Everything We Learned About ‘Secrets of Blackthorn Hall’
Everything We Learned About 'Secrets of Blackthorn Hall’ .@cassieclare
Happy Sunday (or Monday), everyone! Yesterday Cassandra Clare sat down with an international group of fansites to reveal her secret project that she briefly mentioned in our anniversary chat back in April. This project, now no longer a mystery, is called Secrets of Blackthorn Hall! It is a free short story for Cassie’s readers and we will be reunited with the characters from The Dark…
“Era hermoso, siempre había sido hermoso, pero lo había notado demasiado tarde. Y ahora estaba de pie con las manos a sus costados y su cuerpo doliendo porque no podía tocarlo. Nunca podría tocarlo denuevo”
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!
Sorry I haven’t written in you much lately. It’s been busy times around here.
Tuesday Julian and I were having breakfast — it’s been nice and sunny this last week, and the kitchen was pretty cheerful. I’ve become besotted with crumpets, and Julian is excellent at toasting them over the stove. We were having them with honey and butter when we heard a knock on the front door.
Julian jumped up. Now, about a day ago we got a message from Ty saying he was coming with Ragnor to Blackthorn Hall. He seemed really worried that Julian would be mad, but Julian wasn’t at all mad. He was nervous.He went around all day looking distracted and bumping into things, so when we went to bed at night I took his hand and wrote on his palm, the way we always used to do, tracing each letter. W-H-A-T A-R-E Y-O-U W-O-R-R-I-E-D A-B-O-U-T-?
We curled up together under the covers. He told me that he was worried because he used to be the person who took care of Ty, and now it had been more than a year and Ty had been taking care of himself. He said he used to know everything about Ty, when he got up and when he went to sleep, and what he liked to eat and do, and now he feels like he’s lost track of him somehow, like maybe it will feel like they’re strangers.
I told him he would never lose track of Ty and their relationship would always be special, it was just going to be different than it had been because Jules no longer has to take care of everyone and pretend he isn’t doing it. He doesn’t have to carry this big secret weight around, and responsibility is always a weight no matter how much you love the people you’re responsible for.
After that, he kissed me, and the rest, Bruce, is none of your business. Goodness, you like to pry.
Anyway, back to breakfast and the knock on the door. It was Ragnor, looking a sprightly shade of green, like an English meadow. He sailed right past Julian and began inspecting the drapes. Well, he was probably inspecting something magical, like the curse, but to me it looked like he was examining the curtains and the wallpaper. Maybe he’s thinking of decorating his own place. Or maybe he was just giving Julian some time alone with Ty, because Ty was still standing on the stairs, with a duffel bag over his arm, looking adorably awkward.
I wanted to run down and hug him but I hung back because I could feel in my bones that this was Ty and Jules’ moment. Jules was just standing in the doorway looking at Ty with his face all tight and then he said, “Come here,” in a rough sort of voice and Ty dropped his duffel bag and ran up the stairs and Julian hugged him so tightly I thought for sure he’d protest. But he didn’t. He just leaned into the hug. Jules rubbed his back and said, “Ty-Ty,” and I missed what happened next because I was keeping my eyes very wide open and trying not to blink. It’s the best way I know how to keep from crying.
Eventually they let go of each other, and we showed Ty and Ragnor around the first floor, which did feel a little weird, knowing that Ty had already been here two years ago with Livvy. I think we could all feel it, the sorrowful elephant in the room. Julian kept casting anxious glances at Ty, but Ty didn’t look sad, actually — more thoughtful. Eventually Julian told him he should go upstairs and pick out a bedroom. “Any room! There are lots to choose from. Whichever you want, you can decide how you want to decorate it. Anything you want to do.”
“And where will I be sleeping?” Ragnor said grumpily. “Stuffed up the chimney?”
Ty was already headed upstairs with Julian. I told Ragnor he could sleep wherever he wanted though I recommended the couch downstairs if he wanted to be Close to the Ghost. Rupert still tends to turn up most often in the dining room. Ragnor didn’t commit to this, but only wandered into the kitchen instead and started making tea. I offered him a crumpet to be hospitable and when Julian came back downstairs Ragnor was dripping honey on the counter.
“Can I see the ley-line map?” Jules asked. “Or are you too busy attracting ants?”
“No ants,” said Ragnor, around his crumpet. “Not the season.” He licked his fingers, stuck his hand into his jacket, and pulled out a huge rolled-up parchment which, first of all, he did not fit in the jacket without doing some magic, so let it never be said that Ragnor doesn’t like a dramatic gesture, even if he claims to be above that kind of thing. He unfurled it on the long dining table and weighted it down with a candlestick and some books along the edges.
It was a map of central London—it’s hard to miss the distinctive shape of the Thames snaking through the middle—but absolutely covered in lines in several different inks—red, blue, green, gold. And along the lines were astrological symbols and arrows and numbers and the occasional bit of Greek. You could barely read the street names.
“Your map of London is in Greek?” Julian said. “Also, aren’t you going to get honey on it.”
“Honey is good for parchment,” Ragnor said. “It’s a preservative. And it’s Coptic.”
“Your map of London is in Coptic?” I said.
Ragnor regarded it fondly. “It is. Believe it or not, it’s one of the most readable ley-line maps of the city I’ve found. Some of them are just impossible. This one is from the 1700s, they just wrote in Coptic to be difficult. Warlocks are like that.”
I know, I wanted to say, but I didn’t, because Ragnor was doing us a favor.
“Is your ghost afoot?” Ragnor said. He had withdrawn a large magnifying crystal and was peering through it at bits of the map.
“Not sure,” I said. “Rupert? We have a visitor who wants to meet you.”
Nothing happened.
“So he comes and goes,” Ragnor muttered, as though to himself. “Interesting.” He took a small leather notebook from his pocket and paged through it.
“Is it interesting?” Julian said. “Maybe he’s just shy around new people. Before we showed up he was alone here for fifty years or so.”
Ragnor looked up at Julian. “My boy, there are telephone calls I haven’t gotten around to returning that are that old.”
“Well, you should be a better correspondent,” Julian said, folding his arms. “Do you see anything on the map?”
Ragnor kind of hmphed and returned to the map. After a while he straightened up and said, “All right. Do you want to hear all the nitty-gritty details, or should I skip directly to conclusion?”
“Conclusion, please,” I said.
“I thought so,” Ragnor said. He sounded grumpy, for no reason I could imagine. That’s our Ragnor!
“Taking into account the different types of ley-lines and the various intersections, knots, and traces,” he said, “and assuming that the other objects are likely in central London, since all the others have been, andassuming that the objects are likely to be in locations relevant to the Shadow World…” He paused and cocked an eyebrow at us.
“With you so far,” Julian said.
“I see hereandhereas the most likely next search locations.” He had produced a pencil from somewhere, and he circled two spots on the map. “Here is the church of St. Mary Abchurch. And here…” He trailed off.
Julian leaned over the map where Ragnor was pointing. “Yes? It looks like just a street of townhouses in Soho.”
“Well,” said Ragnor, “once upon a time, for many years, there was an infamous Downworlder salon in one of these townhouses. The Hell Ruelle, it was called. It was a very clever name, you see, because a ruelleis a name for a kind of reception French aristocratic ladies used to hold in their bedrooms, a little like a salon, and also a ruelle is a narrow alley, such as the one this house is on.”
“Also,” I said seriously, “it rhymes.”
“Quite,” said Ragnor. “I’ve no idea what happened to it. Salons have been long out of fashion, but Downworlders do like their old-fashioned things. I’d wager it’s still a club of some kind, probably as scandalous as it was back in the day. Scandal never goes out of fashion, I’ve noticed.”
“We saw a playbill from there,” Julian told him. “It was displayed at the Herondale house on Curzon Street.”
Ragnor’s eyebrows went up. “You went to the Curzon Street house? What’s it like now?”
So Julian started telling Ragnor all about our visit there, which was fine because I wanted to go check on Ty. I had thought he might come downstairs to assist or at least observe Ragnor, but he’d apparently find someplace he liked and had remained there. Or some terrible dark magic had befallen him. But probably the first.
He was easy to find, at least—there are a lot of bedrooms but not that many, and besides, these old walls don’t do anything to block sound, and I could hear his voice in one of them. The “gray bedroom,” as Julian and I call it. It has a nice view of the duck pond.
I guess he was talking on the phone to someone; I could hear the pauses where he was listening to the other person. I thought I heard him say, “Well, I have no idea why, but it hasn’t been that long,” in reference to something, and then the door opened and he came out of the room. He immediately started at the sight of me standing in the hall. “Emma?”
“I just came up to see how you’re doing,” I said. “I think we’re going to get some takeaway in a bit. Is that the bedroom you like?”
“Yes,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the high windows. “It’s a good room, I think.”
“Were you talking to your sister?” I said.
He didn’t say anything — he sort of went red, then white. I wondered if he’d said something I wasn’t supposed to overhear, but I couldn’t imagine what. “I wasn’t listening,” I clarified. “I just assumed it was Dru.”
“Oh!” he said. “Yes. Yes, I was talking to Dru. She …”
“Probably wants to know what the bedrooms are like,” I said, trying to put him at ease. “Dru would definitely want the gothiest one.”
“Sure.” Ty and I started downstairs. “I’m not a good judge of what’s gothy, though.”
“I think the idea is ‘as creepy as possible,’” I said, and we reached the kitchen, where Jules and Ragnor were waiting. Ty relaxed pretty quickly; it turned out all he needed was (a) some tea and (b) to talk with Ragnor about the details of the ley-line map endlessly until food arrived and finally stopped them. Bruce, I swear at one point Ragnor told a joke in Coptic and Ty laughed. They’re hardcore over there at the Scholomance. Maybe too hardcore for me. But don’t get me wrong—it was very nice to have them here. It reminded me that when this project is complete and all the Blackthorns are here and can make it their own, this house could feel warm and friendly again. It didn’t even feel that cursed as we lay in front of the fireplace playing Clue (they call it Cluedo here) until Ty was falling asleep.
Update: Sunday night. Ragnor and Ty left this afternoon. It was really great to have them here, it was good for Julian and I to have other people here in the house to talk to other than the builders. Ty and Julian spent a bunch of time roaming around the gardens, deciding which old statues are ruined in a decorative, attractive manner, and which are just ruined. We’re going to have to get some new statues when we redo the garden, which Ty was very excited about; he thinks we should have one of Holmes holding a magnifying glass, and one of Watson.
The only weird thing is that Ghost!Rupert was missing for the whole visit, and then reappeared an hour after they left. We showed him the map and what Ragnor told us, and he just said he’s sure Ragnor is right. And it turns out he didtalk to Ty at some point. He said Ty is “kind to ghosts.” Maybe Ty made him a ghost sandwich or read him a ghost bedtime story or something. Ty certainly didn’t say anything about it.
So, that’s all for now! I guess we’re going to head to St Mary Abchurch tomorrow afternoon, and then depending how that goes we’ll check out this townhouse and see if there’s still a scandalous Soho club there. Though what Ragnor would consider scandalous might not be that scandalous to us. I guess we’ll find out! For all we know it’s just some guy’s house and he’ll be very confused to see us!
Good night, Bruce. It’s nice to think of what it will be like when all the Blackthorns are here and the place is full of noise and activity. It’s the first time since we started I’ve really been able to envision it, even through the curse. Meanwhile, I’m going to tuck a Polaroid of us playing Cluedo here between these pages in case you want something to look at later.
I mean, not that you should be mad. I don’t think it would make sense for you to be mad, because you always say “wish you were here,” and soon I will be there. I heard from Ragnor that you just asked him to come to Blackthorn Hall, and I talked to him, and I’m going to be coming with him to London.
There are lots of good reasons for me to come to London. For one thing, I am curious about what it is like to be in a house that is cursed. You always say that the most important thing is my schoolwork, and up-close experience with a cursed house will definitely help in that department. Which is another reason that you should not be mad.
Ragnor says he’s going to bring a ley-line map of London that he thinks can be used to discover likely locations where Tatiana put the objects that keep the curse in place. He also said he would show you how to read a ley-line map. I thought Ragnor was going to say something about how Shadowhunters ought to know these things already. I said that to him, in fact, but he said no, apparently the Spiral Labyrinth only standardized leyline mapping about fifty years ago and before that every warlock used some different method. I asked if he knew who had made the map and he said no, but maybe he would when he looked. Anyway, ley lines are also something I’ve been studying, so this will be an excellent chance for me to learn more. Another reason for you not to be mad.
I was just going to show up and surprise you but then I thought about it and I realized I wouldn’t like it very much if someone showed up and surprised me, so…I’m going to show up but warn you ahead of time. I also thought if I told you ahead of time, and you were mad, you could be mad before I get there and not after.
(I was going to bring Irene, too, but Anush said that would be more likely to make you mad than me just showing up on my own, especially since Irene eats curtains and it sounds like there are a lot of curtains on the upstairs floors. I really want you to meet Irene, though. She’s gotten big but she’s really well behaved. And I taught her to high-five! Next time I’ll bring her, when I’m not traveling with someone as grumpy as Ragnor.)
I also feel like it would be a good idea for me to check that the Ghost Sensor is working right. I want to take a look at it when I’m there. Anush and I have been working on Sensors some more, because there are a ton just lying around here. We’ve been experimenting with setting them to detect other kinds of supernatural things – we made a vampire Sensor and a werewolf Sensor, those were pretty easy. We’ve got a Fey Sensor that works on about one-third of the faeries we’ve tried it on; that one needs some improvements. I made an angel Sensor but I have no idea how I would ever test it. Anush says that so far it is functioning perfectly as it has correctly detected that there are no angels around.
Surprisingly, it’s much harder to make a Sensor detect something not supernatural. I tried to make one to detect gold and then one to detect bats. Neither of them really works. The only one that’s been a success is the lynx Sensor. As you can imagine, that one went off pretty much continuously for the three days we were testing it. We had to break it with a hammer to stop it. And by we, I mean eventually a bunch of people showed up at our room and demanded that we break it with a hammer.
That has nothing to do with why I’m coming with Ragnor to visit you, by the way! Nothing at all. I am just really looking forward to seeing you and Emma and the house, and I want to learn something about reading leyline maps. Okay, I’ll see you soon! Remember you said you wanted to see me! Don’t be mad!
Oh, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce. You don’t even know (because you are a diary and you never leave the house). I have spent the day among the mundanes. Not just mundanes. Tourists. All things considered, I’ll take the haunted cursed mansion, thanks.
When last I wrote we found out Ghost!Rupert thinks there’s a cursed object in this Herondale house on Curzon Street here in London. After that we have no idea, which is going to be a big problem because ley lines are, you know, lines, so objects could be anywhere along them. But one thing at a time.
It turns out the National Trust operates tours of the Curzon Street house—and I assume some Herondale in the past was smart enough to get rid of, or at least glamour the heck out of, anything too Shadowhuntery there. It’s advertised as being a recreation of a “typical Edwardian home,” which is close enough to the right time period for our purposes. So we got dressed up in mundane costumes—Jules found an excellent vintage Sex Pistols t-shirt in Arthur and Andrew Blackthorn’s Groovy Chambers of Love —and bought tickets for the 2:00 tour the next day.
What we learned from the house tour is that Edwardian décor mostly would look pretty okay in a modern house! It’s light and airy, lots of soft colors, cool patterned fabric, and so on. Oh, and we also learned the Edwardian movement missed Tatiana Blackthorn entirely, since everything about Blackthorn Hall is the very opposite of light and airy. Julian pointed out that she probably left it the way it was when her father died. Whereas I liked the feel of Curzon Street a lot, it was homey. I actually took a photo of some wallpaper and want to ask Tessa if she remembers who made it and, uh, whether they’re still in business I guess. What’s happened to us? We’re renovatingahouse.I feel so old.
The tour was fine, I guess, lots of detail about eras and maker’s marks and furniture. People asked ridiculous questions—one of the American couples demanded to know where the piano was and when the guide said sorry, no piano, they got angry and told her that all Edwardian homes had a piano so there must be one, and she had to kind of apologize and move on. It was awkward and I did not feel great about the people of my land.
But mostly I was tuned out of all that. The house was interesting enough. Persian carpets everywhere! An ivory chess set! A pewter-clad bathtub! Oh, there was a framed playbill from the time period that was obviously from some Downworlder nightclub, that was kind of cool. But most importantly, none of these were things enchanted by Tatiana.
I spent most of the time looking for anything that made it clear Shadowhunters lived here. The only thing I really saw was that there were a bunch of weapons used for decoration, which the tour guide noted was not appropriate to the period. Of course you and I know, Bruce, that weapons are always appropriate décor. But it’s like Julian always says, sometimes you don’t even need glamours, because mundanes don’t see what they don’t want to see. Like, the tour guide went on and on about a beautiful jadeite sculpture atop one of the mantels and said nobody knew what the shape was meant to represent. And it was obviously meant to be displaying a sword that is long gone.
Anyway we
Oh, wait.
It’s not long gone. I know where it went. It’s on the dressing table on the other side of the room. I can see it from where I’m writing this.
A real chill just went up my spine, thinking of that. At the house today I was thinking about the people who lived there, James Herondale and Cordelia Carstairs, but to be honest I didn’t really feel an emotional connection to them while I was there. Maybe it’s just that all the really personal stuff would have been taken out of the house before it became a museum. But also, just…I didn’t know them. Tessa and Jem did, of course, and Magnus, and heck, maybe some of the other warlocks, I don’t know. But I didn’t, and I never will.
But you know who else knew them? Cortana knew them. I wish I’d brought it with me to the house today. (But nooooo, Julian said only weapons that could be completely concealed. And what if the tour guide had turned out to be an Eidolon demon lying in wait for us? I would have faced it with a bootknife smaller than I’d use to peel an apple with. Though it would have been an Eidolon demon that knew a lot about turn of the century furniture. ANYWAY, we were there to find an object, so let me finish that story.)
We were in one of the spare bedrooms, looking at the scrollwork on the bed or whatever. The tour guide was showing off some of the objects on the bedside tables, and the Sensor went off like crazy.
The tour guide gave us an evil look. “Turn off that phone,” she said to me, and the whole tour group flounced off to another room while I pretended to be trying to find my phone in my extremely ugly waist pack. Jules grabbed the Sensor, and it led us to — a music-box on the windowsill. A very ugly music box. Well, maybe not ugly. Very overdecorated, just covered in bits and bobs and, like, way too much for a music box. There was a monkey figurine involved. It was a lot. Anyway, it was an excellent example of the mid-Victorian etc etc but also it was an object Tatiana cursed and, I guess, someone liked it enough to find it and bring it back here???
After that it was just a matter of waiting till the tour moved on, glamouring up, grabbing the music box, sneaking back out of there, and hoping nobody who worked there had the Sight. Which they didn’t. So now we have a music box to show Rupert in the morning and ask Tessa about. I hope it wasn’t hers or anything like that. I think of her as having better taste.
Okay, that’s it for now, Bruce. I’m going to go get Cortana so I can reach out and touch it from the bed. Julian always teases me when I do that but tonight it feels right. Catch you later.
Mark this date down! For once I am writing to you with answers instead of questions. I know you probably felt a sinking sensation when you saw the letter is from me, and considered going into the Witness Protection Program (Warlock Protection Program?) but I’m actually only writing to give you the latest updates. And the great news is, we know a lot more than the last time I talked to you.
First: the ghost in Blackthorn Hall is Rupert Blackthorn, Tatiana’s husband. He’s stuck in the house because of the curse. As near as we can tell, his spirit was floating around Blackthorn Hall anyway, because he died here (according to Tessa and Jem, in quite violent circumstances). But then the curse was fading after Tatiana’s father’s death, since it was tied to him, and Tatiana started to have to do regular maintenance over the following years to keep it working. We have no idea if Tatiana even knew Rupert’s ghost was here in the first place, or knew that the curse was keeping him here—but it clearly did, and has been all this time. He’s observed a lot over the years, I suspect.
The curse works, it seems, by being embedded in objects that are placed on ley lines that interact at Blackthorn Hall. (This was very clever of Benedict, since the objects themselves were not atthe house and thus the curse wouldn’t be detected by Shadowhunters searching here. He didn’t make provisions for faery contractors, lucky for us.) Also, because Tatiana had to keep the curse up, she periodically replaced the objects with new things she’d taken herself. And she took things belonging to Herondales, Carstairs, Lightwoods…the people she hated and their kids. Maybe she thought her hatred would make the curse stronger, maybe she just liked stealing from those people and using their possessions for her own purposes. Hard to say, but it doesn’t really matter. Find the (remaining) objects, lift the curse, free Rupert, and get back to refurbishing the house so we can live here curse-free.
ADDENDUM: It is the next morning, and I have a bit of good news. Rupert knows where one of the objects is! Or at least he has a place he wants us to go. Communication with Rupert still includes a lot of interpretation. In this case we came down to breakfast today to find a very antique envelope we had never seen before in the middle of the kitchen floor. Whatever correspondence was in it is long gone, and the writing was smudged, but we could make out the address, which is on Curzon Street in central London. Some quick fire-messages and we learned that Tessa’s son James lived in a house on Curzon Street a hundred-plus years ago. It still belongs to the Herondales, in fact, but years ago, pre-Jace, probably pre-Jace’s-dad, it was given to the National Trust. So it’s open to the public as a historic building but I guess Jace still technically owns it. So off we go, some tourists who just want to visit a historic home, hoping we find something. Tessa said as far as she knows it hasn’t been inhabited by Shadowhunters for a long time, and if there was some antique thing put there by Tatiana, it could easily have been sold or put in storage or who knows what. Rupert wouldn’t know that. There’s also the question of how much of the house is open to the public and how we might search the parts that aren’t. Emma suggests we get Kit on the phone and have him tell them that as a Herondale he gives us permission, but I’m not sure that’s how it works.
So the situation is still far from fixed, but we’ve made a bit of progress, at least. And Emma likes to point out that things could be way worse. Rupert could be a vengeful poltergeist constantly destroying things or trying to drive us out, but instead he seems to recognize that the way to get what he wants is to help us. I don’t think we can depend on him to find some piece of hundred-year-old trash that will point us to all the objects, but we have a place to go next, and we still have Tatiana’s diary and Ty’s Ghost Sensor. And I feel much better having a concrete goal.
And you may be thinking, well, okay, so what do you want from me? And the answer is, nothing at all!
Thanks again, and our love to Alec and everyone there.
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,
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?
