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Julian to Alec

Dear Alec,

Hello from Chiswick! I’m sure Magnus has been keeping you up-to-date on the adventures we’ve been having here at Blackthorn Hall. We’ve been making progress, slow as it is, but the place still feels very far from being a house I or my family would want to live in. Except Dru, who claims she’d rather keep it cursed for the ambience (not that she’s been here yet.)

All of that is to say I suggest you thank the Angel every day that Tatiana Lightwood married a Blackthorn and this house is our problem and not yours. Anyway, you get the update this time instead of M.; you’ll see why soon.

Our search for the objects that hold the Curse of Tatiana continue! We’ve run out of objects that Rupert has any inkling about, which means we have gotten into the ley-line maps. I can hear Magnus groaning from here as you read this to him. Yes, Eighteenth-century ley-line maps, second only to ancient Babylonian star charts for their ease of reading and understanding. You can tell Magnus he can stop putting his coat on, though, because we got in touch with Ragnor Fell asked him to come from the Scholomance to help us. I suspect Ty harassed him until he agreed (though I have no proof) but he was polite enough about it. Polite for Ragnor, I mean.

The ley-lines suggested two possible locations where something important might be kept—a Downworlder gentleman’s club and a church, both in central London. We decided to start with the church, which is named St. Mary Abchurch. (Am I wrong or are British names weirdly silly sometimes? Emma immediately started calling it “St. Church von Church,” and now that’s the only way I can think of it.)

Anyway, St. Church the Churchiest is a not-huge red brick church on Abchurch Lane (funny how that works out). We took the train and then the Tube to get there, which may have been the most complex part of the day, just figuring out how to navigate the whole weird mundane system. The church was pretty quiet and empty—it was the middle of the afternoon and there were a handful of tourists, but I don’t think it’s well-known so we didn’t have to worry. We weren’t glamoured, but nobody paid any attention to us anyway. Tattoos are pretty common in London.

We walked the whole church, pretending to gaze thoughtfully at the memorials and the paintings on the inside of the dome and so on while waving the Sensor around as much as we could and waiting for it to respond.

And it was not responding. Covering the whole church didn’t take all that long; like I said, it’s not huge.

Emma pointed out that just because the church was on a ley-line in London didn’t mean Tatiana had necessarily left anything there, since there are way more ley-lines than objects we’re looking for. And she’s right—we’re assuming Tatiana didn’t break into some mundane’s house on the same ley-line and leave anything there, but I guess she might have. It would have been a very strange thing to do, but whatever else we’ve learned about Tatiana we do feel pretty confident she was a strange one.

We did get a break, though—just before we were about to leave Emma went to look at a display for visitors on the wall about the history of the church. There was a whole bit about how in the Second World War the dome of Abchurch St. Abchurch was hit by a bomb during the Blitz of London (Tessa was an nurse during the Blitz — did you know that?). Most of it was just about the dome and how it was broken and how long it took to fix and who fixed what, but at the end there was a bit about how for safekeeping a number of the church’s more valuable possessions were removed. There was an artist’s rendering of those possessions—I guess most of them didn’t end up coming back to the church—and now at last you get to find out why I’m writing to you and not Magnus!

Right at one end of the illustration was a pair of candlesticks and on the candlesticks, a very familiar symbol indeed. Flames—and not just flames, but the same flames you’ll find on that family ring of yours. And also a big script “L.”

So, any chance you or Isabelle recognize these? Did they get taken out of the church by a Lightwood, or returned to one? I know it’s a long shot but it seems like it would be too big a coincidence for a pair of Shadowhunter candlesticks to randomly be in St. Mary Abchurch. Let me know if the candlesticks ring any bells for you or Izzy and give our love to the kiddies!

Julian