EMMA
Dear Bruce,
I woke up this morning to find it was an improbably beautiful day with bright blue skies and those cute little white scudding clouds. All right, I thought. There is no way I am spending this gorgeous day in wonderful London inside this falling down house, scrubbing the floors and brooding about ghosts. The question then: How to convince Julian we should go out and have fun?
I marched upstairs and found the man himself drinking coffee in the kitchen. I said, “Jules. You know that thing you want me to do that I’ve been refusing to do? If you come out and have a good time with me today in London, I’ll do it.”
A big grin spread over his face. He said, “Okay!” In fact, he said it as he was already running out the door. I had to get him to come back for a jacket.
Bruce, we had an absolutely great time in London.We took a boat ride down the Thames. We went to a costume shop. We saw the Tower, and went to Fortnum & Mason for tea. Julian ate all my cucumber sandwiches because I hate them. We went on the London Eye, which is like a more spectacular version of the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier. Demons did not attack this time, and Julian booked a whole pod so we could snuggle and cuddle.
In the middle of the snuggling, not to mention the cuddling, Julian stopped and stared into my eyes. It was an intense stare. I could tell he had something to ask me, and for a moment I thought—well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.
“Emma,” he said, “what would you think about moving to London with me?”
I said, “What do you mean? We’re already here.”
He explained that he was thinking, if we got Blackthorn Hall all fixed up, we could live in it until Dru or Ty or Tavvy (or all three of them) grow up and want to move there. He told me Helen and Aline were doing a great job running the L.A. Institute and they don’t really need us. Besides, they’re thinking of starting a family soon so maybe they don’t want so many people running around the Institute.
I said, “But I thought you liked Los Angeles, and practically everyone we know is there.”
He pointed out that that wasn’t totally true. In London, we’d be closer to Ty, and about the same distance from theeast coast where Dru is, and of course Mark and Cristina are in New York half the time, too. I think he could tell I wasn’t sure what to say, because he added, “It’s really about us having a home, one we make together. Being grown up and having a grown up kind of life.”
I joked around, saying we were still fairly young, and he said, “I know most people who get together when they’re teenagers break up. They get older and they change. I want us to go through the important things together so we change together. Does that make sense?”
I told him it did, though I was pretty freaked out he even mentioned breaking up as a concept. So I kissed him, which distracted us both, and when our pod came to a stop on the ground everyone cheered and whistled. The English are more lustful than I had previously suspected.
I was exhausted by the time we got home and discovered our ghost friend had been active in our absence. In the dust on the dining room floor were written the words
DEVIL TAVERN
Now what on earth does that mean? Though honestly, we were both kind of pleased to be given something specific to do. Very kind of the ghost to give us our first clue into unravelling the mystery he’s provided us.
—Emma
P.S. Bruce, I know you’re dying to find out what it was that Julian wanted me to let him do that I have been refusingto do. Remember when I said we went to a costume shop? Well, apparently Dru made Julian watch The Hunger Games with her the last time we were home, and he really really wanted to paint me like this. The things we do for love.
EMMA
Dear Jem,
I feel bad writing to you about this out of the blue, but you said it was okay to get in touch with you anytime for advice. And you always give good advice, but I can’t help feeling like, beyond that, you might have some familiarity here that could be helpful?
You already know Julian and I have taken on the gigantic task of renovating Blackthorn Hall. You probably are totally unsurprised we found a ghost. (I say this because everyone else who was alive back when this house was being taken care of are also not surprised there’s a ghost.)
Good news: ghost is not unfriendly (or at least not violent). He’s just looking for the “silver band” that binds him. Not unusual; lots of ghosts are bound to an earthly object.
Bad news: ghost can’t be identified as a specific person,so could be pretending to not be violent. Also, “silver band” could be any of a thousand things.
I suppose we can put aside anything we find that might be what he’s looking for, but that seems unlikely to work. After all, he hasn’t found the “silver band” in the house and he’s been haunting it for however long.
We did get one direct clue from the ghost. Now that we’ve made contact, he’s started writing things in the dust on the floor. He’s given us one direct request: Look for the Devil Tavern. Okay. A little research turns up that it’s a Downworlder speakeasy, heavily glamoured, that’s been around for hundreds of years in London’s Old City. Supposedly it used to allow mundanes as well, and Samuel Johnson had a drinking club there. Wild times, I gather. Jules looked it up and apparently, it’s still in operation. It’s also not far from the Institute, though whether that’s a clue to the identity of the ghost or just a coincidence, we don’t know.
Anyway, Julian and I went to check out the place. From the outside you just see a bank and one of those blue plaques they put on historical sites. This one commemorates the year they stopped letting mundanes in.
In addition to the usual glamours, they make you you go through a whole rigamarole to get in. You have to go into the mundane bank, which must believe it has the weirdest clientele of any bank branch in England. You mention “the Devil” to the teller, who then gives you a key made of salt that opens a panel in the lift, revealing a button with little devil horns on it. Pressing the button takes you down to the pub. (The key disintegrates when you use it, obviously.) I have no idea what happens when a random mundane says, “What the devil happened to my money,” or something.
That all sounds very complicated but in practice it was easy enough; rather than trying something complicated, Julian just strolled up and casually said, “I’m here for the Devil,” and the teller handed him the key. She barely even looked interested; she was doing a sudoku on her phone or something and didn’t even look away as she grabbeda key from a whole tray of them. Maybe Londoners just don’t blink at bizarre very old London stuff.
