Chapter 36 Emma
EMMA
Dear Bruce,
Bruce, my friend. You don’t even know (because you are a diary and you never leave the house). I have spent the day among the mundanes. Not just mundanes. Tourists. All things considered, I’ll take the haunted cursed mansion, thanks.
When last I wrote, we found out Ghost!Rupert thinks there’s a cursed object in this Herondale house on Curzon Street here in London.
After that, we have no idea, which is going to be a big problem because ley lines are, you know, lines, so objects could be anywhere along them. But one thing at a time.
The National Trust operates tours of the Curzon Street house, and I assume some Herondale in the past was smart enough to get rid of, or at least glamour the heck out of, anything too Shadowhuntery there.
It’s advertised as being a reconstruction of a “typical Edwardian home,” which is close enough to the right time period for our purposes.
So we got dressed up in mundane costumes—Jules found an excellent vintage Sex Pistols t-shirt in Arthur and Andrew Blackthorn’s Groovy Chambers of Love—and bought tickets for the 2:00 tour the next day.
What we learned from the house tour is that Edwardian décor would look pretty okay in a modern house!
It’s light and airy, lots of soft colors, interesting patterned fabric, and so on.
Oh, and we also learned the Edwardian period missed Tatiana Blackthorn entirely, since everything about Blackthorn Hall is the very opposite of light and airy.
(Julian pointed out she probably left it the way it was when her father died.) I liked the feel of Curzon Street a lot.
It was homey. I even took a photo of some wallpaper and I want to ask Tessa if she remembers who made it and, uh, whether they’re still in business, I guess.
What’s happened to us? We’re renovating a house. I feel so old.
The tour was fine, I guess, lots of detail about eras and maker’s marks and furniture.
People asked ridiculous questions—one of the American couples demanded to know where the piano was and when the guide said sorry, no piano, they got angry and told her all Edwardian homes had a piano so there must be one, and she had to apologize and move on.
It was awkward and I did not feel great about the people of my land.
But mostly I tuned out all that. The house was interesting enough.
Persian carpets everywhere! An ivory chess set!
A pewter-clad bathtub! Oh, there was aframed playbill from the time period that was from a Downworlder nightclub, that was especially cool.
But, most importantly, none of these were things enchanted by Tatiana.
I spent most of the time looking for anything that made it clear Shadowhunters lived there.
The only thing I spotted was a bunch of weapons used for decoration, which the tour guide noted was not usual for the period.
Of course you and I know, Bruce, weapons are always appropriate décor.
But it’s like Julian says, sometimes you don’t even need glamours, because mundanes don’t see what they don’t want to see.
Like, the tour guide went on and on about a beautiful jadeite sculpture atop one of the mantels and said nobody knew what the shape was meant to represent.
And it was obviously meant to be displaying a sword that is long gone.
Anyway we
Oh, wait.
It’s not long gone. It’s on the dressing table on the other side of the room. I can see it from where I’m writing this.
A real chill went up my spine, thinking of that.
At the house today I was wondering about the people who lived there, James Herondale and Cordelia Carstairs, but to be honest I didn’t really feel an emotional connection to them while I was there.
Maybe it’s that all the very personal stuff would have been taken out of the house before it became a museum.
But also, I didn’t know them. Tessa and Jem did, of course, and Magnus, and heck, maybe some of the other warlocks, I don’t know. But I didn’t, and I never will.
But you know who else knew them? Cortana.
I wish I’d brought it with me to the house today.
(But nooooo, Julian said only weapons that could be completely concealed.
What if the tour guide had turned out to be an Eidolon demon lying in wait for us?
I would have faced it with a boot knife smaller than I’d use to peel an apple.
Though I have yet to meet an Eidolon that would know that much about turn of the century furniture.
Anyway, we were there to find an object, so let me finish the story.)
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 the Sight.
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