SNEAK PEEK - The Boy with the Hidden Name

Chapter Two

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.