not sure I could even get him to understand what it

is I want from him.

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I should leave the room, I think. He’s fine. I’ve verified it

for myself. Sleeping. Recovering from whatever it is he did

to save my life. Something even Will doesn’t want to know

about. I shudder.

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 set-

tling 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

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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 nor-

mally 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

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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 impor-

tant 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
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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.

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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 head-

ing briskly along the sidewalks, dodging each other and dart-

ing out to cross the street between cars. I am seized by a