We were in one of the spare bedrooms, looking at the scrollwork on the bed or whatever. The tour guide was showing off the bedside tables, and the Sensor went off like crazy.
The tour guide gave us an evil look. “Turn off that phone,” she said to me, and the whole tour group flounced off to another room while I pretended to be trying to find my phone in my waist pack. Jules grabbed the Sensor, and it led us to a music box on the windowsill. A very ugly music box. Well, maybe “ugly” isn’t the right word. Very overdecorated. Covered in bits and bobs and, like, way too much for a music box. There was a monkey figurine involved. It was a lot. Anyway, it was an excellent example of the mid-Victorian etc., etc., but also it was an object Tatiana cursed and, I guess, someone liked it enough to find it and bring it back here???
Then it was just a matter of waiting till the tour moved on, glamouring up, grabbing the music box, sneaking back out of there, and hoping nobody who worked there had theSight. Which they didn’t. So now we have a music box to show Rupert in the morning and ask Tessa about. I hope it wasn’t hers. I think of her as having better taste.
Okay, that’s it for now, Bruce. I’m going to go get Cortana so I can reach out and touch it from the bed. Julian always teases me when I do that but tonight it feels right. Catch you later.
Emma
TY
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 you 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 cursed house. You always say 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 you should not be mad.
Ragnor is going to complain about you bothering him, but you shouldn’t pay any attention to that. I know it’s been a couple of months since you last retrieved one of thecursed objects, and I know you’ve exhausted every other possibility before asking for help. Ragnor knows that too. Rather than digging further into family histories, Ragnor is going to bring a ley line map of London 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 point out that Shadowhunters ought to know these things already. I said that to him, in fact, but he said no, apparently the Spiral Labyrinth only standardized ley line mapping about fifty years ago and before that every warlock used a different method. I asked if he knew who had made the map and he didn’t, but maybe he would remember when he looked at it again. 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 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 the lynx, too, but Anush said that would be more likely to make you mad than me just showing up on my own, especially since Irene sometimes eats curtains and it sounds like there are a lot of curtains on the upstairs floors. I really want you to meetIrene, though. She’s gotten big but she’s well behaved. And I taught her to high-five! I’ll bring her another time, 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. 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 Fae 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 so far it is functioning perfectly, since 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 made us 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 thehouse, and I want to learn something about reading ley line maps. Okay, I’ll see you soon! Remember you said you wanted to see me! Don’t be mad!
Love
Ty
EMMA
Dear Bruce,
Sorry I haven’t written in you much lately. It’s been busy, and also, somehow, boring. The last thing I think I wrote to you about was finding that music box at the house on Curzon Street. There’s nothing much to say about the music box, it turns out. Tessa said that it was probably her son James’s, that he got it as a fifteenth birthday present but she couldn’t remember who from, and everyone thought it was very ugly, and his parents made him take it to Curzon Street when he moved there.
And then that was it for clues. Rupert definitely is getting stronger over time, but he hasn’t had any new suggestions for us on where to look. A couple weeks after we found the music box he started to become an actual visible ghost floating around the place. (He looks like… some guy! Some guy with dark hair, in old-timey clothes!He also looks barely older than we are; I guess he and Tatiana were young when they got together.)
But Visible Rupert has not been all that helpful. He drifts around the house, looking for his silver band. He has not found it, and neither have we. We’ve asked him to talk about Tatiana, but he really doesn’t want to— he tends to disappear anytime we mention her name. We’re not sure if that’s the curse, or if he just doesn’t like remembering her.
Anyway, it’s been two months or something since we went to Curzon Street; we have four objects; we need six; the house is still cursed; and the brownies still won’t work. So Julian broke down and sent a message to Ragnor Fell asking for help.
Yesterday we got a reply from Ty saying he was coming with Ragnor today to Blackthorn Hall. He seemed very worried 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 that night, I took his hand and wrote on his palm, the way we always used to do, tracing each letter.
W-H-A-TA-R-EY-O-UW-O-R-R-I-E-DA-B-O-U-T-?
We curled up together under the covers. He told me 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, what he liked to eat and do. And now he feels likehe’s lost track of him somehow, and when they see each other maybe it will feel distant and strange.
I told him he would never lose track of Ty and their relationship would always be special; it was just going to be different, because Jules no longer has to take care of everyone and pretend he isn’t. 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.
Back to today. Julian and I were having breakfast this morning—it’s been nice and sunny this last week, and the kitchen was feeling surprisingly 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.
