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Emma to Cristina

Dear Cristina!

Sorry to startle you, I just wrote “Dear Cristina” with the comma first and it seemed a little down. Thought I would try to spice it up a little. And I want to hear from you because I miss you and it’s highly annoying that you couldn’t be in New York.

Why did Nene have to pick this exact time to visit you guys? Is it because she has faerie intuition and carefully decided to keep us apart? I mean, no, probably not, she seems like a pretty good person. But still! Show up a week later, Nene! Also disappointed to hear that she didn’t spill anything about what the heck is up in the Seelie Court. I guess if she had given up the court’s secrets to Kieran — who is, technically, the King of the Unseelie Court — the Seelie Queen would consider that “bad” and Nene to be a “traitor,” but that’s nothing compared to how much we want to know what’s up.

Anyway. We’re back from New York, where the weather was much worse than in London, but whatever. We’d sent that picture of the candlesticks from the church to Alec, and he showed them to his mom, who recognized them. She said Robert had brought them along with a bunch of other inherited Lightwood stuff when they left Idris for NYC, and she had no idea what had happened to them since, but they were probably in the NY Institute somewhere. Well, we’ve got the Ghost Sensor, so we said goodbye to Rupert and headed over. (Julian wondered whether Rupert misses us when we’re gone, but it’s hard to tell if ghosts can tell the passage of time. In any case we didn’t find sad faces drawn in the dust when we came back, or anything like that.)

So we saw Jace and Clary, of course, and Alec came to help. I think he was really curious since it’s his family’s stuff. (We were hoping to see Simon and Isabelle but they were off recruiting for Shadowhunter Academy. And Magnus stayed home with the kids. He texted us a video from their apartment where he asked Max and Rafe, “Are we going to help our friends?” and they both shouted, “No!” It was cute. I mean, Max and Rafe were cute. Magnus was maybe milking it a little.)

Finding the candlesticks was…pretty easy, actually, kind of anticlimactic. They were hiding in plain sight in the church’s nave among all the other candlesticks and candelabras and other candle-related things. And the Sensor led us right to them. So maybe they weren’t removed in the Blitz but instead the Lightwoods took them back? Or maybe they were removed and then brought back and sometime after that Robert’s parents took them out of the church? We’ll probably never know, but it also probably doesn’t matter since, whatever, we have them, mystery solved.

In celebration we ordered a pizza and ate it by the light of the candlesticks. New York pizza! It is the best. It hurts to say that a little, as an LA girl, but the truth is the truth. I’d missed it so. Pizza in London is…well, best not to speak of it.

So while we were eating Jace asked Alec if there was any news from Idris, and Julian and I kind of looked at each other because there’s never news from Idris, the Cohort have all shut themselves in there and refuse to come out or let anyone in, you know the deal.

Alec revealed that they had been working on some new variation on fire-messages that would be able to get through the wards around Idris. Mostly using Clary’s power to invent new runes. They’ve been sending them for a while, trying different things, but hadn’t gotten any responses until very recently when they heard from one of my least favorite people, Manuel.

So Alec and Manuel have apparently been sending messages back and forth. Zara refuses to respond and Manuel implied that she didn’t like that he and Alec were talking. Alec thinks he might be lying and Zara might not even know. But Alec also thinks Manuel is tired of being stuck there and might be their way in, since (as we all know) Manuel cares about Manuel above everything else, certainly way more than he cares about the Cohort’s supposed mission. Like Jace said, Zara is a true believer, but Manuel is just an opportunist.

This was all super-interesting, of course, but Julian and I started to feel bad remembering that Alec is, you know, the Consul. Julian said he knew Alec had important Consul stuff to do and it was great that he had come to help find the candlesticks anyway. And then Alec said a really nice thing! He said that their New York crew had always had to work in secret, that they’d always thought of the Clave as the enemy. Well, maybe not the enemy, but not their ally. The Clave they grew up with, you know, locked Jace in the Silent City and refused to believe that Valentine was returning. They would never have thought of going to them for help. So Alec said it was really important to him as Consul to actually be there for the Shadowhunters, to be someone they could know and talk to and bring problems to, rather than hiding. And I guess we did know Alec personally before, and they are his family’s candlesticks, but still, it was nice that he thought of it as part of his Consul duties to help us out, rather than thinking of it as something taking time away from his Real Work. He said this was his Real Work, and we’d better not stop coming to him and Magnus for help.

So then after a while Clary announced that she and I needed to have some girl talk and whisked me off to Taki’s for coffee. Julian she left with Jace and Alec. When last I saw him Jace was guiding him towards the weapons room to take a look at the collection of 17th-century Spanish military swords he’d recently found in one of the church weapons caches somewhere in New York. Julian watched me leave like a puppy being taken to the vet for shots, but I think he had a good time. So he says, anyway.

Clary and I settled into a booth at Taki’s. She wanted to ask me how I was doing, and I started telling her, but she seemed distracted, and I realized that maybe she needed to talk to me about how she was doing. Which turned out to be true. She’s worried because Alec likes to believe the best of people, and he’s really optimistic about the progress they’ve made getting in touch with Manuel, but Clary thinks Zara is a manipulative psycho. On which topic we agree.

“You think it’s a trick?” I said. “Or a trap?”

She said she didn’t know. But then she kind of argued with herself and said she understood how important it was to open up Idris, that she knew the Clave couldn’t survive forever split in two like this.

I said it seemed like it was really weighing heavily on them, and she kind of sighed and gave me the big news, or rather the lack of big news, which is that she and Jace have decided they don’t want to get married until the Clave is reunited. And Simon and Isabelle feel the same way.

“It’s not like there’s any reason to rush,” she said. She was looking out the window as she said it, though, and she sounded kind of sad. “But we don’t want a wedding where all anyone is thinking about is how Idris is off-limits and the Clave is broken.”

She kept looking out the window, so I asked if she saw someone out there, and she kind of looked guilty and turned back to me. “Oh, no, I thought I saw Jace for a minute, but it wasn’t him.”

Finally we got around to how I’m doing and I got to tell her the thing I’m worried about, which you and I have talked about a little. Which is that Julian and I are fixing up this house and I guess…we’re going to move here? Like, move to London. And out of Los Angeles for good. And I haven’t really gotten to think about what that would be like. I was thinking of it as a kind of temporary thing where we would fix up the house and then go home. And it’s easy to feel that way because of all the stuff going on with the Clave.

But for Julian, this will be our new home. And I can’t blame him for wanting that. I mean, for one thing, he’s a Blackthorn and it’s Blackthorn Hall. But we grew up in Los Angeles. I’m an LA girl, all my memories of my parents are of them in Los Angeles. But then we both do have many hard memories from the LA Institute, and it would be nice to put them behind us and get a fresh start. I don’t know. Do you ever find it strange, that you live in New York now? And Faerie? Do you miss the D.F.?

Maybe it’s Idris being out of reach that makes it feel so strange. I grew up always knowing that however spread out the Shadowhunters might be we all had a home together in Idris. It held the Clave together all over the world. But what if Idris is really gone for us, Cristina?

What if it’s gone forever?

Xoxox

Emma

secretsofblackthornhall

Helen to Julian

Hey Julian,

Thanks for your letter! We’ve never been to Cirenworth but it sounds beautiful. Funny to think of quiet, modest Jem and Tessa living in a turreted MANOR HOUSE. It sounds like Kit’s settled in well and really become part of their family, which is wonderful to hear. And we need more pictures of Mina! Never enough pictures of Mina! I will drop a line to Tessa immediately.

But mostly I wanted to say: please don’t worry yourself about Ty and Kit. You’ve got a house to renovate and fairy renovators to manage and a ghost to help and a curse to break…it’s a lot on your plate already. You know Ty, and you know he always speaks his mind. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to talk with us about Kit. Whatever happened between them (and yes, we’re curious, of course we’re curious!) we have to respect his wishes.

Besides, you remember being a teenager. It is a time of HIGHEST DRAMA. (Uh, admittedly, your teenage years contain some specific drama that most people’s don’t, e.g. the civil war in the Clave, Malcolm, you turning into a glowing giant stomping on people.) (Yes, we know you didn’t actually stomp on anyone.) With a little more time and distance from whatever happened, I bet Ty will eventually come around and want to talk about it. We just need to give him time. And maybe Ty needs more time than most people. (For instance, it turns out he needs more time than Kit.)

Either way, please don’t worry too much. You know as well as I do that Ty is stronger than he seems. He’ll be all right.

Thanks for the picture, which Aline is going to have printed out at the drugstore so we can hang it on our well. I think we’ll put it in the kitchen—I miss our CHAOS BREAKFASTS. (Aline has come by to read this and she says that she is going to switch her primary Shadowhunter weapon and start training to fight with Chaos Breakfasts.) Here’s a photo for you in return! Tavvy has gotten deeply into Pokemon, which is very cute and also worrying. Will memorizing 700+ imaginary monsters get in the way of his learning the names of actual demon types or weapons? We worry he won’t be able to tell the difference between a glaive, a guisarme, and a bec de corbin!

Love you, love to Emma and hey, love to the ghost, ghosts need love too,

Helen

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Dru To Kit

secretsofblackthornhall

Tessa to Sophie

Dear Sophie,

My beloved Sophie, you will never read this. On the bottom shelf of the bookcases built into the far wall of my bedroom here in Cirenworth—Cirenworth! you say, but ah, I will explain—are my diaries, in all shapes and forms, from leatherbound quartos of heavy ivory pages to spiralbound ruled notebooks for children to use in school. There are gaps, sometimes of years, and a few that have been lost or damaged, or whose paper was never intended to last as long as I have lived. But each of them is written to someone—I never understood “Dear Diary,” as though Diary were a person I might want to know my thoughts. But you, of course, I do wish to know. And it has been many decades, Sophie, since I have started one of these diaries and addressed it to you. But today brings a fresh start in a new volume, a lovely little book of swirly Florentine paper, and so I address it to you:

Hello, Sophie Lightwood, née Collins, my first true friend in London. You have been gone so long. And yet it also seems only a moment; I turn and see your graceful figure as you hurry down the hall with a basket in your arms, or the way you smiled when you said you were allowed to speak to Will however rudely you liked (and he did deserve it at the time!) or the way you laughed with Gideon over scones.

So: Cirenworth. I live here with Jem now, you know. He is no longer a Silent Brother—well, that is not relevant to my entry today so I suggest you consult one of the earlier diaries to catch up and come back when you’re done. And we have just been visited by his cousin Emma Carstairs, and her paramour, Julian Blackthorn. (Don’t worry; the Blackthorns of his generation are quite kind and friendly!) She has been keeping a diary herself, to record their restoration of Blackthorn Hall in Chiswick, which has remained mostly unoccupied all this time and has fallen into ruin. (Well, further ruin, I suppose.) And, of course, that old pile of bricks has all kinds of magical problems that they’re having to sort out, although of course they were also eager to see us—Jem and I, and Mina and Kit.

Yes, I’m a mother again, Sophie, and that makes me miss you. How good it was to have you by my side in those early days. I remember one evening, when there was a gathering at the Institute—some sort of party, it doesn’t matter, but James was a baby and Thomas was a baby. Someone, maybe old Lysander Gladstone, was trying to engage us in conversation, and I remember we fell asleep against one another right there on the loveseat, and the babies too. When we woke up it turned out Lysander had been highly offended and Will had had to explain to him about babies and new mothers. And we both startled because the children were gone, but of course Will and Gideon had come and retrieved them and put them in the nursery, and let us nap together there.

I miss those moments with you.

Mina is only a toddler, and Jem’s daughter, and thank the Angel she has something of his temperament. It has been a long time since I had to chase a little one across the dining room floor, but she is sweet-natured and easygoing, most of the time. And we have an older son, Kit, who came to live with us after his father was killed. He is a distant relation in the Herondale line, but he does not feel distant at all. He completes our family in a way I could not have imagined, and in a way I’m sure he never expected. He is also a teenager, and he had his own life before he came to us, so between those truths he often keeps things to himself. And so—as one does with teenagers—I worry about him. He has friends—even a girlfriend, if I’m correct in my observations—and he loves Mina with a fierceness that often surprises even him. But there is a heaviness in the way he carries himself sometimes, a sadness that he won’t, or can’t, speak to us about. And maybe it is only that he’s faced so much loss so young, but I can’t help the feeling there’s something more.

I do want to tell you more about Kit, and where he came from—it’s all much more dramatic than you’re probably imagining—but it is late and I can talk to you about Kit anytime. I wish instead to digress and tell you about Julian and Emma’s visit.

They are pulling at the knots of a few mysteries regarding Blackthorn Hall—a curse on the house that dates back to guess who, Benedict Lightwood (I know, Sophie, who could have guessed). And a ghost, benign but faint and unidentified, probably trapped by the curse. There are a whole set of objects, it seems, connected to the curse, and the ghost told them to bring one of them here to Cirenworth—hence their visit, though as I say, I don’t think they minded an excuse to see Kit or Mina.

We were washing up after supper and Jem—you know how Jem is—said straightaway to them, well, let’s see these objects you found.

Julian fetched them from his bag and put them on the counter: a silver-plated whisky flask, quite tarnished, and a dagger, also quite banged up by time. Neither meant much to me at first—as you’ll know, both flasks and daggers are very common in London Shadowhunter homes, even today—but Jem recognized the weapon immediately.

He pointed at the inscription on it and read out, “I wanted so much to have a gleaming dagger, that each of my ribs became a dagger.”

Both Julian and Emma fairly goggled at him. (I also think they don’t realize that Jem does things like this precisely so people will goggle at him; he only pretends to be perfectly dramatic by nature.) “You know it?” said Julian, while at the same time Emma said, “You read Farsi?”

“I’d recognize it anywhere,” Jem said. “It belonged to my cousin, Alastair Carstairs, though it came to him from his mother’s family.”

“The ghost said to bring it here,” Emma said. “To bring it home.”

Jem picked up the flask, which turned out to have a monogram on it. “Oh my,” he said, his voice quiet, and showed me the initials.

My poor dear Matthew. He came into my mind immediately, with his laughing eyes and his bright smile. Julian said they’d already figured out it was his. But that was very strange, I pointed out, because if Benedict was responsible for the curse, he was dead almost ten years before Matthew was even born. Julian started to say it didn’t make sense to them either, and was part of the mystery still. But then there was a sudden loud clicking, which turned out to be the Sensor they had with them that their brother Ty modified for ghosts. (Ty is a whole other fascinating topic, Sophie, but he will have to wait for another day.) They—I mean Shadowhunters in general, not just Julian and Emma—are still using Henry’s demon Sensor invention all these years later!

The Sensor led us to the library. Emma seemed dubious.

“Come on,” she said to the Sensor. “I’m sure the Cirenworth library has been haunted for years.”

“Not to my knowledge,” Jem said. “Although there are houses in the English countryside where if you brought that thing inside it would howl like a police siren. Cirenworth has been well-maintained continually and the owners have always been very thorough about ghosts.”

Using a Sensor to find a ghost is not quite like using it to find a demon. You can tell you’ve found a demon because, you know—the demon is standing there. With ghosts it’s much more a game of “hotter” and “colder,” and eventually we all agreed the clicking was loudest in front of one particular shelf. We took the books down from that shelf and lay them on the table and checked them with the Sensor, and the winner was a quarto book bound in leather. Nothing on the spine, but a quite beautiful compass rose etched into the front.

We opened it, and when I saw the inside, I gasped. And I knew I would be writing this new diary of mine, to you. You would know it yourself—cramped, neat handwriting, with a strong leftward slant, and entirely in Spanish. It was your son’s journal, of course. Thomas’s. My heart! My memories raced back to you holding him, such a small child (who grew to be such a tall broad-chested man!).

Emma was looking through it. This was the first she’d heard of Thomas, perhaps (there are still Lightwoods around, never fear, but they live in New York), so of course she didn’t have the sentimental reaction Jem and I did. “The problem, of course,” she said, “is that my Spanish is terrible.”

So then Julian of course teased her a little, because Emma’s best friend Cristina is from Mexico City. Emma said that was the problem, whenever she needed to read or say anything in Spanish Cristina could just help her.

“Do we need it translated?” Julian said. “We don’t know that it has anything to do with the curse or the ghost. The flask was just a flask as far as we know, right?”

Jem was shaking his head, though. He put the flask and dagger down next to the book and gave them a look. “I don’t know if you realize it, but these three objects all come from the same era. The owners of all three were the same generation and almost the same age. They were all friends.”

And then I could see all of them in my mind—Thomas, Matthew, Alastair, but also Christopher and Cordelia and my own James and Lucie. It was all so long ago, but I could call up their faces as though it were yesterday. As I can call up yours, Sophie. I looked at Jem and I could tell he was thinking the same thing, but all he said to Julian and Emma was, “It can’t be a coincidence. But Benedict Lightwood never knew any of them, he’d been dead for years by then. Are you sure he’s the one responsible for the curse?”

Emma said they were fairly sure—that they’d been reading a diary they’d found in the house that spelled it out. Whose? Oh, Sophie, you have already guessed. Tatiana Blackthorn’s.

“She was about our age, I think,” Julian said. “Maybe a little younger. He told her about the curse and the objects.”

I think Emma saw the expression in my face and Jem’s. “Did they…” She touched the flask, the dagger, the book, one after the other. “Matthew, Alastair, Thomas, did they know Tatiana Blackthorn?”

“She knew them,” Jem said darkly.

“She hated them,” I explained. “She hated all our families—the Herondales, the Carstairs, the Fairchilds. And the other Lightwoods. She became…rather more and more unpleasant as time went on. More and more obsessed, I might say, with harming us.”

Julian had been looking into the distance. Now he suddenly turned to take in the objects on the table. “She changed the enchantment,” he said. “She replaced some of the objects. Maybe all of them.”

Clever Julian! We all knew at once it was the likely answer.

“Why, though?” said Emma. “Maybe some of the things Benedict used were lost.”

When Jem spoke, his voice was harder than I’m used to hearing it. “I don’t know how she comes across in her journal. When she was younger she was more mild. But in Tatiana’s heart was a terrible, grasping desire for power. For control. There need not have been anything wrong with Benedict’s curse, for Tatiana to have wanted to make it hers.”

He was right, my dear Sophie, and his words filled my heart with dread. Tatiana cannot hurt Julian and Emma. She is long gone. But she reaches out from the years past to bring her evil even to today. Whomever this ghost is at Blackthorn Hall, I pray, at least, that it is no one that we loved.

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Julian to Helen and Aline

Dear Helen and Aline,

So Emma and I took the train from Paddington Station pretty early in the morning (I suppose we could have gone to the Institute and seen if they’d let us use their Portal, but it seemed like trouble and besides, it’s not our first train trip in England.)

We got off the train at Exeter, a sprawling town with a big Gothic cathedral. Tessa was waiting to pick us up in a racing-green Mini Cooper with Mina strapped into a kid’s seat in the back, wearing goggles. She reminded me of Tavvy when he was littler. Emma got in the back and played peek-a-boo with Mina, and I chatted with Tessa while we rolled through gorgeous green countryside. I hate it when people say “It looked like it does in the movies,” but it kind of did. I kept wanting to get out and paint the scenery.

We drove through a big gate, and then up a long road lined with oak and poplar trees. I thought we were in a national park of some kind — there were trails, and lots of greenery and flowers. Tessa told me the purple ones were bluebells (you’d think they’d be blue), and the yellow ones were celandine. We passed a big glass house and then we came out in front of what I swear I thought was a castle.

I think I knew Cirenworth was fancy, but I don’t think I realized how fancy. It’s this huge pile of gold-colored stone with little turrets, and windows full of leaded glass. There’s a big circular driveway in front, and we parked there in front of steps that looked like they could be outside a museum. Jem and Kit were waiting for us at the top and Mina started squealing with delight the moment she saw them. It was pretty cute.

We got a tour of the house — it turns out they only use about half of it, and the other half is closed off because it’s too much to take care of. I asked if they’d had to renovate the place and Jem said no, it had never fallen into disrepair like Blackthorn Hall. Tessa said she’d had to redecorate because it had been pretty dark “and a little moldy” when they moved in, but she said she’d redecorated before — apparently she fixed up the whole Institute a long time ago. I asked her about renovations, but she pointed out that back when she’d done the Institute, indoor plumbing had been a new thing.

Kit said they had put the internet into Cirenworth (do you “put the internet into” things? Emma says you “wire things for the internet.” I think neither is probably right) for him, because he uses it for school. I think he’s happy here. He pointed out things in all the different rooms that he liked — and there were a lot of different rooms. A big library with gold rugs, a games room with a pool table (only they call it something else), an inground swimming-pool, a bunch of offices, a music-room, a sewing-room, I mean, they probably have a room just for licking stamps and putting them on envelopes.

I realized this was the most I’d really seen of Kit since he left to go live with Tessa and Jem. I fell back to talk to him while Tessa was showing Emma the portrait gallery of Carstairs Past. He’s so much taller, almost my height now, and his voice sounds deeper. And I realized he looks older just like Ty looks older; I’d been almost thinking of him as the same age he was when I first saw him. But no, he’s growing up. Is grown up, maybe. Almost.

He said he wanted to show me something in the garden, so I followed him out through a French door. It was an overgrown spot — there were strawberry bushes, though no strawberries (not the season) and there was a cracked sundial in the middle. Kit said, without looking at me, that if it made me uncomfortable to be around him, or I didn’t want to see him, he could claim he had a headache and go to bed.

I was thrown. I asked him why I’d mind if he was there. He kicked some dirt around with his boots, and finally said, “Because — because of him.”

I didn’t say anything at first. I was a little frightened to. Kit had seemed fine inside, laughing and joking around and picking up Mina so she could climb on his shoulders. Now he reminded me more of the way he’d been when we first met him, or even the way Mark was when he came back from the Wild Hunt . . . Fragile.

“You mean Ty?” I said.

He nodded stiffly. “You’re his brother,” he said. “I mean, I talk to Dru, and she’s his sister, but — you were always more than just his older brother. You were like his father. I know you raised him. I guess I just meant that if you were on his side — I wouldn’t blame you.”

I said, “Ty has never indicated to me there’s a side to be on.”

Kit looked up. “He — hasn’t?”

“I know you two don’t talk,” I said. “I don’t know why. Ty’s never told me why. But he’s never blamed you, or said it was because of anything you’d done. People fight,” I added. “It happens. I wish you were friends again, because when you were, it was pretty special.” Ty was so happy. But I didn’t say that. “But either way, regardless of anything happening with you and Ty, we all went through so much together. You’ll always be one of us. Family.”

He said in a hoarse voice, “That means a lot.”

We all went and had dinner after that, and a lot of stuff got talked about — including that Tessa’s son James Herondale once had a gun that worked on demons, which Kit was pretty excited about — but this letter is getting pretty long, and I mostly wanted to tell you about Kit. I guess I didn’t realize how unhappy he was about the situation with Ty. I wonder if our whole hands-off attitude is working? I mean, I know it’s their business, but what if Ty is unhappy too? Is there something we should be doing?

—Jules

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Hypatia to Julian and Emma

To the Blackthorn Nephilim residing at Blackthorn Manor, Chiswick

From Hypatia Vex, Fellow, Spiral Labyrinth

My greetings. Attached please find the first pages of Tatiana Blackthorn’s diary that I have translated from Purgatic. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought that Magnus Bane might shed some light on the situation that caused you to bring the diary to me, and he did, speaking of a curse upon the house. I have skipped over a number of entries related to the author’s clothes, opinions about her peers, complaints about the weather, and so on, in favor of one that I think will be of special interest (though it rather contradicts what I think of as the history of the house — Benedict Lightwood of course was hardly known to be trustworthy, or perhaps things have altered since his time. A mystery to be delved into, perhaps?)

I will be in touch soon with further translation.

Yours,

H. Vex

Dear Diary, tonight I am in a state of rare elation. It seems that my patience and care may not be as worthless as they are usually assumed to be by the members of this family. For I believe that Father has at long last come to accept and even approve of my betrothal to Rupert! (Oh, happy day, oh darling Rupert!) More astonishing, he has communicated this not by anything so clumsy as an awkward sentimental statement, but instead by taking me into his confidence, and telling me of things that I am sure he has never shared with my brothers.

It was after supper. The Terrible Gs were off whacking at each other with swords, or some such nonsense. Father usually repairs to his study, of course, but tonight he came over to me and, out of the blue, asked me to accompany him there. I dutifully followed.

There he closed the door with care and bade me sit in one of the wing-chairs facing his desk. He settled himself in his own chair and began by telling me that the Lightwood name is a powerful and ancient one.

I replied that I knew that and, indeed, never forgot it.

He continued to say that such a name brings with it great prestige and influence, but also great enmity. The adversaries of the Lightwoods were many, he said. “And I speak not of the demons we make war on, or even of the half-demons permitted to roam the earth on our sufferance, but of those of our own race, that is, the Nephilim.” He explained that there was great envy towards us, and while it would not be expressed directly, there were those who would seek to destroy us.

I asked him who he was thinking of in particular, but he demurred. The enemies change, he said, with the times; alliances form and crumble, as the varying Shadowhunter families’ interests are altered by time and fate.

(I am recording his words as exactly as I can recall them, Diary. I admire the forceful manner by which he expresses himself, and wish to take it upon myself, since the others in my family do not.)

He went on to explain that while it is not widely known, we are well-protected here in Lightwood House, not only by the sound brick and stone, but by an enchantment that affects the house and its grounds themselves.

An enchantment! I was astonished. I knew that magic was a subject of interest to Father, and that his researches led him to minor experimentations. I had no idea that he had accomplished so much. This I expressed in, I hope, a complimentary manner. He said that it had taken him several years to make the preparations, for he did not trust anyone, even a warlock paid well for their silence, with the knowledge of the house’s protection.

The enchantment is very elaborate, as I understand, and its effects somewhat difficult to communicate. Father said that it served both to prevent other Nephilim from investigating the house, and to keep areas of the house, and possessions of the family, hidden from discovery. I asked by what means did the enchantment work, and he said that it had to do with ley-lines, the seams of magic that cross the earth, and a half-dozen objects selected and placed at locations along those ley-lines that are a matter of elaborate calculation.

I pressed him for more detail, reminding him that I shared his interest in the topic of magic, but that was all he would tell. He explained that I was as yet an unmarried girl who need not trouble herself with the ways of the world—and here I finally reach the reason for telling this story, Diary.

As he spoke of me, he gave me a look, one that at first I could not translate. But soon enough I realized: he said that I was “as yet” unmarried. By the glint in his eye I understand what he was saying: you will soon be a married woman.

And so all comes clear, in a beautiful burst of triumph!

Father accepts Rupert, and will approve our marriage—

This will cause me to gain my majority—

That will cause Father to take me further into his confidence about the nature of Lightwood House and his work in magic—

Because he understands that whatever the Law may say, I am the right and proper heir of his goals and his work—

And because he intends Rupert and I to become the masters of this Manor after him!

Though my efforts have been long and arduous, Diary, and I have feared they would never come to fruition, I sleep tonight with victory within my grasp, and only pity for my poor brothers, too vacuous and pigheaded to even understand what has happened while they beat each other with sticks in the training room.

Tatiana soon-to-be-Blackthorn Lightwood

secretsofblackthornhall

Emma to Bruce

Dear Bruce,

It’s been a quiet couple of days, and I’ve hated every single second. After I gave Jules the diary, he retreated to the half-painted ballroom to read it. When he’d come out, he’d look thoughtful, sometimes serious, but he didn’t want to talk about what he’d read. And Bruce — neither did I. Even though I knew Jules was upset with me for not telling him about the diary, I couldn’t explain why I hadn’t. And when I tried to think about why I hadn’t, my mind just skipped over the question, like a needle over a broken groove in a record.

We talked about other things. Round Tom, the curse on the house, a letter from Ty, a letter from Luke at the Academy about some trouble Dru got into with her roommate. (I feel like this is a good sign that she likes her roommate. It’s always good to have someone to be bad with.) But there was something faraway in Julian’s eyes, something distant and unapproachable.

I missed him.

It made me think of the bad times, when Julian and I couldn’t really talk, and every time I wanted to talk to him I couldn’t say what I felt, that I loved him, that I always would love him, because it was illegal and impossible. I had to fold the real meaning of what I wanted to say into ordinary conversation, so when I’d say How are you, or Are you using the car today, I’d really mean, I love you, I love you.

I was sitting on a stool in the kitchen this afternoon, marking boxes. Some of the old stuff in the manor we’re keeping to make a permanent part of the house. Some of it is getting packed up for the kids to go through, see if there’s anything they want to keep. There’s an old clock I think Ty will like, and some tin toy soldiers for Tavvy, and lots of creepy old lace for Dru to examine. I was kind of listlessly marking the contents of each box with a pen when Julian came into the kitchen, an odd expression on his face.

“Ask me about the diary, Emma,” he said.

I started a little. He looked so strange, and a little pale (maybe that’s just lack of sun . . . sorry, England!) So I put my pen down and asked him how reading the diary was going.

“I don’t remember,” he said, and then closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were blazing, like someone lit a fire behind that gorgeous blue-green color I love so much. “Except I do. I remember. But my mind doesn’t want me to say so. Mark texted me,” he added, and I nodded along, like I knew what this had to do with anything. “He said the diary was probably enchanted. And of course it is. Don’t you see? There’s a slippery sort of enchantment on it, one that makes you not want to talk about it after you’ve read it, or even think about it that much.”

Of course. It made so much sense — why I never seemed to remember to tell Jules about the diary, or anyone else; why I kept it hidden under the bed instead of in plain sight on the nightstand. I exhaled a shuddery breath. “I feel so stupid —“

“No.” Jules was across the room to me in a flash. He took my face between his hands, and a shiver went up my spine. He looked so serious, so intense. Jules had to grow up so fast, and in moments like this he almost scares me with how adult he seems — not that either of us are children, and we’ve been through a lot more than most people our age, but there’s something about his presence that he can summon up sometimes, something commanding.

It’s pretty hot, actually.

“No,” he said again. He gently stroked my cheekbone with his thumb. “Emma. It was a spell. It made you not think about the diary, it literally pulled the thoughts out of your mind — I know because it’s been happening to me, too. You can’t blame yourself. You can blame me — I should have guessed what was going on. I was too busy worrying that you were keeping something from me, when I should have known better.” His voice dropped, low and raspy. “Be angry at me,” he said. “I deserve it.”

I turned my head, kissed the palm of his hand. Felt the shiver that went through him. “There’s nothing to be angry about,” I whispered. “Just . . . “

“Take me to bed,” I said. I blushed, too. I don’t usually say that kind of thing but I didn’t care at the moment. His eyes widened and he pulled me right off the stool, lifted me up in his arms. I wrapped my legs around his waist, grabbed the lapels of his shirt, and kissed him. He groaned and kissed me back and then he was carrying me through the house, and we were kissing like we couldn’t breathe otherwise. He kicked open the door of the bedroom and we fell on the bed together . . .

And that’s it, Bruce. No more details for you. Suffice it to say that it was a while later and the sun had almost set when we started talking again, at least in words of more than one syllable. We were tangled up in the paisley sheets, and Jules was leaning over me, propped on one elbow. I was dancing my fingers up and down his arm, which was hard with muscle (thank you, Shadowhunter training.)

“Well,” I said. “That was nice, but I’m not sure it totally solved our problem.”

“Nice?” Julian looked outraged. “Puppies are nice. Fuzzy pajamas are nice. Kraig’s retirement party was nice. That was . . .”

“Spectacular,” I said. “There, are you happy?”

“Spectacular is a start.”

“Julian . . .”

He grinned. “No. It doesn’t solve the problem. The diary has a spell on it, and we shouldn’t mess with it until the spell is off. I think we should go to the Shadow Market. See if we can find someone willing to remove the enchantment.”

“You don’t want to ask Magnus?”

“We can’t keep bothering Magnus.” He sat up, which provided me with a nice view. I enjoyed it for a while while he rummaged in the drawer of his nightstand. He turned back to me, holding a gift-wrapped package. He was wearing a serious expression. “I meant to give you this for Valentine’s Day,” he said. “But I don’t want to wait. I know you said there’s nothing to be angry about, but I’m still so sorry, Emma. I trust you, entirely. There’s never been anyone I trusted more.”

He gave me the package, which was good because I thought otherwise I might cry. It had been an emotional day. The present turned out to be a gorgeously framed picture of the two of us on the London Eye; I couldn’t even figure out how he’d gotten it framed, or when.

“We look so happy,” I said, delighted.

“I always want you to be that happy,” Julian said. “I want to make you that happy. And I’ll spend my life doing it.”

Then I did cry, and he kissed me, and well, that’s all you need to know, Bruce. Maybe I’ll tell you about the Shadow Market when we go. Until then . . .

Emma

secretsofblackthornhall

Kieran to Julian

To: Julian Blackthorn, Master of Blackthorn Hall

From: The Court of Unseelie

My dear Brother,

Mark has shared with me, with your permission I gather, the contents of your last letter to him as they regard Round Tom and the manor house. I have investigated what you ask, and it unfortunately falls to me to agree with yon Thomas: Blackthorn Hall is suffering under a curse.

I am sure that from your perspective, the bad news is less the fact of the house’s curse, and more the additional charges that Round Tom has added for the repairs and updates that his team is performing. It must especially vex you that these new prices do not include the breaking of the curse, but are only meant to cover the increased risks for the workers and the extra protections they will need to take.

I have already taken steps to seek a solution, but pray let me explain the situation, perhaps somewhat more cogently than R. Tom was able.

First, please know that Tom’s unwillingness to break the curse in fact is a prime example of his virtue (or, Mark has suggested, his fear of the office I hold; I choose to think it the former). The company working on Blackthorn Hall is not at all qualified to address such a complex thing as a curse. In this situation, many of the fey (though I am loath to admit it) would claim they could solve the problem, and would charge you enormously for a task they could not, in truth, accomplish. That Tom has not done so is a credit to him.

I appreciated your suggestion that the curse and the specter haunting the house could be one and the same. Unfortunately, when I communicated with Round Tom through my sources—

(Mark has interfered to admonish me for not simply saying General Winter; my apologies. Speaking plainly in written correspondence can be remarkably difficult for one used to the politics of Faerie.)

Unfortunately, after communicating with Round Tom via General Winter, I have been assured beyond a doubt that the ghost and the curse are different articles. Round Tom’s words, I believe, were to the effect that,

“Old houses always have ghosts. We don’t mind ghosts, and they do not interfere with our work. A curse, however, does, and Blackthorn Hall is cursed.”

He also made clear that it had been his impression that you already knew—that when the house’s owner shares the same name as the house, they likely already know enough of the history to be aware of a curse. Of course, he doesn’t know anything about the history of the Blackthorn family, and he should not have made such an assumption.

I pressed him to lower the price anyway, as a personal favor, and explained that the circumstances of your taking ownership were quite unexpected. I am sorry to say that he could not be moved. He produced a veritable library’s worth of treaties, bylaws, and charters to support his contention that these protections for his men were guaranteed by the Courts of Faerie, and in fact, he is correct.

I am therefore in the regretful position of suggesting that you focus your efforts on discovering and lifting the curse. While it is true that Round Tom and his crew will be unable to assist you, I know you to be a well-connected member of the Nephilim, and among your friends and companions many warlocks, Silent Brothers, and so on are to be found. I have every confidence in you and Emma; surely no curse can go long unlifted once the two of you have committed yourselves to its end. I have enclosed a brochure that might be helpful, as it is intended for those who have just discovered their dwelling-place is cursed. (Mark tells me one should never utter the words “I have enclosed a brochure” in personal correspondence, but I am not sure how else to word what I am doing. Perhaps “Lo, a pamphlet” would have been more appropriate.)

Thank you also for the delicious cake that you sent. While it does not stir the wild blood of my heart as faerie food does, it was a delicious accompaniment to a pot of strong tea, and we enjoyed it here muchly. Mark has informed me that this cake was created by a mundane, Victoria Sponge. All credit to Lady Sponge, and to you for sharing her artistry with us!

Mark and Cristina send their love. To that I attach my own, and remain etc. etc. Hail Kraig.

Kieran

becausealecisnotyourbitch

i’m sorry we are not seriously being given “maybe this isn’t what she wants” after 2000+ pages of these two insufferably obsessed with each other. how many times did I read the word “forever” in tda

secretsofblackthornhall

Mark to Julian

secretsofblackthornhall

Julian to Mark

secretsofblackthornhall

Emma to Bruce

Dear Bruce,

It’s tea time. Now that Jules and I are living in England we are trying to embrace the concept of tea time, though as you already know I prefer to take my caffeine in the form of chocolate. (Unlike Cristina, who is literally addicted to coffee.) Chocolate chip cookies, brownie bars, ice cream—any form of chocolate is welcome and acceptable, and there is excellent chocolate in England. I have become addicted to Galaxy bars.

Julian is outside talking to the contractors — I can see Round Tom waving his arms around about something — so I thought I’d take a moment to fill you in on what happened since my last entry.

If you recall, we found a silver flask at the Devil Tavern that seemed to set off all Ty’s Ghost Detector alarms. It was a beautiful flask . . . etched with flowers and butterfly wings, and the initials MF. We brought it back to Blackthorn Hall and had a look at it in the bright light of day, where I immediately remembered where I’d seen that butterfly design before.

On the Fairchild family ring.

I know this because of Clary. (I don’t spend a lot of time staring at her jewelry, Bruce, but Shadowhunters are pretty into family symbols, generally speaking. And there was that time I borrowed her jacket in Faerie and then went to Thule and everyone thought she was dead because her ring was in the pocket…but that’s a story for another time. I’ve got enough to document in the present.) So Jules and I agreed that whoever owned this flask was likely a Fairchild whose first name began with M. Genius-level Sherlock detecting, I know.

Over a lunch of toasted cheese sandwiches we decided it would be better to do a little more diligent research rather than diving right in and asking the ghost ARE YOU A FAIRCHILD, Y/N. So we sent a fire message to Helen and Aline. There are several old Shadowhunter family histories in the LA Institute library, and we asked them to have a look for Fairchilds who had first names beginning with the letter M. I guess Helen was up early, because she got back to us pretty quickly with a short list of candidates. Medea Fairchild, Myles Fairchild, and Matthew Fairchild. It wasn’t clear from the records whether any of them are ancestors of Clary, but I am curious! (I personally hope Medea is, because that is a badass mythological name.) Anyway it didn’t take us long to nominate a candidate for Owner of the Silver Flask. (Drumroll, please, Bruce.) The candidate is….Matthew Fairchild!

We deduced this because Medea died in 1802 at the age of seventy-eight, and Myles died in 1857 at fifty-nine. So, given the timeframe we’re looking at—Jem said his friends were hanging out at the Devil Tavern during the early part of the last century—Matthew, born in 1886, was the only one who fit the bill. (There wasn’t a death date for him, apparently, which doesn’t mean he lived forever or died at birth, records from around that time tend to be spotty.)

Without further ado, we returned to the dining room to contact our mystery ghost. I swear, even though we’ve swept it multiple times, that room just seems to get dustier and dustier. I’d left some papers from the Blackthorn archives (which is a kind way of saying “from the pile of junk with occasional interesting stuff in it”) stacked on the dining table, and they were all in disarray. It made me wonder if the ghost was trying to read them in our absence.

Julian cleared his throat. “Attention, ghost,” he began.

“Maybe they don’t like being called ‘ghost’,” I hissed under my breath. “Maybe we should refer to them as ‘Deceased Person.’”

“That sounds medical,” said Julian. “Like we’re in a morgue.”

We both became dispirited about the idea of being in a morgue. After a moment’s thought, Julian said, “How about wraith or phantom?”

The curtains stirred even though the windows weren’t open. Apparently phantom was the popular choice.

“Matthew?” I said, slowly. “Matthew Fairchild?”

It’s a nice name, Matthew. I thought about Matthew Fairchild, born in 1886, and wondered what he’d been like. Wondered if all that was left of him was a breath of air stirring the curtains in our dining room.

Though the curtains weren’t stirring right now. They were utterly still.

“Are you Matthew Fairchild?” Jules asked, clearly deciding we needed to be more specific.

The curtains gave what I can only describe as an annoyed little shake. This stirred up some more dust, which made the air hazy. I heard a noise behind me and whirled around. The stack of papers on the table tipped over. Papers were being flung in all directions, by an unseen, angry hand.

“So — you’re not Matthew Fairchild?” I said, fighting the urge to sneeze. “Look, it’s fine if you aren’t — we just want to help — we’ll keep looking —”

The papers stopped flying. The room was quiet again. Hushed, even, like the inside of an Institute. I guessed our phantom friend had departed and I realized I was disappointed. I’d really been hoping we’d find an answer . . .

Then Julian laid his hand on my arm. And pointed. Goosebumps exploded across my skin. In the dust on the floor, an invisible finger was writing words — writing in the old-fashioned cursive that had become familiar since our arrival at Blackthorn Hall.

One by the one, the words appeared, the letters shaky and spiky, as if the ghost were agitated.

Read the diary

The imagine of Tatiana’s diary sprang into my mind. I knew, somehow, that was the diary the ghost was referring to. More words appeared:

READ THE DIARY

“But I have,” I said, without thinking. “I have read the diary.”

Julian turned to look at me, a blank expression of surprise spreading across his face. “Emma,” he said. “What diary?”