To the Blackthorn Nephilim residing at Blackthorn Manor, Chiswick
FromHypatia 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 darlingRupert!) 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—
Becausehe 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.
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.
Ah, it’s good to get back to the dank, gloomy ruin that is Cursed Blackthorn Hall. You know, I’ll almost miss the curse, when it’s gone. Just kidding! Cirenworth proves you can have an old manor house with hundreds of years of history and it can be warm and welcoming and friendly.
We got back yesterday night, and then this morning Hypatia came in with a few more translated bits of Tatiana’s diary. (Don’t worry, Bruce: you are my One True Diary. Tatiana’s diary means nothing to me, I swear, nothing!) She was a big weirdo about it as usual, of course; the translations are all on these large parchment pages that look like movie props but no, Hypatia just likes to use ancient yellowing vellums for her normal work here in the twenty-first century. Warlocks! She said something about treated pages, demon language, and so on. And she was wearing kind of a 40s burgundy dress with a matching hat and Bruce, the brim of this hat was so wide I thought the wind would carry her away. (Oh, I should have said, we were outside. Julian was on the roof with the builders, not my favorite thing, so I was watching from the front gates while I tried to cut back the briars, which grow here at like ten times the rate of anything in California despite the much worse weather. I pointed this out to one of the faeries and he looked at me and said, “Black. Thorn.” And then walked away as though he’d made a great point. But it was Lightwood House first, I yelled back, and he ignored me. Which is for the best, really.)
I’m pretty sure the briars had grown another few inches while we talked, but they would have to wait. I got Julian down from the roof and we went in to read.
It looks like Hypatia has started actually thinking about what she’s translating; instead of doing every entry, this time she had snippets from a bunch of entries put together (she dated each one). Which is a little bit of a shame because I kind of liked seeing Tatiana talk about her clothes or her brothers or whatever in between all the, you know, evil demon stuff. But I admit that evil demon stuff is what we are here for. Like the old Shadowhunter motto says, “Shadowhunters: That Evil Demon Stuff Is What We Are Here For.” But in Latin probably.
Some translated highlights for you, Bruce. I won’t include the dates, but they stretch over a matter of years. The first one is from 1878 and then most are in the 1880s, but then there’s a jump and the last one is from 1903. (Sometime before then she seems to have found a “patron” of some kind, but she doesn’t say who it is. Or why anybody would want to be the patron of such an unpleasant person…)
Father is dead and Rupert is dead. I cannot speak of what happened; when I try, the words will not come. It is the fault of the London Enclave, many of whom were present for their deaths. Not only did they not save either of the men I love most, I daresay they hastened the disaster. I shall be, at very least, registering a formal complaint with the Clave, but I have little hope of justice, of course. The corruption among the Nephilim here in London goes all the way to the roots.
I cannot believe I have been left all alone. My mother, gone. My brothers, gone. The walls of Lightwood House are my only companions, their silence a terrible reminder of how much I have lost, in such little time. Today I went from room to room, and wherever I found a mirror, I smashed it. The glass I left where it fell, a reminder that everything bright and good has been destroyed.
I have Rupert’s ring. It is all that remains of him. I know I must have felt happy, to stand beside him and recite the vows of marriage. I cannot dredge up the memory of that feeling. There is blood upon the ring. His blood. I shall never clean it.
To honor my father’s memory, I have begun going through the books in his library. Not the library the Clave knows about, of course, the one they pillaged after the incident involving his death, but the other one, Father’s sanctum, which the enchantment hides. I wish to learn what he knew. To seek power that will help me, who now has been left with nothing. I have found only one thing that causes my heart to beat in my chest: because of his violent end, far from his own home, it is not unlikely that the spirit of my Rupert may still be present here in the house. If he is here, I will find him. I will see him, and I will know that our love is more powerful than death.
I have searched and searched, performed spell after spell. I have not seen any ghost, not of Rupert, not of Father. Not even of some Lightwood relation long dead who might have been haunting the place earlier. Is it my father’s enchantment that keeps the dead from this place? Or does it only prevent my finding them? But I am the master of that enchantment now, as I am the true inheritor of the house. (If G and G attempt to take it from me, they will find there is more than an enchantment that will work against them.)
Father’s protection is fading. I can feel it, as I remain here in the house, and it becomes a part of me, as I become a part of it. Someday my son will inherit the house—the last gift that Rupert ever gave me—and I will not have Blackthorn Hall made unsafe for myself and my family. I have been reading extensively on the topic of the enchantment and I place the blame on the urn containing mother’s ashes, which fell from its location in the Lightwood tombs in the countryside and chipped terribly. It did not shatter, but since then I have felt the eyes of the world more upon me. But I believe that the objects themselves can be replaced, as long as the magic is renewed, and so instead of the urn the enchantment now inhabits Father’s mourning brooch, with its locks of Mother’s hair, and I have put it in the place of the urn. The spell has been rewoven and renewed. Father would be proud of me. He was right to make me the inheritor of all his works.
Rupert is here, I know it, though I cannot see him or hear him. Where else, indeed, could he be other than close to me, where he belonged, where he was meant to dwell before his life was cut so short by the machinations of the Enclave. Sometimes in the night I feel I can almost see him, as though he is hiding just behind a thin curtain that divides the living realm from the dead. And now I have made sure he will stay with me.
I realized that the objects of the protective enchantment on the house are things that would be important to Father, when he was master here. But now I am master here, and having studied more fully Father’s research, it was a simple matter to place his ring in a location of power. It will be part of the spell from here on, protecting the house as Rupert would have protected me.
You can see, Bruce, the way the last entry seems…different?
Vengeance. Vindication. They are close.
But the power of the house fades. At the worst time.
I appealed to my patron. He said the magic was of my own doing and that only I may repair it. But—for he is perceptive beyond any other—he saw that I had repaired it before. He asked me what objects held the enchantment and I told him: the brooch, the snake skin, and so on.
And as I spoke he only had to look at me in his knowing way, for me to understand him. The objects were of my Father’s time, and while his memory and honor will never fade from my mind, more than twenty years have passed.
I comprehended my patron at once: it was time that I replaced the foci of the enchantment with my own. Not only Rupert’s ring, but new things.
What could I use? I have been alone so long. I have lost a child and there has been no help for me. I have only one thing remaining: my vengeance. And so I will take the things of my enemies. I will take them from under their noses, from their own homes. Their sorrow, and my satisfaction in it, will be the force that keeps Blackthorn Hall safe—safe from them! It is the kind of cunning that my patron is known for, and that he loves best.
And once my protections have returned to their fullest strength, they will finally pay for their sins. They will pay in their blood.
Eesh. Makes me shiver just reading it. I guess she didn’t actually make them pay in their blood or Tessa and Jem probably would have mentioned it. (They would have been some of the blood-payers, I’m pretty sure.) So let’s summarize, Bruce: the ghost is Rupert Blackthorn, Tatiana’s husband. He died in some kind of tragedy and she blamed the families Tessa and Jem talked about—the Herondales, the Carstairs, the Lightwoods…So she stole their stuff.
To the Blackthorn Nephilim residing at Blackthorn Manor, Chiswick
FromHypatia 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 darlingRupert!) 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—
Becausehe 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.
if Jesse ends up being a traitor and just used Lucie to get him revived form the dead with reverse psychology and has been helping his mother all this time I swear to god—
Ah, it’s good to get back to the dank, gloomy ruin that is Cursed Blackthorn Hall. You know, I’ll almost miss the curse, when it’s gone. Just kidding! Cirenworth proves you can have an old manor house with hundreds of years of history and it can be warm and welcoming and friendly.
We got back yesterday night, and then this morning Hypatia came in with a few more translated bits of Tatiana’s diary. (Don’t worry, Bruce: you are my One True Diary. Tatiana’s diary means nothing to me, I swear, nothing!) She was a big weirdo about it as usual, of course; the translations are all on these large parchment pages that look like movie props but no, Hypatia just likes to use ancient yellowing vellums for her normal work here in the twenty-first century. Warlocks! She said something about treated pages, demon language, and so on. And she was wearing kind of a 40s burgundy dress with a matching hat and Bruce, the brim of this hat was so wide I thought the wind would carry her away. (Oh, I should have said, we were outside. Julian was on the roof with the builders, not my favorite thing, so I was watching from the front gates while I tried to cut back the briars, which grow here at like ten times the rate of anything in California despite the much worse weather. I pointed this out to one of the faeries and he looked at me and said, “Black. Thorn.” And then walked away as though he’d made a great point. But it was Lightwood House first, I yelled back, and he ignored me. Which is for the best, really.)
I’m pretty sure the briars had grown another few inches while we talked, but they would have to wait. I got Julian down from the roof and we went in to read.
It looks like Hypatia has started actually thinking about what she’s translating; instead of doing every entry, this time she had snippets from a bunch of entries put together (she dated each one). Which is a little bit of a shame because I kind of liked seeing Tatiana talk about her clothes or her brothers or whatever in between all the, you know, evil demon stuff. But I admit that evil demon stuff is what we are here for. Like the old Shadowhunter motto says, “Shadowhunters: That Evil Demon Stuff Is What We Are Here For.” But in Latin probably.
Some translated highlights for you, Bruce. I won’t include the dates, but they stretch over a matter of years. The first one is from 1878 and then most are in the 1880s, but then there’s a jump and the last one is from 1903. (Sometime before then she seems to have found a “patron” of some kind, but she doesn’t say who it is. Or why anybody would want to be the patron of such an unpleasant person…)
Father is dead and Rupert is dead. I cannot speak of what happened; when I try, the words will not come. It is the fault of the London Enclave, many of whom were present for their deaths. Not only did they not save either of the men I love most, I daresay they hastened the disaster. I shall be, at very least, registering a formal complaint with the Clave, but I have little hope of justice, of course. The corruption among the Nephilim here in London goes all the way to the roots.
I cannot believe I have been left all alone. My mother, gone. My brothers, gone. The walls of Lightwood House are my only companions, their silence a terrible reminder of how much I have lost, in such little time. Today I went from room to room, and wherever I found a mirror, I smashed it. The glass I left where it fell, a reminder that everything bright and good has been destroyed.
I have Rupert’s ring. It is all that remains of him. I know I must have felt happy, to stand beside him and recite the vows of marriage. I cannot dredge up the memory of that feeling. There is blood upon the ring. His blood. I shall never clean it.
To honor my father’s memory, I have begun going through the books in his library. Not the library the Clave knows about, of course, the one they pillaged after the incident involving his death, but the other one, Father’s sanctum, which the enchantment hides. I wish to learn what he knew. To seek power that will help me, who now has been left with nothing. I have found only one thing that causes my heart to beat in my chest: because of his violent end, far from his own home, it is not unlikely that the spirit of my Rupert may still be present here in the house. If he is here, I will find him. I will see him, and I will know that our love is more powerful than death.
I have searched and searched, performed spell after spell. I have not seen any ghost, not of Rupert, not of Father. Not even of some Lightwood relation long dead who might have been haunting the place earlier. Is it my father’s enchantment that keeps the dead from this place? Or does it only prevent my finding them? But I am the master of that enchantment now, as I am the true inheritor of the house. (If G and G attempt to take it from me, they will find there is more than an enchantment that will work against them.)
Father’s protection is fading. I can feel it, as I remain here in the house, and it becomes a part of me, as I become a part of it. Someday my son will inherit the house—the last gift that Rupert ever gave me—and I will not have Blackthorn Hall made unsafe for myself and my family. I have been reading extensively on the topic of the enchantment and I place the blame on the urn containing mother’s ashes, which fell from its location in the Lightwood tombs in the countryside and chipped terribly. It did not shatter, but since then I have felt the eyes of the world more upon me. But I believe that the objects themselves can be replaced, as long as the magic is renewed, and so instead of the urn the enchantment now inhabits Father’s mourning brooch, with its locks of Mother’s hair, and I have put it in the place of the urn. The spell has been rewoven and renewed. Father would be proud of me. He was right to make me the inheritor of all his works.
Rupert is here, I know it, though I cannot see him or hear him. Where else, indeed, could he be other than close to me, where he belonged, where he was meant to dwell before his life was cut so short by the machinations of the Enclave. Sometimes in the night I feel I can almost see him, as though he is hiding just behind a thin curtain that divides the living realm from the dead. And now I have made sure he will stay with me.
I realized that the objects of the protective enchantment on the house are things that would be important to Father, when he was master here. But now I am master here, and having studied more fully Father’s research, it was a simple matter to place his ring in a location of power. It will be part of the spell from here on, protecting the house as Rupert would have protected me.
You can see, Bruce, the way the last entry seems…different?
Vengeance. Vindication. They are close.
But the power of the house fades. At the worst time.
I appealed to my patron. He said the magic was of my own doing and that only I may repair it. But—for he is perceptive beyond any other—he saw that I had repaired it before. He asked me what objects held the enchantment and I told him: the brooch, the snake skin, and so on.
And as I spoke he only had to look at me in his knowing way, for me to understand him. The objects were of my Father’s time, and while his memory and honor will never fade from my mind, more than twenty years have passed.
I comprehended my patron at once: it was time that I replaced the foci of the enchantment with my own. Not only Rupert’s ring, but new things.
What could I use? I have been alone so long. I have lost a child and there has been no help for me. I have only one thing remaining: my vengeance. And so I will take the things of my enemies. I will take them from under their noses, from their own homes. Their sorrow, and my satisfaction in it, will be the force that keeps Blackthorn Hall safe—safe from them! It is the kind of cunning that my patron is known for, and that he loves best.
And once my protections have returned to their fullest strength, they will finally pay for their sins. They will pay in their blood.
Eesh. Makes me shiver just reading it. I guess she didn’t actually make them pay in their blood or Tessa and Jem probably would have mentioned it. (They would have been some of the blood-payers, I’m pretty sure.) So let’s summarize, Bruce: the ghost is Rupert Blackthorn, Tatiana’s husband. He died in some kind of tragedy and she blamed the families Tessa and Jem talked about—the Herondales, the Carstairs, the Lightwoods…So she stole their stuff.
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.
Ah, it’s good to get back to the dank, gloomy ruin that is Cursed Blackthorn Hall. You know, I’ll almost miss the curse, when it’s gone. Just kidding! Cirenworth proves you can have an old manor house with hundreds of years of history and it can be warm and welcoming and friendly.
We got back yesterday night, and then this morning Hypatia came in with a few more translated bits of Tatiana’s diary. (Don’t worry, Bruce: you are my One True Diary. Tatiana’s diary means nothing to me, I swear, nothing!) She was a big weirdo about it as usual, of course; the translations are all on these large parchment pages that look like movie props but no, Hypatia just likes to use ancient yellowing vellums for her normal work here in the twenty-first century. Warlocks! She said something about treated pages, demon language, and so on. And she was wearing kind of a 40s burgundy dress with a matching hat and Bruce, the brim of this hat was so wide I thought the wind would carry her away. (Oh, I should have said, we were outside. Julian was on the roof with the builders, not my favorite thing, so I was watching from the front gates while I tried to cut back the briars, which grow here at like ten times the rate of anything in California despite the much worse weather. I pointed this out to one of the faeries and he looked at me and said, “Black. Thorn.” And then walked away as though he’d made a great point. But it was Lightwood House first, I yelled back, and he ignored me. Which is for the best, really.)
I’m pretty sure the briars had grown another few inches while we talked, but they would have to wait. I got Julian down from the roof and we went in to read.
It looks like Hypatia has started actually thinking about what she’s translating; instead of doing every entry, this time she had snippets from a bunch of entries put together (she dated each one). Which is a little bit of a shame because I kind of liked seeing Tatiana talk about her clothes or her brothers or whatever in between all the, you know, evil demon stuff. But I admit that evil demon stuff is what we are here for. Like the old Shadowhunter motto says, “Shadowhunters: That Evil Demon Stuff Is What We Are Here For.” But in Latin probably.
Some translated highlights for you, Bruce. I won’t include the dates, but they stretch over a matter of years. The first one is from 1878 and then most are in the 1880s, but then there’s a jump and the last one is from 1903. (Sometime before then she seems to have found a “patron” of some kind, but she doesn’t say who it is. Or why anybody would want to be the patron of such an unpleasant person…)
Father is dead and Rupert is dead. I cannot speak of what happened; when I try, the words will not come. It is the fault of the London Enclave, many of whom were present for their deaths. Not only did they not save either of the men I love most, I daresay they hastened the disaster. I shall be, at very least, registering a formal complaint with the Clave, but I have little hope of justice, of course. The corruption among the Nephilim here in London goes all the way to the roots.
I cannot believe I have been left all alone. My mother, gone. My brothers, gone. The walls of Lightwood House are my only companions, their silence a terrible reminder of how much I have lost, in such little time. Today I went from room to room, and wherever I found a mirror, I smashed it. The glass I left where it fell, a reminder that everything bright and good has been destroyed.
I have Rupert’s ring. It is all that remains of him. I know I must have felt happy, to stand beside him and recite the vows of marriage. I cannot dredge up the memory of that feeling. There is blood upon the ring. His blood. I shall never clean it.
To honor my father’s memory, I have begun going through the books in his library. Not the library the Clave knows about, of course, the one they pillaged after the incident involving his death, but the other one, Father’s sanctum, which the enchantment hides. I wish to learn what he knew. To seek power that will help me, who now has been left with nothing. I have found only one thing that causes my heart to beat in my chest: because of his violent end, far from his own home, it is not unlikely that the spirit of my Rupert may still be present here in the house. If he is here, I will find him. I will see him, and I will know that our love is more powerful than death.
I have searched and searched, performed spell after spell. I have not seen any ghost, not of Rupert, not of Father. Not even of some Lightwood relation long dead who might have been haunting the place earlier. Is it my father’s enchantment that keeps the dead from this place? Or does it only prevent my finding them? But I am the master of that enchantment now, as I am the true inheritor of the house. (If G and G attempt to take it from me, they will find there is more than an enchantment that will work against them.)
Father’s protection is fading. I can feel it, as I remain here in the house, and it becomes a part of me, as I become a part of it. Someday my son will inherit the house—the last gift that Rupert ever gave me—and I will not have Blackthorn Hall made unsafe for myself and my family. I have been reading extensively on the topic of the enchantment and I place the blame on the urn containing mother’s ashes, which fell from its location in the Lightwood tombs in the countryside and chipped terribly. It did not shatter, but since then I have felt the eyes of the world more upon me. But I believe that the objects themselves can be replaced, as long as the magic is renewed, and so instead of the urn the enchantment now inhabits Father’s mourning brooch, with its locks of Mother’s hair, and I have put it in the place of the urn. The spell has been rewoven and renewed. Father would be proud of me. He was right to make me the inheritor of all his works.
Rupert is here, I know it, though I cannot see him or hear him. Where else, indeed, could he be other than close to me, where he belonged, where he was meant to dwell before his life was cut so short by the machinations of the Enclave. Sometimes in the night I feel I can almost see him, as though he is hiding just behind a thin curtain that divides the living realm from the dead. And now I have made sure he will stay with me.
I realized that the objects of the protective enchantment on the house are things that would be important to Father, when he was master here. But now I am master here, and having studied more fully Father’s research, it was a simple matter to place his ring in a location of power. It will be part of the spell from here on, protecting the house as Rupert would have protected me.
You can see, Bruce, the way the last entry seems…different?
Vengeance. Vindication. They are close.
But the power of the house fades. At the worst time.
I appealed to my patron. He said the magic was of my own doing and that only I may repair it. But—for he is perceptive beyond any other—he saw that I had repaired it before. He asked me what objects held the enchantment and I told him: the brooch, the snake skin, and so on.
And as I spoke he only had to look at me in his knowing way, for me to understand him. The objects were of my Father’s time, and while his memory and honor will never fade from my mind, more than twenty years have passed.
I comprehended my patron at once: it was time that I replaced the foci of the enchantment with my own. Not only Rupert’s ring, but new things.
What could I use? I have been alone so long. I have lost a child and there has been no help for me. I have only one thing remaining: my vengeance. And so I will take the things of my enemies. I will take them from under their noses, from their own homes. Their sorrow, and my satisfaction in it, will be the force that keeps Blackthorn Hall safe—safe from them! It is the kind of cunning that my patron is known for, and that he loves best.
And once my protections have returned to their fullest strength, they will finally pay for their sins. They will pay in their blood.
Eesh. Makes me shiver just reading it. I guess she didn’t actually make them pay in their blood or Tessa and Jem probably would have mentioned it. (They would have been some of the blood-payers, I’m pretty sure.) So let’s summarize, Bruce: the ghost is Rupert Blackthorn, Tatiana’s husband. He died in some kind of tragedy and she blamed the families Tessa and Jem talked about—the Herondales, the Carstairs, the Lightwoods…So she stole their stuff.
I’m back from London, and Julian and Emma told me to tell you “hello” and also “they send their love.” But that is not the important part of the letter, which is later. But you shouldn’t skip to that part, I will explain why soon.
Blackthorn Hall is actually pretty cool. It’s big and it’s old, and lots of parts don’t work properly yet, but Emma and Jules have done a lot to make it nice. There’s lots of bedrooms. I picked out one for me, which they called the “gray bedroom,” but honestly all the bedrooms are kind of gray. They said it’s so we can paint them if we want, they’ll be our rooms and we can decorate them how we like.
You’ll have to pick out the one you want when you visit, but I found one that I bet will be your favorite. It overlooks the gardens which I think will be the last thing to get fixed up, and so will continue to look creepy for a while. There are all these broken statues with plants grown over them, like they were trying to kill the statues. Like they succeeded in killing the statues. It looks like if you went walking down there the vines would wrap around you and pull you underground. You’ll love it.
I didn’t sleep well before we traveled to London and now I think it was because I was worried. Anush says our bodies often tell us how we are feeling even when our minds aren’t conscious of it. Like feeling nauseated before an important test. You probably know what I mean.
But it was good. Especially to see Jules and Emma. I hadn’t realized how much I missed them until I saw them. I think I felt it like Anush says, like a weird pressure in my chest that went away when Jules hugged me. Maybe it’s the same for you. Or maybe you already know how much you miss them. Anyway I thought it was important to say I also miss you and it’ll be nice when we can all be in the same house together again. I think Irene will like it there too.
Ragnor’s map did actually help, so it was good he came. He found a couple of places in London to check for more of those cursed objects, so that’s one step closer to un-cursing the house. I know, it would be cool to live in a cursed house. But it wouldn’t be fair to Rupert the Ghost, since he’s trapped there because of the curse. And anyway there’s all this renovation work that the builders won’t do until the curse is lifted. And it would be good if the house’s roof didn’t leak. That might be a little too gloomy even for you.
Now we’ve talked about the bedrooms, the house, and Ragnor, so if anyone asks you can tell them those are the things we discussed. We are now at the part of the letter where I have to tell you important things but I wanted you to have information you could share in case someone asked you if you had heard from me. I mean, if someone important asks you. If someone we don’t know asks you, Anush says you can say “Make like a tree and leave,” which I don’t understand but he says will definitely work.
So, the important part. Rupert the Ghost. I wasn’t really thinking when I wrote up above that it will be nice for us to all be together. I mean, it will be, but it’s not quite that simple, at least for me. See…Rupert saw Livvy. She wasn’t hiding or anything, and she didn’t act surprised that he saw her. But I’ve spent so much time worried about other, you know, living people finding out about her. It hadn’t even occurred to me that of course there are ghosts everywhere, all over the world, and they’ll all know she’s there. The ghosts here at the Scholomance know about her, of course, but Edvard and Prudence keep to themselves and nobody really pays attention to either of them. Prudence is always in the library pretending to shelve books (or actually shelving ghost books, I can’t tell) and Edvard paces slowly through the halls and barely ever talks. Sometimes he moans, but that’s just him complaining.
Rupert and Livvy had a couple of conversations with just the two of them, I guess about ghost stuff. She says she made him promise that he wouldn’t say anything about seeing her, but ghosts can lie. So what if he says something to Emma or Julian? What if he can tell that something is weird with the way Livvy is a ghost and he mentions that?
The thing is, it’s not just Rupert. Even if he stays quiet, I already almost made Emma suspicious by talking to Livvy myself. I had to tell her I was talking to you on the phone. I know about Rupert and I know about Edvard and Prudence, but there could be ghosts anyplace I go, and if someone else is there and they start interacting with Livvy I’m going to have to explain. I got used to Edvard and Prudence ignoring her but Rupert drifted right into the bedroom and asked her who she was.
Livvy says I shouldn’t worry. She reminds me that any Shadowhunter can see ghosts who want to be seen, like Edvard and Prudence, but that it’s much harder to see a ghost who doesn’t want to be seen, and that’s most ghosts. She says Rupert wanted to be seen — first by Emma and Jules and then by Livvy and me, though only Livvy’s seen him really clearly— but if he didn’t, I’d never have known he was there. She says she’s able to hide herself from almost all people (even Jace, and he has latent ghost-seeing powers), and even able to hide herself from a lot of ghosts. And that even if they do see her, they won’t necessarily know who she is, it’s not like ghosts can just identify each other. And she says if she has to, she’ll just lie to them.
She said a lot of reassuring things. But it still gave me a cold feeling, which I think is my body telling my brain that I’m afraid. If Julian and Emma found out about Livvy, they wouldn’t just be angry. They’d feel like they had to do something, like lay her to rest. People don’t think ghosts can be happy, but Livvy is happy. She helps me with work and she tells me advice for Anush (he has a crush on Rayan’s sister Nasha) and when we’re alone we play games or I read to her. She can’t do everything but why would being all the way dead be better? Everyone calls it “rest” but no one really knows, do they?
Maybe you have ideas. Tell me if you have ideas.
Love,
Tiberius
You don’t understand, I’m crashed….. I miss him so much
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