I must go—Kieran has come to fetch me. Cristina and Emma have prepared a cream tea in an effort to lighten the mood. Kieran assures me the sandwiches are extremely tiny, and that he cut the crusts off himself with great accuracy.
I love you, Tiberius. I wish you were here with us, but I know you are doing great work in the Scholomance. I am proud to be your brother.
Mark
*Julian informs me there are no raccoons in England, whatever Disney films might have indicated to the contrary. I cannot express the depth of my betrayal.
TY
Hi Julian and Emma,
There are lots of things in this letter, so I have made them into an ordered list.
Don’t worry. The device I’ve included is not dangerous and is in no danger of exploding. (Obviously.) When Professor Hardcastle saw me packing it up, she suggested I tell you up front it is not a bomb. I told her you know I would never send you anything dangerous without taking all appropriate precautions. She said yes, but it looks like a bomb.
I started looking through the records. Nothing so far about Blackthorn Hall being haunted. Plenty of weird stuff happened there in the past, so it’s definitely possible there are ghosts that haven’t been reported. But I’ll bet plenty of weird stuff has happened at everybig old Shadowhunter manor. Are all of them haunted? Now that I think about it, possibly yes.
I’m not done with the records yet, just letting you know what I’ve found so far. I’m still looking. The library is huge, and the Cohort left it very disorganized. So finding particular documents can be a challenge. Genealogies aren’t hard to come by, but given all the intermarrying among Shadowhunter families there’s a lot of tracing up and down ancestors and cross-referencing—and yes, I know what you’re going to say, and I do like cross-referencing. But the volume is still very high. Also, Professor Loss warned me a lot of the Shadowhunter family trees are inaccurate, and there was a period where Shadowhunter families would create fanciful family trees, like a…marriage wish list. But there’s some accurate truth beneath all this mess and I am resolved to find it.
The only thing I’ve learned that might be helpful so far is that before the place was Blackthorn Hall it was Lightwood House and occupied in the mid-nineteenth century by a Benedict Lightwood who got into some kind of legal trouble. I’m not sure what kind. His death is recorded as by “misadventure,” but that could mean anything. Oh, and there are records of demons being found on the grounds at various points but that doesn’t mean anything; sometimes demons wander onto grounds.
You probably find this lack of information frustrating. I find it frustrating. I will be devoting myself to uncovering the history of this house in the fashion of Sherlock Holmes, although I do not have the hat with me.
On the topic of the Scholomance and how I am doing here…I have been putting together a curriculum, with the help of Prof. Loss, aimed in the direction of investigation and detection. So far it includes: Signs & Sigils, Alchemy (closest I will get here to forensics), Tracking, Law, and Downworld Relations (apparently this one used to be a real doozy back in the pre-Accords days when it was called “Interrogation.” The older profs still occasionally call it that). You will see the glaring omission here. I need a course on criminology, but the term only dates to the late 1800s and that is not nearly enough time for the Scholomance to have put together a class by now. They move very slowly.
This is maybe more like 6A. A friend suggested I put together my own syllabus for a course on the history of non-mundane crime. So I’ve been doing that on top of my own academic work.
The device. Since the situation sounds urgent and I don’t have much yet, Anush and I rushed to put this together for you. It’s a modified Sensor—instead ofpicking up demonic energies, it’s sensitive to spectral energies. At least, it’s supposed to be. The design is theoretically very sound, but I admit this is the first prototype. Normally I would want to go through a couple of revisions before I shared it with anyone, but I trust you. So I hope it works and will help you to feel better about the house. I would appreciate it if you told me anything about it that doesn’t work, or works differently than you expect, or functionality you’d like it to have, so we can put those changes into the next version. This is Anush and my first real invention, and it’s more like a hack for an existing tool. Anyway, the more feedback you can provide, the better.
Will you send me a fire-message next time you’re going into London? I’d like you to pick up a couple things for me. I should have expected this, but it’s really hard to do any shopping in the Carpathian Mountains.
Love,
Ty
PS. If you do find a ghost, treat it kindly. I don’t think all ghosts mind being ghosts as long as people are nice to them.
TATIANA
The Very Secret Diary of Miss Tatiana Lightwood 6:00 p.m.
Dear Diary, I am inconsolable. As planned, I importuned Papa to beg him for mercy. It was my last-ditch attempt to be permitted to stay home tonight rather than to attend the ball at the Institute. It was a bad plan, I recognize now. He was in his private study, and he hates to be interrupted there; when I came in, he had only an unfriendly look for me, and I should have retreated right then. Lessons learned, I suppose.
The upshot is I, quote, must, unquote, attend the ball at the Institute tonight, as—so I am told—the Name of the Lightwoods depends upon it. I told him if Gabriel attended— as Gideon has abandoned us for Spain—this would surely be enough to show the Lightwood flag. But he only shook his head, muttered something about how “tongues would wag,” and waved me away. I suggested I could be reported to be unable to attend due to temporary illness of a non-specifiedwomanly nature. For that suggestion I was cast out of the study immediately, of course.
The name of the Lightwoods! What care I for the name of the Lightwoods? What good has the name of the Lightwoods ever done for me? My only purpose in life, after all, is to find a better last name to replace it with. And what a grand entrance I will make at this party towards that purpose, attending the ball on the arms of my disgusting brother, my escort of last resort.
Not that I will find any sympathy in this house. Gabriel seems perfectly happy to attend the ball without escorting any lady besides his sister. He does not understand, being soft of brain and even softer of heart, that the favor of our father is bestowed easily, carelessly, upon him, because he is a boy, whereas I must work ten times as hard for less than one-tenth the approval. By the Angel…Gideon abandoned the family to drink wine and sun himself in Spain, and Papa still treats him better than me. His travel year! As though it is some unbreachable commandment handed down by Raziel himself. It is tradition, but tradition is happily broken for the sake of family. We need Gideon here—Papa needs Gideon here. I will never forgive him for having left us, the great lummox.
Gabriel, of course, only grows worse in the absence of his personal hero Hideous Gideon. He wishes to be taken seriously now and so he acts like Father, and it is like watching a dog try to walk on its hind legs. An embarrassment of pomposity and egomania the like of which is, I daresay, a black mark on the Lightwood name far worse than any harm I could do by staying home from a party.
I go now to dress for the ball, weighed down by the burden of my fate.
midnight
Dear Diary, I know I am not in the habit of writing more than once in a day, but I had to take you up immediately upon returning from the party because a miracle has occurred. I have met a boy—no, a man, a wonderful man. His name is Rupert Blackthorn, though he is not one of the tedious Blackthorns from the Cornwall Institute. He usually lives in Leeds, but he is here visiting family friends. He is the most beautiful man ever to have lived. His hair is deep black as midnight, and his eyes are emerald orbs that gaze into one’s soul. Every girl in the Institute was watching him, hoping he would give them a dance, and he came right to me, without hesitation, and smiled at me and asked me. And I danced with him, and it was glorious. Even better yet, he had no interest in anyone at the party but me. I do believe he even gave Gabriel the cut direct when Gabriel tried at one point to start talking about himself. I am not entirely sure; it was quite loud, and he might only not have heard. But I choose to believe it was a deliberate snub. From the most desirable boy in the whole detestable building.
When I wrote earlier, I was the lowest of the low in this house, but now I am raised up triumphant. I danced with a beautiful dark-haired man who said my name as though it were poetry. The name of the Lightwoods indeed! Take that, Will Herondale!
