Chapter 12 Emma
EMMA
Dear Bruce,
Sorry it’s been a long time since I’ve written in you.
Everything’s been kind of crazy since Ty sent the Ghost Sensor.
Which was incredibly helpful and nice of him, and we decided even if it didn’t work we’d still tell him it did, but that didn’t turn out to matter.
It definitely works. The minute we unpacked it, it started to make weird little crackles and beeps.
It didn’t seem to be reacting to anything specific, more like it was reacting to the environment of the house, fussing about it like a grumpy baby.
Julian decided to use it kind of like a divining rod, following where the strongest crackles and beeps seemed to be. We spent probably an hour traipsing through the house while the Sensor made whistling sounds like an angry teakettle.
Eventually the Sensor led us to one of the upstairs hallways.
There’s no furniture in it now and it looks a bit forlorn with tattered curtains hanging from the windows and an empty frame on the wall.
It was also pretty eerie, standing there with the Sensor going crazy but not being able to see anything.
We both looked at each other, thinking, Is there a ghost in here with us right now?
At that moment, I remembered what I’d read in Tatiana Lightwood’s diary—how she’d hidden the pages of her old diary in the wall.
I went over to the wall and tapped on it.
Jules immediately got that I was looking for a hollow spot and started knocking as well until we found a spot that sounded different.
We both stared at it for a minute before Julian said, “Hang on.” He went downstairs and returned with a sledgehammer.
He started to swing at the wall, but I stopped him.
“I really think you should take your jacket off while you do this. Maybe your shirt, too.”
He obligingly stripped down to his undershirt. That’s my guy. I may have taken a picture. Pretty soon Julian had smashed through, sending plaster flying everywhere and revealing a dark hollow space behind the wall.
Julian backed off while I reached inside.
I cannot tell you how many spiderwebs I touched, Bruce.
It was disgusting. (It’s no Spidertown, but it turns out the Spider Suburbs are also very impressive, spider-wise.) Eventually I pulled out a bunch of old clumped together pages.
I can’t help but think they are Tatiana’s old diary pages, the ones she talked about destroying, but they were so water damaged I couldn’t be sure.
I was wondering if I should tell Julian about the diary—for some reason I haven’t mentioned it to him yet—when he reached into the hole and pulled out a hard wooden board engraved with letters and numbers.
“It’s a Ouija board,” he said. “Dru wanted one for Christmas last year.” He turned it over in his hands. “An old homemade one. Not the one you can buy in a mundane store.”
I’ve always thought of Ouija boards as being part of human superstition. Like palmistry, not something Shadowhunters needed to take seriously. But the Sensor was going crazy, beeping these dark red pulses that reminded me of Isabelle’s necklace.
“Should we try to use it?” I said.
Julian frowned. “I don’t know. When I was looking into getting one for Dru, I found out these things can be kind of…dangerous.”
So I’m writing this right now while lying in bed. Julian is already asleep with plaster in his hair. He looks so cute. Anyway, we decided we’d try using the Ouija board tomorrow. We’re Shadowhunters, we can deal with ghosts, right?
Goodnight, Bruce. I think I’ll read a little of Tatiana’s diary to put me to sleep. Meanwhile, enjoy the eye candy.