Chapter 53 Emma
EMMA
Dear Bruce,
We did it! The curse is broken! Rupert is free! Long live Rupert!
In retrospect, it’s insane how much of this we tried to do by ourselves. We should have known that when we finally succeeded we would do it with a whole team present—in this case Jem, Tessa, Kit, and Magnus. (Mina assisted by raising morale and drawing all over everything with her toy stele.)
Everyone’s still here, too, and we can relax a little in a newly uncursed house.
It really is quite homey now that it’s been cleaned up and, you know, had its demonic aura dispelled.
Well, everyone is here except Magnus, who left this afternoon in a great rush to get back to New York.
(One weird thing: Ty had sent a postcard saying he was going to come see everyone here, but he never showed up.
I sent him a fire-message and he said he’d had some Scholomance work come up and had forgotten to let me know.
Which is fine, but it isn’t like Ty to be absent-minded like that.)
New paragraph to talk about this, because I have a lot of questions that don’t have answers and I can only ask you, Bruce.
Magnus was in a hurry to get back because of a meeting Alec is holding with Luke and some other Downworlders about plans for negotiating with the Cohort.
Okay, but I feel like the Cohort doesn’t have much leverage, right?
The situation is way worse for them than for us.
We should be able to wait them out—shouldn’t we?
I guess they have a symbolic advantage. We’re all Shadowhunters and we all miss Idris and Alicante and Lake Lyn and probably a lot of us left stuff there we can’t get back and, oh right, also a lot of people lived there who have had to evacuate all over the world and want to get back.
I get it. But, like…what are the Cohort even eating in there?
Idris doesn’t really grow food. Are they all homesteading in there?
Raising crops? Churning butter? It’s kind of hard to imagine Zara doing any of that.
But you never know. I mean, there aren’t even any demons to fight in there, which is a good reminder that the Cohort have a bizarre view of Shadowhunters, since we are definitely not meant to hole up in Idris where there’s no demons to fight.
I feel like Raziel was clear on that point.
They must be losing their minds in there. I hope they found some board games or something.
Maybe Zara has declared herself Queen for Life and she doesn’t have to farm because she just marches around threatening to kill anybody who doesn’t grow her a potato right this instant.
Or maybe we haven’t heard anything because they all ate each other. Or maybe they mutinied against Zara and someone else gets to threaten to kill people now.
Okay, end of pondering the Cohort. I’m in a good mood, or was before I started this entry, anyway.
We’ve been hanging out with Jem and Tessa and Kit and it’s wonderful.
We ordered in Chinese (delivery couriers are always a bit terrified to come up the driveway, but we tip them like crazy, so they’ve started to know us while we’ve been here).
We lit candles—for ambience instead of for dark magic, what an idea!
—and ate dumplings until we were too full to move, a thing I haven’t done since Magnus and Alec’s wedding.
Apparently if I am offered dumplings, I will eat them until I become a dumpling myself.
To that I say: I heartily embrace becoming that which I love most.
Even Kit was less broody than usual tonight.
He was hanging out with Round Tom, and they seemed to be getting on okay.
Oh, and I almost forgot! How could I forget!
The workers found a coffin buried in the garden.
But rather than a horrifying dead body inside, there was a bunch of old stuff.
Using a coffin as a time capsule seemed like a weird choice to me, but Tessa and Jem made some faces and noises that suggested there was a long-ish story there we’ll have to ask about later.
Anyway, in the coffin was a scabbard for Cortana.
I mean, right? Can you believe it? Tessa said it used to belong to Cordelia Carstairs, who was Cortana’s wielder generations ago.
The scabbard needs a lot of cleaning but then it can be reunited with Cortana.
After all, I think it’s probably more Cortana’s possession than anyone else’s; I like to think they’ll be happy to be back together.
There was also a sword for Julian—what used to be a Blackthorn family sword, but this one is only a hilt; its blade is totally missing, I have no idea why.
He’s talking about getting it reforged. Big shock, Round Tom knows a guy.
Triangular Jerry. No, I’m kidding on the name, but Round Tom actually does know a blacksmith and he and Julian have started talking about getting that done.
Actually, what Round Tom wants to do is have a forge installed at Chiswick, which is a cool idea, but do we want another building project on top of all the others?
I mean, maybe having a forge here at the house would be cool.
Oh, you might be wondering about Rupert’s ring.
Magnus checked it out and his theory, which is probably right because he’s Magnus, is that whatever Tatiana did to trap Ragnor in the Phantom Zone (or wherever he was) so she could try to resurrect him, the ring was trapped in there too.
The most hidden of the things that the enchantment hid.
Rupert obviously couldn’t take the ring with him, so we weren’t sure what to do with it.
Magnus says it’s just an ordinary ring now, magic-free, but of course none of us is going to wear it.
We put it on the mantelpiece in the drawing room. Where it will remain.
The Gray-Carstairs-Herondaleses are heading back to Cirenworth tomorrow. It’s been great having them here, but you know, it will be nice to have them go and have it be just Julian and me here in the house, not feeling creepy all the time. I see good times in our near future.
* * *
Bruce, good times are canceled. Everything’s gone wrong. I guess I was a little too smug; the universe had to come and screw it up for me.
Mina is gone.
And by gone I mean kidnapped.
And by kidnapped, I mean the kidnapper left a creepy old-timey porcelain doll (with wide, dead eyes, ugh) in her place, and a note.
I had just finished writing the above stuff when I heard a horrible scream from upstairs and loud footsteps. I came out to find everyone gathered in Mina’s room, staring in horror.
I immediately thought oh no, another curse, or the same curse, the curse isn’t over, and maybe you did too, but that’s not what this is. This is something else entirely. Something involving faeries. Something involving Faerie.
Tessa picked up the note, read it, and handed it to Jem with a bad look on her face. Julian was already opening the window to see if anyone could be spotted outside, and I read over Jem’s shoulder: