Mark Blackthorn

℅ Helen Blackthorn

Los Angeles Institute

Malibu, CA

Dear Mark,

Don’t worry about the parchment scroll yet, I’ll get to it at the end of the letter.

Hello from Chiswick! It’s pronounced like chizzick, it’s just outside central London, and it is a collapsing ruin. The house, I mean, not the neighborhood, which is cozy, a little suburban, lots of green space, quiet. You’d like it.

I should have been in touch before, I know that – and I’m sorry. We had to move fast to save this place and I knew a fire-message wouldn’t reach you. Blackthorn Hall may be a ruin, but it’s our family’s legacy, one of the very few things that we’ve inherited from Blackthorns past. I feel this sense of responsibility, a need to preserve the place for Tavvy and Dru, for Ty and Liv — well. You know.

It was us or the Clave, and they would have knocked it down and put something else in its place. It’s easily in bad enough shape that knocking it down would be the practical move. But it’s ours, and I kind of love it. I mean, if we don’t love it, who will? It can be truly beautiful again, I believe that. You should visit when you get a chance—all of you there are invited, of course—but be warned that if you come in the next couple of months you will be put to work.

This brings me to the parchment, which is the estimate and contract from the faerie builders for the renovation work on the house. I was hoping you and Kieran could look it over for faerie trickery, both in terms of whether their rates seem reasonable, and also to make sure they don’t get Tavvy if we’re late with payment, that kind of thing. They came highly recommended—they’re brownies? I think? They look like big garden gnomes. I mean, it’s probably the pointy hats. They could take them off, of course, but I guess they like them. They must know they look like garden gnomes. Anyway, they seem trustworthy and industrious and all that. But faeries do love tricking humans. Let me know what you think.

Oh, I should explain that there is one part of the house that is in all right shape and has all the “mod cons,” as they say here. It was redone in the Sixties and, well… it is groovy. The cons are Mod as well as mod. I am not sure you will get that joke but don’t worry about it, it was pretty stupid. The thing is, I’d never thought about it, but I realized this must have been fixed up by our grandparents. The timing works out. So this must be where Dad lived, once. And Uncle Arthur. It was where they grew up. And I realized: they, too, must have been groovy.

Arthur. Must have at one point. Been really groovy.

I just want you to sit with that for a moment, the way I did. It creates a feeling I believe to have never been felt before by any human being in the world.

You should see the clothes. I mean, really. You should see them. There’s a consignment shop’s worth of vintage stuff here and none of it suits me at all. You’re welcome to it but it is almost all synthetic fabrics and would not go over in Faerie itself.

Aaand I know I’m rambling. I was trying to avoid saying this, but there’s something about this house. It reminds me of some of the nights you and I used to ramble around the Institute back home. Which I know is weird, London couldn’t be more different than the Santa Monica Mountains — I miss the wildfire tang in the air, the smell of the chaparral and sage, the coarse dirt under our feet. (Do you miss it too? I feel like it has to be very different where you are in Faerie.) But there were plenty of times, especially when we were younger, when we’d tell ghost stories out there and scare ourselves that something was watching us. Maybe something was, though I’m inclined to think now that it was something friendly. Here in this house I get the same watched feeling, like there are eyes on me, shadows I see out of the corners of my own eyes that disappear when I turn around.

Anyway, I really wish you were here. I’d bring it up with Emma, but I don’t want to freak her out. She’s started the massive job of sorting through decades of papers and journals that used to belong to the people who lived here, and I’ve started painting the ballroom. I know Emma has been in touch with Cristina, please send my love to her and to K as well!

Your loving bro,

Julian

PS: I realize now I don’t know where this letter will find you, so let me clarify that “all of you are invited” from the LA Institute, not “all of you are invited” from the Unseelie Court.

Me trynna find flaws in Hunt now so I don’t feel stupid reading book 2: 

Mark: not everyone likes Cristina.

Emma: who doesn’t like Cristina?

Mark: well-

i have a very distinct memory, in my childhood, of the moment of my disillusionment.  i believed that grown-ups knew what they were doing, and that the things that seemed so obvious to me had to be obvious to them, too (things like DON’T GO TO WAR IN IRAQ, for example).  i believed that, and had that belief pulled out from under me, so my disillusionment comes with a sense of betrayal.