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First: the ghost in Blackthorn Hall is Rupert Blackthorn, Tatiana’s husband. He’s stuck in the house because of the curse, that is, Benedict Lightwood’s protection spell over the house. Tatiana did something to kind of bind him into the house, in some way, and hold him in a kind of limbo until she could figure out how to raise him from the dead. (Tatiana never seems to have wondered even for a second if necromancy should give her pause, by the way; she takes it for granted as though anybody would be a foolnottopursue the darkest possible magic.) And then the curse was fading after Tatiana’s father’s death, since it was tied to him, and Tatiana had to do regular maintenance over the following years to keep it working.

The curse works, it seems, by being embedded in six objects placed on ley lines that interact at Blackthorn Hall. This was very clever of Benedict, since the objects themselves are not kept at the house and thus the curse wouldn’t be detected by Shadowhunters searching here. He didn’t make provisions for faery contractors, lucky for us. 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. The plan is clear: 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 more good news. Also a bit of bad news: we tried to make contact with Rupert to tell him we figured out his identity, but we didn’t get any reaction from him by speaking or even using the Ouija board again. We couldn’t get him to so much as flutter the pages of a book, much less talk or even write in the dust. Maybe he had pressing business elsewhere in the house; who knows. We told him what we’dfound out anyway in case he was listening but couldn’t respond, because what do we know about ghosts? Not much. We’re not too worried about his silence, though, because of the good news, which is that this morning he left us an antique envelope in the middle of the kitchen floor, and it means he has another lead to the location of one of the objects. Or at least, he has a place he wants us to look. (What we will do if he runs out of clues like this before we find everything, we don’t know.) Whatever correspondence was in the envelope 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, but years ago, pre-Jace, probably pre-Jace’s-dad, it was given to the National Trust. I guess Jace still technically owns it, but it’s also open to the public as a historic building. So off we go, as mundane tourists interested in a historic home, hoping to find… something. Tessa said as far as she knows it hasn’t been inhabited by Shadowhunters for a long time, and if some antique thing was 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 he gives us permission as a Herondale, but I’m fairly sure that’s not 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 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. We obviously can’t depend on him to have a piece of hundred-year-old trash to serve as a clue to every object, but hey, we have a place to go next, and we still have Tatiana’s diary and Ty’s Ghost Sensor. I feel much better having a concrete goal.