We heard a scratching sound coming from one of the walls, and we sledgehammered our way in with great excitement, but the scratching turned out to be a badger. Actually, it was a mother badger and some badger cubs, which was very cute until the mother tried to kill us. So we had to interrupt and go get the gnomes to help us and they relocated the badger family to a glade of some kind. They also issued us a bill for “badger decampment.”
This was all very disappointing. Emma said maybe it was rude to ask for the ghost’s name before introducing ourselves.
Emma:M-Y-N-A-M-E-I-S-E-M-M-A-C-A-R-S-T-A-I-R-S
Me:A-N-D-M-Y-N-A-M-E-I-S-J-U-L-I-A-N-B-L-A-C-KT-H-O-R-N
Well, that got a reaction. As soon as I finished the last “N,” the board leapt off the ground and twisted violently around. The planchette went flying and Emma went to go retrieve it from the other end of the room, but when she came back the board went flying around in the air and, I am sorry to say, we chased it around for probably two full minutes without catching it. Eventually the ghost got bored, I guess, and the Ouija board stopped in midair and shattered into pieces, which fell to the ground. And all the candles went out. (There were sixteen pieces, if that means anything. Emma says no; I said we should mention it anyway just in case.)
So…any advice? Too much ghostly energy for an old Ouija board? Defective board in the first place? Does the ghost want to be left alone? If so, why does it keep knocking things over? Did we offend it? There hasn’t been anything like that since, but exploding a Ouija board seemed sufficiently threatening that I wanted to get in touch. What do you think is our next step?
Again, I’m really sorry to bother you, but your help would mean a lot. I want to make Blackthorn Hall a place the Blackthorns can use again, a place that will feel like a second home for all of us. And it would be nice if people in London associated the Blackthorns with a grand manor house rather than an infamous wreck. Which is not going to happen if visitors wake up with their hair tied to the bedposts, or have their suitcases upended on the staircase. In payment, we promise you as much babysitting as youlike, whenever you need. Although maybe once we’re no longer living in a collapsing death trap.
Much obliged—
Julian
MAGNUS
Dear Alec,
Before anything else, I just want to mention once again that you are by far the handsomest man I have ever met, with the most beautiful blue eyes, and what I love most about you, among so, so many other features, is that you are a man of incalculable understanding, patience, and forgiveness.
Yes, this is our vacation. Yes, you and the kids are lounging on the soft white sands of St. Barths, as is good and right. Yes, I have had to dash to London on urgent business involving Blackthorns. Yes, I have been receiving your many supportive texts, accompanied by your many photos in which you look angry while holding umbrella drinks.
No, I will not be back today. You must imagine me saying this with the heaviest of sighs and the most forlorn look. I need one more day. Blackthorn Hall is haunted—whichI could have told anyone who had bothered to ask; I’ve never known a more obviously haunted place in my life—and none of the little Blackthorns (who I suppose are no longer quite as little as all that) have had to deal with this kind of ghostiness before.
So again, let me commend you for your forbearance in this time of trial. That is not sarcasm, just formal! I really mean it!
Love you, Alec. See you tomorrow night. The next morning at the absolute latest.
To the Greatest Man Who Has Ever or Will Ever Live,
Sigh. It will be tomorrow morning. I meant to depart tonight, but it is now very, very late, and I have had no small amount of wine, and these are not the conditions by which I would feel quite safe opening a Portal. It will not do me any good to return to St. Barths if I show up on top of the Gustavia Lighthouse.
So since I cannot yet sleep, but must, let me quickly fill you in.
As you know, the Blackthorns are fixing up Blackthorn Hall—fancy that—and while I understand they are now properly adults, they are still young enough to find a hundred year old Ouija board hidden in the walls and immediately use it. No planchette? Not a problem, we will just make one out of scrap without reference to the wood or the ley lines or any of the— Sorry. I can’t help it, it’s such the Shadowhunter stereotype. Leap before you look. In fact, just leap. Leap whenever and wherever. No time for looking; we’ve got so much leaping to do!
As it turns out (spoiler alert!) the spirit of the house—at least the restless one—probably means no real harm and is in your standard everyday “ghost looking for its missing bauble to move on” situation. But I was more alarmed for it being the house in Chiswick. Generations of Lightwoods lived in it over many years, and there always seemed a dark shadow over the place. In the mid-19th it was the home of, I’m sorry to say, a very bad Lightwood, one of the worst Lightwoods, and after that, its fall from grace was precipitous. I cannot say from what period this ghost might date, but given its reaction to the name “Blackthorn,” I have my worries.
Specifically, before I even arrived, Julian and Emma had said the word “Blackthorn” to the ghost, who immediately magically shattered the Ouija board into pieces. I magicked it back—note for future reference: it’seasier to magically repair something that was magically broken in the first place rather than with, say, a hammer— and produced a makeshift but (unlike theirs) correctly calibrated and warded planchette. And burned their planchette in a fire. Outside.
Soon enough I’d used the new planchette and the repaired board to make contact with the spirit. It is very weak, probably from being alone for the past hundred-odd years. After some trial and error, I was able to get it to communicate with us not by moving the planchette (which it cannot manage) but by writing words in the dust.
Alec, my love, there was a knot in my stomach the moment it began to communicate. Is the ghost someone I knew? Someone I once cared about? It probably isn’t— most of them would have no reason to have ended up ghosts at all, much less ghosts stuck here—but once the thought occurred to me, I couldn’t put it aside. I tried to ask but you know how ghosts are.Do you know me?I asked.NOT NOWwas the response. What the heck does that mean? I asked,so did you know me before?JustNOT NOWagain.
Anyway, the thing seemed peaceful enough; hopefully now that it can write in the dust it can just say what it wants rather than rattling the silverware. We at least are fairly sure the ghost is male—at one point when we saidWho were you?it saidSON HUSBAND FATHER. But the most important thing he said was the only complete sentence he managed:
I AM BOUND BY A SILVER BAND
Whether this silver band is a ring, a bracelet, a handcuff, the concept of “the ties that bind,” or a group of robot musicians, I have no idea. But it’s normal enough for a ghost to be bound by an object and to be looking for the thing that binds them. I honestly didn’t get a negative vibe from the guy. I’m…let’s say ninety percent sure it’s not the aforementioned B. Lightwood, at least. (“B” is for “Bad,” if that wasn’t clear.) Julian and Emma said they should try to find the silver band and free him, because that is what they’re like. (I know, you would want to find it too.) They have a Sensor modified by Tiberius to detect ghostly magic, which is how they found the Ouija board in the first place; I modified it for them to be calibrated to the magical lines, auras, and fields of the house, so it wouldn’t be constantly set off by the gigantic amounts of random ghost magic floating around England in general and London especially. I also told them not to kill themselves over this, and it’s probably not an emergency. This felt like wise advice, although we had all had quite a bit of wine at that point.
The wine was drunk continually throughout the evening, as there were some salvageable bottles from Spidertown (the cellar). It’s rather amazing anything there is drinkable, much less good, although I don’t know, maybe Shadowhunters have wine preservation runes somewhere in the latter appendices of the Gray Book. And drinking red wine while talking to a ghost just seemed, I don’t know, the right pairing? But now I have a splitting headache froma combination of sulfites and light necromancy. I am going to put myself to long-overdue sleep, and then tomorrow at six in the morning your time please tell le garçon I would like waiting for me a café allongé, very hot, and a sidecar, very cold. I will then entertain the children for the rest of the day while you, my love, my all, take a nap and join us whenever you please.
All of my love, and then even more love you didn’t even know I had in my love reserves,
M.
