I need someone to talk to and I don’t want it to be Julian or Emma. Or Jem or Tessa. So it’ll have to be you. Which means I can’t ever send this and you can’t ever read it. I’ll burn it in the garden when I’m done writing it so I’m not tempted to send it.
The gardens here are really excellent, by the way. I guess you know that since you’ve been here. There’s an old Georgian greenhouse, and a little pond with lilies and frogs and benches to watch them, and a walled garden, and it’s just very nice to walk around here with Mina. I never had a sister or brother before, you know that, but being with Mina makes me realize more about how you felt about Livvy. Still feel about Livvy I guess. I’m not saying I forgive you. Just maybe I understand more.
Blackthorn Hall is still being restored, of course, and there are faeries everywhere doing the restorations. They’re brownies, apparently, and even though they aren’t doing anything that interesting—weeding and carrying wheelbarrows of dirt and whatever—I can’t stop watching them. I have hardly seen any faeries at all since—well, since we were in that battle with them. I guess I didn’t realize how strictly I was being kept apart from them. Until now.
I should really stay away from them, because every time I get close enough for them to talk to me, they do something to freak me out. The head builder, this guy Round Tom— he’s not even that round, honestly — anyway the first time Round Tom saw me he did a little thing where he jumped in a circle and made some odd gestures in the air, and then bowed in my direction. I just turned around on my heel and walked off in the other direction like I had just remembered I forgot something.
And then General Winter, like Kieran’s General Winter, was there helping out—Julian says he’s there to keep all the workers in line since they are scared of General Winter but not Round Tom—and he knew I was the First Heir. Like the Riders did.
The Riders whose horses I made disappear. Or something. I don’t know if they ever came back. No one seems to know.
I tried to pretend I didn’t hear General Winter either but we were just out in the open and it would have been way too obvious. So when he addressed me as First Heir all I could think of to say was, “That’s me. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”
“If you’ve been told,” he said, “then it is true, since we do not lie.”
I wanted to say buddy, I worked at the Los Angeles Shadow Market for years. Faeries do all kinds of sketchy stuff. Instead I just said, “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do about it.”
General Winter watched me with this thoughtful look on his face, and said, “You need do nothing about it, yet. Indeed, at this moment that might be the wisest course of action. For things are strange in Faerie.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“There are disturbances,” he said slowly. “Rumors swirl about the Seelie Court. And Mother Hawthorn walks again.”
BEfore I could ask him what any of that meant, Round Tom came rushing over. “Cousins.” (I had forgotten faeries sometimes addressed each other like that, and it gave me a little shiver, like he was saying, you are one of us.) “I have found something. Please come with me.”
He led us around to one of the big plane trees. A little ways away from the trunk was a huge hole, and then on the other side of the tree were two sawhorses across which balanced a coffin.
At least I think it was a coffin. It was really busted up, half-rotted, cracked everywhere, caked in dirt. It was obviously the thing that had come out of the hole.
“A tomb?” said General Winter as we got closer, but Round Tom was shaking his head.
“We would not have disturbed a tomb,” said Round Tom. “But none lie buried here. Only magic, of a dark and powerful kind.” He stepped back. “Look inside.”
I came closer. There was indeed a bunch of random stuff inside the coffin. It looked like—well, you know how old Egyptian pharaohs were buried with all their belongings? It was like that, I assume for a Shadowhunter, except the belongings were a weird assortment. It was dirty and falling apart and mostly just junk—papers and little jars and bits of fabric and the hilt of a sword with no blade, that kind of thing.
“How old is it?” I said, and Round Tom reached it and fished out a liquor bottle. The label was pretty faded and ripped but it was a printed label, in a Victorian style. I wondered if Jem or Tessa would have any guess whose stuff it could be.
“You said there was magic here?” I said.
“Dark magic,” Round Tom said gravely. “Wild magic.”
“The curse?” said General Winter.
Round Tom’s expression cleared and he shrugged. “Perhaps not. It’s actually much less demonic in nature than the curse on the house. But emanating from the foot of an unremarkable tree it bore exploration. There are two items that might be of further interest.”
He cleared away some of the mess and revealed a scabbard. It was a very nice scabbard. Sorry, that doesn’t really capture it. A very very nice scabbard. It needed some cleaning up, but it was obviously beautiful and, I’m sure, valuable. It was steel but covered in gold inlay all over in the shape of leaves and birds. There were some runes on it, too, so it was definitely a Shadowhunter’s at some point.
“It is more than ‘nice,’” General Winter said. “It is clearly the work of Lady Melusine herself. See how it has not deteriorated at all?”
Round Tom looked important. “And yet it is the less interesting of the two pieces,” he said. With a great dramatic gesture that he had clearly practiced ahead of time, he pushed all of the junk to one side in the coffin, leaving—
“One of those mundane weapons, yes,” said Round Tom. He picked it up as though it might go off, though it was rusty and covered in dirt. It was a revolver. It didn’t look any different than revolvers from a million gangster movies, or Westerns—I guess if I were really sending this to Ty I would have to explain what a Western was.
Anyway the big difference was this gun was covered in etchings and runes and words and was obviously magic af. (Which means . . . oh, never mind what it means.)
“But Shadowhunters don’t use guns,” I said.
“They never have,” General Winter agreed. He picked up the gun with a surprising amount of familiarity, and sighted along it in the direction of a nearby tree. He tried to fire and it just clicked — the cylinder didn’t even turn.
“Rusted shut, probably,” said Tom. General Winter handed it to me to look at. I’m not good enough with runes to know any of the ones that were on it. I pointed it at the same tree, kind of as a joke, kind of just to feel how heavy it was, and pulled the trigger, and there was a huge BANG and a bunch of wood splinters exploded from the tree.
My arm kicked back from the force of the shot. And we all stared. My ears were buzzing, but I thought I heard Round Tom say something to General Winter. I’m pretty sure the words First Heir were in there.
Certainly when I looked at them again, at Round Tom and General Winter, their expressions were guarded. Closed.
“Perhaps we should take this item inside and see if the other Nephilim recognize anything about it,” General Winter said flatly.
“I’m sure it just only works for Shadowhunters,” I told General Winter, but he just gave me kind of a troubled look and said nothing. “Anyway. I’ll bring it in.”
I could feel General Winter and Round Tom watching me as I ran across the lawn and into the house. Jem and Tessa were sitting on a couch in the drawing-room, watching Mina coloring with crayons on some butcher paper.
The moment I came in holding the gun both of them looked utterly shocked. Tessa got to her feet and moved between me and Mina. I told myself she was standing between the gun and Mina, but it still felt rotten.
“What—” said Jem, standing up, but he didn’t finish the sentence. He just stared at me, and the gun.
“Round Tom found it in the garden,” I said. “Is this a gun for Shadowhunters?” I could feel my voice getting tighter. “Shadowhunters don’t use guns.”
“Long ago, Christopher Lightwood tried to create a gun that Shadowhunters could fire,” said Tessa. She was still staring at the gun.
“It was in a coffin,” I said. “With a bunch of other stuff. A broken sword, and a fancy scabbard.”
“I wondered what he did with it,” said Jem. He? Who was he?
Jem and Tessa exchanged a look. “The gun belonged to my son James,” she said. I felt kind of sick. Tessa hardly ever talked about her children with Will. “He was the only one who could use it. It would not fire in anyone’s hands but his.”
They both looked stunned, and not in a good way.
“You are very special, Kit,” Jem said. “You are the First Heir. We don’t yet know the extent of how that power works in you.”
“Or perhaps it is just that he has faerie blood,” said Tessa.
I could have said that it definitely wasn’t just faerie blood because General Winter couldn’t use the gun and he doesn’t only have faerie blood, he has a full faerie body with faerie organs and everything. But I didn’t say anything. I just felt a weird feeling in my stomach. I said I would put the gun away and not use it, and Jem and Tessa seemed to feel that was the best thing I could do, and Mina piped up and said “Gun!” and then I felt like the worst person on earth.
So now it’s late and I’m up writing this letter to you that I am going to burn when I’m done, because I can’t sleep. Because I don’t want to be the only person in the world who can fire a magic gun. I don’t want General Winter to straighten up when I’m nearby like I outrank him. I don’t want any of this. I had five minutes where I got to think, oh neat, I found this cool-looking gun and I bet there’s a story behind it, I wonder if they’ll let me keep it or if it needs to go to a museum or something. And then I fired it and instantly—just another thing that’s weird about me.
Good night, Ty. I’ll never send this, and you’ll never read it.
