"Of course I remember," Kelsey says. "He died in a shark attack, Selkie. It was awful."
That was the official story. He died in a shark attack. But he didn't. "No, he didn't, Kelsey." I turn back to Will. "Ben mentioned something about him being a goblin. Something." I am trying so hard to remember. How did I not remember all this before, when Ben was around? "It's all fuzzy now."
"Wait," says Kelsey, and her face is also screwed up in concentration. "You might be right. I think…I mean, he wasn't a goblin. Wasn't he a…monster? Was he a monster? But it was a shark attack." Kelsey gives up. "I'm confused."
"Yes," Will says. "Too many overlapping enchantments. But it wouldn't surprise me if you'd had a brush with a goblin before. They've been keeping a close eye on you. You're just as valuable to them as you are to the rest of us. They're really all around, most of the time masquerading as attractive humans. It's an ego thing."
"Brody tried to kill me." At least, I think he did. I wish I could remember the encounter better.
"You probably misinterpreted. You said he looked like a monster?"
I nod. I'm fairly sure he did. He was hideous and terrifying.
"Then he was in some distress, as goblins usually have no problem maintaining their disguises. He was probably asking you for help." Will shrugs, as if this is no big deal.
"And then I killed him?" I gasp in horror.
"You probably didn't. Goblins are very difficult to kill, and it wasn't like you had any special powers. I'm sure he's fine." Will continues to look very unconcerned about all of this. "You can ask the Erlking when we see him. I'm sure he'll know."
· · ·
We decide to all go see the Erlking together, because Boston isn't safe anymore. I don't want my aunts to stay behind, and they don't want me to leave without them, and so we are agreed.
It is Will who says, "What do you wish to do with Etherington?"
And up until that moment, selfishly, like a terrible daughter, I had not really thought about my father. It's not because I don't love my dad—because I do—but because I'm not used to him being involved in stuff. And I'm used to thinking of him as being safe where he is.
But that was before I learned that Boston is about to turn into a battleground.
I look at my aunts, who look back at me.
Aunt Virtue says, "We will have to go get him."
Aunt True pulls out a white handkerchief, heavily embroidered because she's probably been adding embellishments to it for centuries now, and blows her nose, her eyes weepy.
"How will we get him out?" I ask. I've never really thought about it, but surely we're not just allowed to walk in and retrieve our institutionalized family member?
Aunt True looks at me blankly with red-rimmed eyes.
Aunt Virtue draws herself up proudly and intones grandly, "We are the Stewarts of Beacon Hill. Who would dare to stop us?"
I decide that maybe they know better than I do about this, and anyway, it's nice to have something that someone else is in charge of.
"Selkie," Will says to me, "get your sweatshirt."
I hesitate. I took the sweatshirt off in a fit of anger right after Ben left me on the Common, because if he was going to walk away and abandon me, then I wasn't going to cling to his gift, even if it was supposedly keeping me safe. I don't know that it will work anymore, that Ben cares enough to be maintaining the enchantment over it, over me, because he doesn't care. He left.
Will walks over and stands next to me, stalled at the bottom of the stairs, looking up toward my bedroom.
"It wasn't about you, Benedict leaving," he tells me in a low voice. "I've never seen him so fond of anyone before, and I've known him a very long time, longer than either of us would care to remember."
I look at Will. "I don't care. I don't care why he left. I don't care what he was thinking. I'm not worrying about him anymore."
Will looks dubious.
I frown. "I don't. I'll get the sweatshirt if you want me to, but I don't care." I shrug to show how much I don't care, then say, "The only thing I'm worrying about is that my mother said Ben was going to die. That he was going to betray me and he was going to die."
Will shook his head. "She was saying it to get to you, Selkie."
"He did betray me," I point out. "I don't care, but I don't want him to die." I remember how my mother named Ben when we were trapped in Tir na nOg. Saying his name over and over with dangerous intent. Causing him pain.
"He's got a hidden name, Selkie. He's going to be fine. And if it really is a prophecy, then all we can do is find a way out of it."
"Fulfill part of the prophecy without fulfilling all of it?" I say hollowly.
"Get the sweatshirt," says Will. "It's the first step. We need to keep you as safe as you can possibly be."
"And you think the sweatshirt is still enchanted to protect me?" I am not nearly as sure about that.
"Benedict liked you more than I've ever seen him like anybody," Will repeats.
Which shouldn't mean anything to me, considering he also left me. But I can't help it; it does. So I jog up the stairs.
My sweatshirt is just where I left it, crumpled on the floor. I take a deep breath and pull it over my head, and then I take another deep breath and look around me at my room. I step onto the landing and peek out of the Palladian window, choosing one of the lavender panes, letting it tint Boston Common below into wavy purple. This is my home, and now it's a battleground, and somehow I'm the one who is leading everyone into battle.
Or something.
"Selkie?" Kelsey says behind me hesitantly.
I don't turn to face her.
"I guess this means we won't have to take the quiz on Emerson," I say, because that was what had been on our schedule for today, before all this.
"Yeah, that's at least one good thing to come out of all of this. We've been saved from having to pretend we understood any of 'Nature.'"
"You should go home," I say. "You should go home to your mom and—"
"You heard Will. It's not safe. What good would it do?" Kelsey comes up to the window and looks out of it with me.
"I called my mom," she says eventually. "She didn't pick up. I left her a message and I told her I loved her. I…didn't know what else to do. How can I say to her, 'Mom, I'm scared the world's ending, but don't worry, Selkie and I are trying to stop it'?"
"I don't know how I got us into this," I say, because I don't understand how it all spiraled so quickly to this moment here.
"You were you," Kelsey replies. "And I always knew you were going to be a little bit crazy to be friends with, from the very beginning."
"You didn't think it would be this crazy."
"Maybe I had a suspicion," says Kelsey.
"Remember when all you had to worry about was cheerleading?"
"No," Kelsey answers frankly. "I don't. That seems like a lifetime ago. Look, the world might end, right? I want to be able to brag to my grandkids that I stopped it. So let's go."
I lean forward and hug her fiercely and say, "It's so good to have you here."
And Kelsey says, "Right back at you."
And then we head down the stairs together. Only I get distracted on the landing, looking at the clock.
Because it's stopped.
"Selkie?" Will says from the foyer. "Ready?"
"The clock stopped," I call down to him.
"What does that mean?" he asks.
I look down at him in surprise. "I thought you would know."
"Why would I know what that means? It isn't my clock. But I'm going to assume, based on recent events, that it is probably another portent of ill to come and we should get moving and not spend time winding it."
I am already on my way down the stairs. "Fine," I say to him. "I didn't need a speech."
My aunts are already outside, standing on the front stoop with Safford. They both look typically anxious, wringing their hands, and I don't blame them. I think of how they had to go through my entire existence worrying that all of this was going to happen someday and they were going to lose me, and it makes total sense to me now, all of the stuff that I dismissed as craziness on their behalf.
Aunt Virtue closes the door and carefully locks it.
Aunt True lays a hand against it, reverently and adoringly, sniffling.
"True," Will says to her, his voice very gentle. "Everything we've been through together, all of us, here, it does not end like this. Do you hear me?"
Aunt True looks up at him, eyes wide and welling with tears. "How can you be so sure?"
"Because I am not going to stand by and just give them Boston," says Will. "I lived on this hill when it was an actual hill, before its height was stolen to create new land. I was hanged out on that Common for being a witch. I will not surrender it to the Seelies. Not until one of them names me, and not a second before."
"That isn't going to be necessary," I say, trying to sound soothing. "We're going to take down the Seelie Court."
My aunts stand side by side, almost identical with their dark features and dark hair and matching long-sleeved black blouses and knee-length black skirts and black boots, all neat and gleaming. And they look at me, their eyes sad, like they're worried I'm so delusional that they don't even know what to do with me anymore.
Aunt True takes Will's arm. "Will," she begs. "Could you cast a protective charm? Please?"
He looks down at her. "I can't promise it would do any good, True, not now."
"Please?"
He sighs and glances back at the house. I don't see anything happen but something must, because, after a second, my aunt relaxes slightly and breathes, "Thank you."
Will nods once, brusquely, and then we set off down the Common together.
"So," says Will as we walk, "the plan is that we retrieve Etherington and then we go to the goblins."
He seems to be much calmer now that we have a plan, a direction. I think he was feeling rudderless without the prophecy, and it was making him panicked. I think of how panic-inducing it must be for someone like Will, who lives in a world where he's used to thinking he knows what's going to happen and suddenly he's lost that. It must be, in a way, like suddenly losing a sense, suddenly going blind or deaf.
"How are we getting to the goblins?" Kelsey asks.
"We're going to take the subway, of course," Will says matter-of-factly.
"The subway is a mess," Kelsey says.
"It's true," I agree. "The lines were all backed up. We were going to take it to go find you."
"It'll work for us," Will assures us confidently.
Park Street is crowded during rush hour on the best of days, but it's worse today, balanced on the edge of a full-fledged riot. You can taste panic in the air.
"Everyone's trying to get out of the city before it falls," Will remarks, walking through the gates on the heels of a commuter. "As if that's going to do any good."
"Wait," I say, confused. "Aren't these…humans?" I hope no one is eavesdropping.
"Well, yes. But an odd, sudden storm just rolled in and church bells are falling out of towers," Will points out. "It doesn't matter what you are—you're getting away from here."
"The Red Line trains will be running, right?" Aunt True asks. "The human ones?"
"They should be. The human trains will run longer than our trains will," Will responds. "The goblins will fall back, but the trains will run as well as they can for as long as they can."
We go down to the Red Line platforms, reaching the platform in the middle, which is so packed you can barely move. Will walks without apology, pushing through the crowd. I try to keep him in my sight and make sure everyone else is still with us too.
We come out, finally, on the far side, near the fire exit stairway.
A train sounds its horn, rolling up to the station toward us on my left. At the same time, another train comes roaring in from the tunnel on my right, going in the opposite direction.
The bells chime then. An awful jingle-jangling sound that makes me feel queasy. My hands clench into fists automatically, and I back away from the fire exit stairway, where the sound seems to be coming from.
The trains to our left and our right have their doors open.
"Selkie," Will says slowly. He stands still, his eyes on the fire exit stairway, watching, waiting, tense. "The goblins live in the subway tunnels. Get into a tunnel, ask for the Erlking, and use my name."
"Wait, what?" I say, looking at him, confused. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Get on the train," he tells me.
I glance behind me. My aunts have already gotten on the train, although Aunt Virtue is standing with her hand on the door to keep it open. I look back at Will.
"Selkie," Kelsey says to me, and I look at her.
She is staring up at the fire exit stairway. Where a faerie has appeared, glowing palely in the dim T station.
The faerie is a Seelie. For a moment, looking up, I think it might be my mother. It isn't, but it could be; that's how strongly the Seelies resemble each other. Although I didn't think that when I was in Tir na nOg. Did they all look alike then? Or is it just that they all look alike now?
In my moment of confusion, all hell breaks loose. It feels like an earthquake shakes the station, the cement trembling under our feet, fine vibrations that increase to tremors. The regular commuters all look around in confusion that quickly tips over into fear then rises to a crescendo of panic.
And then the floor literally begins rolling underneath us.
"Go!" Will shouts, and I dart toward the waiting T, except that the pavement cracks right in front of me, rising in an impossibly high jagged cliff.
I try to scramble up over it, and I'm almost to the top when I hear someone say my name. It must be the Seelie, saying it with intent, because I cry out with the pain of it, and someone yanks hard on the hood of my sweatshirt, pulling me back through the crowd of people, and I scream in panic and wheel around to claw at whoever's holding me.
I collide with the being that grabbed me. Who turns out to be Will. He tumbles backward and into the open T door across the platform from where my aunts are. He manages to get hold of me and pull me in after him, and then the doors slide closed. The lights of the T flicker off and then back on.
And then Kelsey says, "Where the hell are we?"
【CHAPTER 4】
The train looks like the living room of some kind of fancy hunting lodge, with comfy chairs positioned in cozy little reading nooks around an enormous central fireplace. I am with Will and Kelsey and Safford. My aunts, who were the first people on the other T, the T we were all supposed to get on, were stuck there when the platform cracked between us.
"My aunts," I say, and reach for the closed doors, although I don't know what I'm going to do. How do you open subway car doors once they've closed?
And then the subway swings into motion, taking us away from the station. Away from the Seelie and the weird earthquake, but away from my aunts too.
I whirl back to Will. "No. Will. Take me back. I have to go back. I have to get them."
Will is massaging his face where I collided with him. "We can't go back."
"We have to go back, Will!" I scream at him. "We can't just leave them! There was a Seelie!"
"They're on their own subway train. They'll be on their way now. And anyway, you're what the Seelies want, and you're here. That makes your aunts safer than they would be with you."
"Will—" I start, and then truly register the surroundings of the train around us. "Wait a second. Where are we? What happened? We're not even in Boston anymore."
"We are. We're just on an Otherworld train."
"The Otherworld trains go to the Seelie Court! They're evil!"
Will shakes his head. "Only the Green Line is evil. The Red Line should take us to the Erlking."
"It can't," I tell him. "It can't take us anywhere without my aunts and my father. We have to go back. This train has to stop, right now."
And then it does.
It screeches to a violent halt. The chairs skid forward, crashing against the wall. We all lose our balance, tumbling to the floor. The awful squealing of the wheels against the track ends, and the silence that descends is deafening.
After a moment, I say hesitantly, "Did I do that with the power of my mind?"
"No," Will bites out as he gets back to his feet. "You didn't. I told you the Seelies were after you, didn't I? We have to get off this train." Will is studying the doors.
"In the middle of a tunnel?" Kelsey asks.
"And go back for my aunts?" I say.
"No," Will snaps. "We can't go back for your aunts. Don't you get it? We're being hunted. The Seelies stopped this train. So we have to get out into the tunnels."
"And what are we going to do once we're there?" I demand hotly. "We have to go somewhere, we might as well go—"
"We'll go to the goblins." Will cuts me off brusquely and tries ineffectively to pry the doors open. "This is all so much easier to do when you've got a traveler with you," he comments, and then, "Don't tell Benedict I said that."
"Aren't you a wizard?" I ask. "Just magic it open."
"Sorry, I was busy learning important spells like disguising silver boughs to smuggle into prison for you and casting a protective enchantment over an entire city. I didn't bother to memorize the spell for opening subway train doors."
"You don't know the spell to open things?" I say in disbelief.
And then the doors slide open.
I look at Will, who looks back at me, and then we both turn our heads.
Safford is replacing the emergency door release handle. "What?" he says at our looks. "Didn't you want to open the door?"
"Magic trains have emergency door release handles," says Kelsey.
"Safety first," says Will, and then, "Thanks, Safford." He leaps out the open doorway into the dark tunnel beyond then turns back to the rest of us. "Come on."
There is a moment when I stand at the edge, hesitating. I look at Kelsey and Safford, who are depending on me to keep them safe. I think of my aunts and my father. I don't know how I'm supposed to be keeping all of these people safe. And I haven't even started to think about Ben, who is somewhere dangerous, undoubtedly getting himself into yet another situation where he will need my rescue.
I don't know what to do, but I believe that we are sitting ducks on this train. Better to keep moving.
I jump down after him.
Kelsey and Safford follow.
Will starts walking, and we trail behind him, for lack of anything better to do, I guess.
"Tell me how being in the subway tunnel is going to help us get to the goblins."
"Well, the goblins live in the subway tunnels. We were going to get there the civilized way, on the train, but this will work just as well."
"The goblins," Kelsey repeats in a processing tone of voice, as if she is taking careful notes for when she writes up her memoir of this experience, "live in the subway tunnels."
"Yes," Will answers crisply, as if Kelsey should have figured out much earlier in her life that goblins lived in the Boston subway. "Did you never wonder why your subway system is so excruciatingly incapable of functioning correctly?"
"I wondered that all the time," retorts Kelsey. "I never thought it was because of goblins."
"They sabotage the tracks," Will explains.
"Do they hate us?" I ask.
"No, they're just mischievous and frequently bored," Will replies.
"Can't they get hobbies?" grumbles Kelsey, and I don't blame her, because the malfunctioning subway is annoying.
"Brody didn't live in the subway tunnels," I say.
"How do you know where Brody lives?" counters Will, and he has a point.
"So the goblins will help us get to Ben," I begin.
"And we can use them to check up on your aunts and your father. The goblins have the run of Boston," Will says.
"The goblins," says Kelsey, in that same thoughtful tone of voice, "have the run of Boston."
Will rolls his eyes as if Kelsey has just revealed she doesn't know the alphabet.
The tunnel is very quiet. I expect there to be the rumble of subway trains from other places, but there is nothing but silence all around us. I listen harder, for the chiming of bells, for Seelies to rush up on us. I imagine, as I listen harder, that what I can hear is scuffling.
"Are there rats in the tunnels?" I ask suddenly.
"Of course there are," Will answers. "What kind of ridiculous question is that?"
I draw to a stop. "Ben told me there weren't any rats in the tunnels."
"Then he lied," Will answers, sounding unconcerned. "He's a faerie, Selkie, it's what he does. Anyway, what do you have against rats?"
I start moving again, but going very slowly, disgruntled over the revelation of Ben's lie. "That's right, you love rats," I recall.
"You love rats?" says Kelsey.
"I love all creatures," Will announces primly.