Colorful Void

Dear Alec,

Before anything else, I just want to mention once again that you are by far the handsomest man I have ever met, with the most beautiful blue eyes, and what I love most about you, among so, so many other features, is that you are a man of incalculable understanding, patience, and forgiveness.

Yes, this is our vacation. Yes, you and the kids are lounging on the soft white sands of St Barths, as is good and right. Yes, I have had to dash to London on urgent business involving Blackthorns. Yes, I have been receiving your many supportive texts, accompanied by your many photos in which you look angry while holding umbrella drinks.

No, I will not be back today. You must imagine me saying this with the heaviest of sighs and the most forlorn look. I need one more day. Blackthorn Hall is haunted—which I could have told anyone who had bothered to ask, I’ve never known a more obviously haunted place in my life—and none of the little Blackthorns (who I suppose are no longer quite as little as all that) have had to deal with this kind of ghostiness before.

So again, let me commend you for your forbearance in this time of trial. That is not sarcasm, just formal! I really mean it!

Love you, Alec. See you tomorrow night. The next morning at the absolute latest -

To the Greatest Man Who Has Ever Or Will Ever Live,

It will be tomorrow morning. I was meaning to depart tonight, but it is now very, very late, and I have had no small amount of wine, and these are not the conditions by which I would feel quite safe opening a Portal. It will not do me any good to return to St Barth if I show up on top of the Gustavia Lighthouse.

So since I cannot yet sleep, but must, let me quickly fill you in.

The Blackthorns are fixing up Blackthorn Hall—fancy that—and while I understand they are now properly adults, they are still young enough to use a hundred year old Ouija board they found hidden in the walls. Didn’t have a planchette? Not a problem, we will just make one out of scrap without reference to the wood or the ley-lines or any of the— Sorry. I couldn’t help it, it’s such the Shadowhunter stereotype. Leap before you look. In fact, just leap. Leap whenever and wherever.

As it turns out (spoiler alert!) the spirit of the house—at least the restless one—means no apparent harm and is just your standard everyday “ghost looking for its missing bauble to move on” situation, as you’ll see. But I was more alarmed for it being the house in Chiswick. Many generations of Lightwoods lived in it over many years, and there always seemed a dark shadow over the place. In the mid-19th it was the home of, I’m sorry to say, a very bad Lightwood, definitely one of the worst Lightwoods, and after that, well, its fall from grace was precipitous. I cannot say from what time period this ghost might date, but given its reaction to the name “Blackthorn”, I had my worries.

Anyway, by the time I got to the house, Julian and Emma had managed to cause the Ouija board to, you know, magically shatter into a dozen pieces. I magicked it back—note for future reference, easier to magically repair something that was magically broken in the first place rather than with, say, a hammer—and produced a makeshift but actually calibrated and warded planchette. And burned their planchette in a fire. Outside.

It was quick enough at that point to contact the presence in the house, who was indistinct, probably from being alone for the past hundred-odd years. Let me tell you, Alec love, I was worried then. I was worried that this ghost was someone I knew. Someone I cared about, once. It probably isn’t—most of them would have no reason to be ghosts at all, much less ghosts stuck here—but once the thought occurred to me, I couldn’t put it aside. I tried to ask but you know how ghosts are. “I do not now know you,” it said. Great. But did you know me when you were alive? Just “I do not now know you.”

Anyway the thing was peaceful enough. We finally got around to the topic of why he is a ghost—we got enough of a spoken voice to know the voice is male, at least. He spoke aloud, and firmly. I am bound here by a silver band, he said.

Whether this silver band is a ring, a bracelet, a handcuff, the concept of “the ties that bind,” or a group of robot musicians, I have no idea. But it’s normal enough for a ghost to be bound by an object and to be looking for the thing that binds them. I honestly didn’t get a negative vibe from the guy. I’m… let’s say ninety percent sure that it’s not the aforementioned Bad Lightwood, at least. I told Julian and Emma there was no harm in their keeping an eye out for a silver band during their cleanup of the house, but not to worry themselves sick over it. This felt like wise advice at the time, although we had all had quite a bit of wine at that point.

The wine was in fact drunk continually throughout the evening, as there are some salvageable bottles from the cellar—rather amazingly, although I don’t know, maybe Shadowhunters have wine preservation runes somewhere near the back of the Gray Book. And drinking red wine while talking to a ghost just seemed, I don’t know, the right pairing? But of course now I have a splitting headache from a combination of sulfites and light necromancy. I am going to put myself to long-overdue sleep, and then tomorrow at six in the morning your time please tell le garçon I would like waiting for me a café allongé, very hot and a sidecar, very cold. I will then entertain the children for the rest of the day while you, my love, my all, take a nap and join us whenever you please.

With all my love, all my kissin’, you don’t know what you been missin’,

M.

Jem, Kit and I are so looking forward to your visit. In preparation, Kit has been attempting to teach Mina to say your name. She’s almost got it, but you may have to content yourself with being called “Agnes,” as she has trouble with the M — very trying for her as she is so advanced in her speech, just as you say Max was. You should have heard them in the kitchen this morning. “Who is coming to visit, Mina?” “Agnes!” I feel that your alter ego, Agnes, would wear sequins and be absolutely deadly at whist.

Thank you for your thoughts about the wards. I will look for labradorite at the gem store in Exeter. I tried what you suggested with the chickens—I was able to borrow a Blue Orpington from a neighbor on the last quarter moon. Since then chickens seem to be avoiding Kit, so maybe it will work on demons too? (Though can you really tell when a chicken is avoiding someone as opposed to just being a chicken?)

Jem and I are endeavoring to walk a narrow line, keeping Kit safe and hidden while also providing him with the most normal life we can. We don’t want to lock him away in a tower like a fairytale princess—he’d be miserable. And Mina would be miserable, she just adores him and rides everywhere on his back, clutching onto his shirt with her little hands. It reminds me of the way James and Lucie used to ride on Will’s shoulders. I suppose times change, but children never do.

We’re trying to allow Kit freedom wherever we can. He’s enrolled at the small school in the village, where a few of his friends know about the Shadow World and others don’t. There’s a local pack of werewolves who we’ve become friendly with, and some of their children go to school with him. I’ve begun to suspect that Kit has a girlfriend, but he’s secretive about it. (I guess that’s another thing that never changes about children—how secretive they are. I just hope he knows he can tell us anything. Especially related to demons, or in Kit’s case, the fey. A hundred and ten years later and I’m still edgy.)

He’s a puzzle, our Christopher Jonathan Herondale. About some things he’s opened up, and is willing to talk to Jem and me about them freely — his father, and what it was like growing up being able to see all sorts of peculiar things but not really understanding why. About being taught to fear Shadowhunters. About his concerns about his heritage — what it means, what kind of power he might have. I think it frustrates him, not knowing.

Other things he won’t talk about. We have asked him about Ty, as you and I discussed, but he’s like a brick wall about their friendship. Whatever happened he won’t speak of it. I think Livvy’s death hit him harder than we guessed, too. I’ve heard him call out her name in his sleep, always in this very despairing way. Sometimes he’ll say Not if you do this. Not if you do this, Ty. I feel like whatever they fought about, it must have been awful. But people can be terrible when they’re grieving; we both know that.

You can probably tell from everything I’ve said how much I — how much we — love Kit. I just love him, Magnus, like he was my own. He is my own. I’d kill anyone who wanted to hurt him, just as I would protect Mina or Jem with my life. I never thought I’d have this again, this perfect family I love so much it hurts. Strange after so many years to be so surprised by one’s own feelings — but I imagine it’s much the same for you, isn’t it? Speaking of which, I hope you and Alec and the kids are well. Please let Max know that we found his superhero cape—it was inside the piano.

I enclose a picture from your last visit here. How adorable they all are!

Love,📷

Tessa

Cassie just sent this Newsletter on the mail:

Memorandum from The New York Institute

Highlight to:

Jace defending his natural hair like his life depends on it lmao 😭😭

Jace pining so hard for Clary like he should 😍🥰

Simon making bad hair decisions lmaooo 💀

Malec's kids putting gum on Alec's hair and him refusing to taking care of it 😂😂💀

Magnus having perfect hair 😌😌

Izzy being a goddess as always 💅🏼

Jace still considers Church a member of the TMI gang 🥺💖

I just love the idea of the TMI gang having a hair contest every year on Jace's birthday 😂😭❤️❤️

Cassie didn't say if this is only a joke for April fools or canon but idc, it's canon for me now because I love the energy of it 😂

tmi gang for barbie (2023) - art by cassandra jean

- alec is, like, barely above mundane drinking age and running the whole shadowhunter government, which is basically the same age as his divorced, half deceased parents were when they were running around committing hate crimes. he’s married the notorious manic wizard down the street, magnus bane, who’s, like, 400-something and witnessed said parents’ hate crimes, and they’ve adopted an abandoned warlock child who is completely blue and a prickly 5 year old who doesn’t speak a word of english.

- jace was adopted because robert and maryse felt morally obligated to due to them thinking he was the son of robert’s ex-parabatai who was in love with him and didn’t even turn out being his father. he is engaged to clary who he thought was his sister but still wanted to bang, and she is the daughter of the leader of the hate cult robert and maryse were involved with and her older brother (who also wanted to bang her) killed jace’s adopted little brother. jace is parabatai with alec, who he offered to kissed once to prove a point.

- isabelle fights demons in stripper heels and is engaged (married?) to simon who is really just a guy. a guy who was randomly dragged into the their whole family disaster and turned into a vampire then drank her blood then saved her life then drank her brother’s blood because he saved her life, then forgot everything. then she dragged him back into her whole family disaster and they were will-they-won’t-they for forever (even though they were obviously will-they the whole time) and they had sex and he drank out of a shiny cup and became a shadowhunter.

- there was also this one time they were in hell and jace was having sex with clary and isabelle was making out with simon and alec was getting wine drunk by himself, all in same cave

Of course! I'm tagging some writers who primarily write book malec fics:

@magnus-the-maqnificent - here on ao3

@littleturtle95 - here on ao3

@my-archerboy - here on ao3

@chibi-tsukiko - here on ao3

@high-warlock-of-brooklyn - here on ao3

Some people wanted to see them in a row all together so here we go!

Also doodled a bonus scene lol

This started out as a fun experiment and turned into a full blown project but I've designed covers for ATYD inspired by some classic MinaLima covers that I adore.

They are free to use for anyone who wants to print with them, and if you do I'd absolutely love to see a photo!

Here is a Google drive link