the blackthorns have a thing about getting the herondales involved in their necromancy plans huh

I am a proud simp of all the Herondales and I am not afraid to show it.

Emma To Bruce

Dear Bruce,

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.

— Emma

Ty to Julian

Hi Julian,

Don’t be mad.

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!

Love

Ty

Julian to Helen and Aline

Dear Helen and Aline,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You mean Ty?” I said.

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

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

Kit looked up. “He — hasn’t?”

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

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

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

—Jules

Julian To Magnus

Hi Magnus, it’s Julian Blackthorn. (I know, you told me just “Julian” is fine, but habits are hard to break.) You had said you wanted updates on what was happening with Blackthorn Manor, so here are some of those. More than you probably expected, actually.

First off, Hypatia Vex says hello. So that probably tells you from the start how things are going. She also says that you should contact her regarding some kind of money you owe her, but I said I didn’t want to be in the middle of any of that and only said I would mention it. (I believe she said you “welshed on a bet,” which I had to look up. (a) It doesn’t sound like something you would do, and (b) it seems offensive to the Welsh?)

We saw Hypatia because we went to the London Shadow Market, and we went to the Shadow Market because, in addition to all the other mysterious business at the house—a ghost, a curse, a lot of bad vibes overall—it turns out we also have an enchanted diary. It belonged to a Tatiana Blackthorn, née Lightwood, back in the 1870s. Emma has been reading it since we got here, but it has some kind of spell on it that prevented her from telling anyone about it. Even before we got to the Shadow Market, Emma and I both forgot about the diary a couple times each. Luckily the other one still remembered. Eventually I wrote “REMEMBER THE DIARY” in huge colorful letters on some posterboard and hung it up so we see it when we first wake up.

But that’s not a long-term solution, so we took it to the Shadow Market to find someone to disenchant the thing. Hypatia has a kind of outpost of her magic shop that she sets up in the Market, and we were relieved to find someone we knew—I wasn’t eager to hand over an ensorcelled Shadowhunter item to just anyone. As you’d probably guess, she did not seem happy to see us, but that’s kind of Hypatia’s thing. And no one is ever happy to see Shadowhunters at a Shadow Market, of course. We tried to look as casual as possible but it’s not like we can tell everyone, “Don’t worry! We’re not here to raid the place!” We did see a few stands suddenly close for the day as we approached, including one that sold a potion that was guaranteed to “put werewolf hair on your chest.” I have to wonder, is that actual werewolf hair shaved off an actual werewolf, or is it supposed to just make you look hairy like a werewolf?) I couldn’t ask because the stall was closed. You know how it is.

Anyway, for all her grousing about Shadowhunters only turning up when they needed something and so on, Hypatia was helpful enough once we explained what was going on. I think she couldn’t resist the puzzle of it. She took the diary in the back and, I guess, did some disenchanting. When she came back, she had good news and bad news. Good news: the diary was no longer enchanted. Bad news: being disenchanted triggered a failsafe spell which caused all the text to degenerate into Purgatic script. Someone really didn’t want that diary read.

Hypatia agreed to translate the diary, albeit for a significant fee (though it is a drop in the bucket compared to all the other costs of fixing the house). One thing: she said it would be kind of slow to do. Apparently the act of translating from demon scripts saps the translator’s energy and they can only do so much before they have to rest. I did not know that! (And if it turns out it’s not true, and Hypatia is only messing with us, please let me know.)

So provided Hypatia keeps her end of the deal, we should know more about the diary soon. It feels like we have all these puzzle pieces but we have no idea how to fit them together, or if we’re missing pieces, or if they’re even from the same puzzle. Is Tatiana’s diary related to the ghost? Are either of them related to the curse? Or is this house just totally piled up with bad magic?

Then on our way out of the Shadow Market there was another surprise: Ty’s ghost-modified Sensor started going crazy as soon as we left. We thought it must be something in the Market and went back in, but no, the signal stopped. We followed it out and it took us to Southwark Cathedral, which is just down the road from the Market. It still had a whole bunch of tourists visiting, so we got to do the classic Shadowhunter thing, glamour up and sneak in. The Sensor took us to the Nephilim weapons cache (in a niche under an alabaster statue of somebody-or-other) where we found…a weapon. I know, amazing, right? But this was obviously not just some generic weapon that had been left in the cache; it was beautiful and elaborate and looked like it could be worn ceremonially. It’s a curved dagger, Middle Eastern in origin (I am no expert on weapons from the region, unfortunately, and will have to check some references to get the specific kind), and there’s beautiful calligraphy all along the blade in Arabic script. (Of course, there are probably twenty common languages that use Arabic script; I don’t know which one this is.)

I’ve got some pictures and am going to write to Ty to see what he can find out about the dagger. It doesn’t seem like it goes with the flask at all, and I have no idea why it would have been left in the cathedral. The mysteries continue. This house is, uh, more of a fixer-upper than we originally thought.

Emma sends her love, and please give our love to Alec and the kiddos. Let me know if you have any thoughts and hope you’re finally getting a chance to relax a bit.

Julian

Personally I think it very fitting that a Blackthorn is on the Chain of Thornscover

“And give our love to the kiddies!!”

Your honour?? I love him

“…but whatever else we’ve learned about Tatiana we do feel pretty confident she was a strange one.”

…and the understatement of the year award goes to: Julian Blackthorn!!

I would like to keep reinforcing that Julian has an ELITE sense of humour

Emma and Julian bouncing jokes off of one another is just such a them thing to do

I’m still getting over the fact that Julian and Emma can just straight up talk to Rupert???

Does Rupert ever strike up a conversation with this newfound ability or does he just wait for Julian and Emma to coax him out??

Except Dru, who claims she’d rather keep it cursed for the ambience (not that she’s been here yet.)

And we love her for that.

Nobody:

Me: yes, Emma, Julian might be your boyfriend, but he’s MY husband.

Things I cried about in this week’s SoBH: a masterlist

1. Right off the bat, Julian being nervous about Ty coming over because he was afraid that things would be different
2. Emma writing on Julian’s hand with her finger just like old times
3. Julian and Emma hiding under the covers together
4. The entire scene where Ty dropped his duffel bag and ran up to Julian and Julian wrapped him up in a big hug
5. Julian calling Tiberius “Ty-Ty.”
6. Julian telling Ty to pick a room and decorate it however he likes — because that will be HIS ROOM NOW?? LIKE THAT’S NOW TY’S ROOM?? I AM SOBBING?? LIKE OMG THIS HOUSE IS FEELING LIKE A HOME??
7. Ty suggesting Sherlock and Watson statues for the garden.
8. THIS ART:

I’m imagining that Rupert didn’t surface for most of Ty’s visit because he was with hanging out with Livvy.

… we all thought the same thing, did we not?

Ty won many rounds of Cluedo. Canon. Confirmed.

“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.

When I tell you my heart dropped—