To The Mountaineers,

I haven’t posted to my blog in a while because it feels, well, compromised? But it’s not like I’m trying to cut you all off.

I’m all caught up on what you’ve been up to since I got to New York. Yes, it’s weird. Yes, it’s unnerving. Yes, this is all waaaaay too much. I mean, I was stalked by a talking rabbit who’d possessed a human body to steal my dad’s pocket watch.

But as hard as all this is to get my head around I realise that you saved me. You tore the plaster off, which is good, but right now it’s painful and raw and I feel very exposed.

I don’t go to your forum anymore. It’s too weird to read people talk about you like you’re a character in a book. But I get it. That’s your space to figure out what’s going on.

Meanwhile, here’s what’s happening with me… I can read my dad’s journal now. Most of it still doesn’t make sense, in that it’s rambling and disjointed, but the words are words now, not jumbles of headache-making blobs.

Whatever my dad did to me protected me from the truth. From “magiq.” So his journal, The Monarch Papers, must lead to the truth, or some part of it, because now that his spell is broken, I can read parts of it. It’s all I have to go on right now.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks, following my father. He talks about a trail that was left behind hundreds of years ago. A trail that leads to the buried truth. A trail of paintings and sculptures and tapestries and books, all around the world. And as I follow the trail, more appears in the journal. I don’t know what I’m doing or why, but starting a publishing company doesn’t seem like my prime imperative right now, right?

Strange to ask a question and realise there are people on the other side of this with help, advice, maybe even answers for the first time in a long time.

Magic is real. My father learned how to perform it. And he left a trail for me to follow him. Maybe it’ll lead to the lost books, maybe it’ll lead me to learn magic, or maybe it won’t lead anywhere. Maybe back to a warren in Central Park where he died, alone.

I don’t know. But I’ll stay in touch. You deserve that.

To Cole:

I had a hundred reasons to walk away from New York City. What you confided in me wasn’t one of them. I promise.