"So" Clary said, glancing over her shoulder slightly to look at the man next to her driving the pickup truck that was casually cruising down the motorway. "Tell me again why I can't stay with you?" she asked, almost pleadingly, using her large green eyes to the best of her advantage.
Luke laughed, his eye's staring straight ahead through the lenses of his glasses, never looking off of the road.
"Clary, we've been over this" he said calmly, keeping the smile from his face as Clary pouted at him. "I'm not stable enough to be your legal guardian" Clary stared out of the open window, watching the scenery change from the city, to the suburbs, to the fields that rolled on for miles. The cold wind was slapping delicately against her face, the few crimson ringlets managed to escape her messy bun, whipping around her face.
"I don't think you're dangerous" she said, her arms crossed over her chest, her feet wrapped in converse resting against the dash board. "The courts are wrong, you'd never hurt me" he chanced a look at her, his blue eyes meeting hers, a silent pleading passing through them. She huffed and went back to looking out of the window.
Despite her mother's listing of Luke as an emergency contact, the courts refused to listen. The 'issues', so they said, with Luke's anger was too much of a risk for Clary to live with him. Clary's parents were in a car crash nearly six months back, her father, Valentine, was killed instantly, her mother wasn't so lucky. Jocelyn was currently trapped in her own mind, lost in the dark as she succumbed to the brain damage and fell into a coma.
Since that moment, Clary had lived with Luke, her older brother being off at University in California, but the courts said it was only temporary, that Luke was too prone to lash out, his emotions weren't in check. Anyone who knew Luke knew his past; he was just that kind of person.
You met him, you spoke, and you learned his life story. His mother walked out when he was young, he was raised by his sister, Amatis, but she kicked him out. The only part of the story still secreted was the reason behind his sister's actions. Some say she just wanted the house, others say Luke was too much of a burden.
"You know I'm only going to America to help Maia out, then I'm coming straight back." He said, like it was a good enough excuse. Maia was Luke's niece, a dark skinned girl that Clary hadn't seen since she was about five years old; Maia must be closer to seventeen now though, she always was older than Clary was Who's recently turned sixteen. it was common knowledge that Maia was a bit of a trouble maker now. Her parents had kicked her out when she was fifteen to go and live with her boyfriend, Jordan. Then very same boyfriend that had just been killed by a random man with a gun not long ago, so Luke was going to care for her now her 'guardian' was gone and her parents wouldn't take her back.
"Well, why can't I live with you and Maia, here" she said pleadingly. Clary had moved to England just over ten years ago with her parents and her brother, Jonathon, after spending her first five years living in New York.
"Because you can't, Clary" Luke said, coming from anyone else you'd think he was snapping at her, scolding her even, but his voice was sad and Clary noticed this "I know it isn't what you want to hear, and I'm sorry, but you can't." she sighed, a far gone look passing over her face as she watched the rolling hills turn to tree's and then to small villages, back to hills once again. It was getting late now, the sun dipping down below the hills, lighting the sky with pinks and oranges. "How did Simon take it?" he asked, trying to take the subject off of her not being able to live with him.
She gave him a look, clearly saying 'how'd you think?' and he nodded in response.
"I expected as much" he said, his eyes staring once again to the road. "If it makes you feel better, me and your mother knew the Lightwood's, they're good people" he said with a sad, pleading smile.
"But bad things happen to good people" she said coldly, looking out of the window, the wintery whip nipping at her cheeks, her mind somewhere else, her eyes not meeting his as she spoke. The rest of the journey was spent in silence, neither one of the trucks occupants wanting to make the silence anymore awkward than it already was.
It was dark by the time Luke parked his blue truck in the airport car park, locking the doors before turning to Clary. Her hair shined orange in the dim street lamps lighting the car park, her dark jeans were ripped and frayed at the knees, one of her father's baggy blue shirts over the top of a white vest.
An old habit Clary picked up as a child was wearing her fathers shirt when she was frightened, or sad, a habit she still hadn't grown out of. Maybe it was the feeling of being wrapped up in something bigger than her, like the feeling of someone's touch, maybe she just needed to smell her father, to remember what his scent was and how it comforted her still.
After his death, Clary was only able to keep one of her father's shirts, a shirt that no longer held his scent, but she still wore it. Luke had seen her several times, staring at the photo in her purse as she sat curled on the window seat of Luke's London Flat, her fathers shirt wrapped around her like a blanket.
"Are you ready?" he asked her earnestly, reaching down and picking up his duffel bag, throwing it over one shoulder, and picking up one of Clary's few suitcases in the other. She nodded slowly, reaching and grabbing the remaining two suitcases. For a girl, Clary travelled light. Despite the fact she was moving to a new home she only had three bags, one for clothes, one for all her art and school supplies, and one for anything else she felt like taking with her, books and photographs mostly.
"I'm ready" she said, smiling up at Luke through the haze of street light. Luke nodded and the two of them began walking towards the entrance, ready to each embrace a new life. Clary with the Lightwood's, her new family, and Luke with Maia, his niece he'd not seen for nearly ten years.
It was nearly six o'clock in New York, Two and a half hours before any of the Lightwoods should be at school. This meant that Isabelle had been up for the last half an hour trying to prepare her outfit for the day. Maryse was sure to be up and it was likely Robert had already left for work, which would be of course mean he actually came home for once. How could he not be here for today? Today was after all the day the Lightwoods were having the day off school to welcome their newest member.
An hour later, Isabelle was downstairs, her long, inky black hair swishing around her shoulders, a blue dress falling to her mid thigh with a black belt around her waist. Around her neck hung a ruby necklace, passed down from generations to finally rest at her throat.
"Is your brother up?" Isabelle's mother asked, simultaneously putting bread in the toaster and clipping in a pair of pearl earrings. To say the Lightwood's were a well off family was an understatement. Both Robert and Maryse worked long hours at very successful companies, meaning they lived a moderately lavish lifestyle. They weren't billionaires, but they were rich enough to own a large house, large enough to be classified as a hotel, and still have money to spare.
Isabelle was the spitting image of her mother, tall, slim, long legs and inky black hair that fell perfectly straight. If it wasn't for the miniscule crinkling by Maryse's eyes and the maternally wise glint to her blue eyes you could pass them off as sisters. The only real difference, despite their age, was that where Maryse, like the other members of the Lightwood family had light blue eyes, Isabelle's were a dark – almost black- brown. Just one other thing to make her different.
"Which one?" Isabelle asked, raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow at her mother who gave her a very maternal, very agitated glare back. "Fine" Isabelle grumbled, sliding off the stool by the kitchen island and making her way to the stairs, taking them two at a time. Impressive of course due to the seven inch heeled boots she wore on her feet.
She ran to the bedroom door across from her own first. It was plain white wood, still in pristine condition. Alec's room.
"Wake up!" she shrieked, flinging the door open wide before prancing to the window, flicking the blinds to bathe her very annoyed brother in the bright sunlight of the early winter. The room was so orderly and clean, everything had a place and everything was in it's place, it was shocking that he and Isabelle could possibly be related. Alec grumbled something incomprehensible, stuffing his head beneath his pillow. It sounded something along the lines of 'ducking witch' but Isabelle shrugged it off with a laugh before dancing toward the next bedroom, her heels soundless on the rich carpeted floor.
The next door was Max's, her nine year old brothers. The white wood was plastered in pictures from his anime books, the letter's M-A-X scrawled across the wood in messy, uneven, bubble writing. When she opened his door she saw the sight she had expected.
Max was sat up in his bed, his overly large glasses perched on his nose as he flicked his way through his newest manga book. His hair was as black as hers was, sticking out every which way like nine year olds should. He was still wearing his red and white pyjamas beneath his quilt but Isabelle jumped and sat next to him anyway, throwing her long slim arms around his weedy frame.
"Izzy!" he squealed, his voice still higher than an average boys as he tried to squirm from under her arms, giggling like the little boy he was the whole time.
"You excited?" she asked, poking his stomach once they had both calmed down.
"Yeah!" he shouted, re-adjusting his glasses to sit back on his nose. The glasses themselves were too big for his small face, the thick lenses making his blue-grey eyes look ever larger. "Do you know when she's getting here?" he asked, his eyes growing wider in anticipation.
"Just as soon as you get dressed" Isabelle smiled, pinching her brother's nose making him giggle again. She leapt from the bed then, darting out of the room, shutting the anime poster covered door behind her.
She bounded to the room opposite Max's, stopping for a moment to look at the name scrawled across the white door. Jace's room. She threw the door open again, but decided immediately against bounding across the floor, purely due to the fact the hole room was a bomb site.
Drawers were hanging open, some clothing spilling out of them. The blinds were shut, the only light in the room spilling from the open doorway. The floor was a sprawl of clothing, bottles, books and CD's, a minefield of redundant crap. The double bed was pushed over to the corner, the cover's a tangled mess, wrapping like vipers around two, strong, tanned legs.
Jace was face down, the way he always slept, his golden hair a scruffy mess as he lay against the pillow. He was, of course, still asleep. Not wanting to risk herself across the death-trap that was Jace's floor, she picked up the closest thing by her feet, and threw it. Lucky for Jace, this item was a pillow left abandoned by the door.
Jace sat bolt upright, his golden eyes wide and confused. He looked from the still blind covered window, to the walls littered in random posters of bands he didn't even like, his gaze finally landing on a rather chuffed looking Isabelle in the doorway.
"Mum says wake up" she said with a smirk, looking pointedly at her freshly painted red nails. Jace grumbled a response that Isabelle knew she'd rather go without hearing. Jace said mean things sometimes, he wasn't always a pleasant person, if fact he was hardly ever pleasant, but then again, none of the Lightwood children were. That was likely to be the reason they all loved and protected each other to fervently. The three of them sat together at school, usually with Alec's eccentric boyfriend, Magnus, and didn't tend to speak to others. Isabelle and Jace were exceptions of course, they would widen their circle when they were looking for someone else to spend a night with, but that never lasted more than a few days, maybe a week at the max.
"Do I have to?" he moaned, laying his head back against the pillow with a crash. He rubbed his hands against his face as Isabelle reached for something else to throw at him. "Don't answer that" he said, holding a hand up and effectively stopping Isabelle before she let the book fly.
"Well she's going to be here soon, so hurry up" Isabelle said before disappearing back down the hallway to the kitchen, hoping to retrieve her unfinished breakfast before someone else descended on it, the way her brothers usually did.
Breakfast that morning was a surprisingly dull affair. Isabelle had finished hers before Max had even made it to the table.
"When's she getting here then?" Alec said as he swooped up a piece of toast, ruffling Max's scruffy hair with his free hand. "And what was her name again?" he asked innocently, trying to avoid his mother deathly gaze as she stared astounded at him for forgetting already.
It had been two months since Maryse had considered adopting Clarissa, and not a day had gone by she hadn't been talking about her like she was a long lost friend. The fact Alec had forgotten her name already was bound to earn him a slap. A theoretical slap, but a slap all the same.
"Clarissa" Max piped up, a mouth full of cereal as he looked at his older brother. "And she's getting – when is she getting here?" he asked, his eyes back to the childish innocence the made your heart melt. Isabelle would never stop seeing him as her baby brother, not until the day she died.
"Her flight left Heathrow at about four o'clock yesterday. So she arrived in America at midnight" Maryse said, and you could see how carefully she had thought it through. That was something about Maryse, she was so organised, not a thing could go unthought-of, every scenario had to be planned and accounted for. "She's staying at a hotel for the night so she could rest after her flight and should be here at around nine o'clock" she finally said with a bright, excited smile.
"That's an hour and half?" Max said, more a question than a statement, his big eyes failing to hide his excitement at meeting the new, soon to be, resident.
"Yes it is" Maryse said, dropping a kiss on Max's head before scurrying round the kitchen. They all laughed as Max tried frantically to flatten his hair, and it was that moment a grumpy looking Jace tumbled into the nearest stool and rested his head in his hands.
"Was somebody out last night" Isabelle said, wiggling her finger towards Jace who swatted it away half heartedly.
"Shut up, Iz" he grumbled back. "I didn't get a lot of sleep last night" he sighed, a lot softer than before. Maryse's eyes softened slightly. Jace was a Lightwood in all ways but blood, his actual parents having died when he was ten meant that Jace spent most of his life with the Lightwoods. It was no secret either that the first ten years of Jace's life weren't easy, but that wasn't something this family spoke about.
"So how long until she gets here?" Jace mumbled into his hands, Max of course was the one to reply, only making Jace grumble more. "Do I require prettying up" he said with half a smirk and the others laughed.
"It takes more then an hour and a half too fix that face" Alec sniggered at the comment just as a very loud, very glittery boy entered the room. "Maryse, darling" he said, kissing Maryse's hand.
"Magnus!" she shrieked happily, batting him away in a friendly manner, laughing at him still.
"So, the new girl get's here soon, I look forward to it" he said, planting a kiss on Alec's cheek. They all laughed for a moment, exchanging their greetings with Magnus, welcoming him into what was more or less his second home.
"Jace, please go smarten yourself up" he grumbled again before half standing, half stumbling and making his way up the stairs. "An hour and a half, you all ready" she said with a smile, one all of her children and Magnus greatly returned, but Maryse was still a bundle of nerves as she walked to re-make Clarissa's room for the third time that morning.
"So how far away is this new home?" Clary asked solemnly. She'd woken up later than intended, her mind confused due to the five hour time difference between New York and London. She and Luke had – on Mr and Mrs Lightwood's advice - spent the night at a hotel in the city to allow Clary time to adjust to the change. Clary, however, did not see that happening any time soon.
It was around eight o'clock when she had woken up in her single room in the reasonably pricey hotel room - thanks to the Lightwood's - listening to Luke's snores from the next room. Knowing she had two hours to get ready and make her way too her new home, she'd leapt in the shower, bombarding her small body with hot water until her skin felt raw and scolded.
Clary was a petite girl, much smaller than any other fifteen year old girl. Barely scraping five foot two with a massive bush of red hair, she had been subject to a few tugs of bullying throughout her primary school life. That however ended once everyone grew up and she began to fill out in the right places. It was then Clary could finally spend time with her best friend, Simon, without hearing someone shouting 'carrot-top' at her.
Not only was she small, she was also skinny, making her look a lot younger than she was with bright green eyes just that bit too big for a face and a dusting of freckles across her nose. Despite this she was still a beautiful girl, the kind of girl boy's wouldn't noticed immediately, but once they did see her, the couldn't stop. She wasn't an unpopular girl, far from it. Although she preferred the company at lunchtime with Simon alone, she knew she could always sit at any table in the dinning hall without word of complaint from any other student. She was the girl everyone liked.
By the time she'd left the bathroom, fruity smelling steam following her as she desperately tried to towel dry her knotted ringlets, Luke was pouring coffee into a mug for her. That was about an hour ago, now all the coffee was drunk and both of them were ready to go.
"It's not too far out of the city" Luke replied, his face a mask of thought as he tried to remember the directions he'd written out and then Clary had spilt cereal over, making the ink run down the page like dark blue tears. "Shouldn't take more than half an hour to get there, give or take" Clary nodded in response, letting an awkward silence fall over the pair of them.
"Do I still get to see mum?" she asked sadly, her eyes looking at the floor as she thought of her mother, trapped in her own mind, no one else aware if she was going to wake up or not. Luke sighed, rubbing his hand over his stubbly face.
"Jon said he'd take you whenever he went, but I can't say how often that'll be" he said and Clary responded again with a nod. Looking down at his watch, Luke scoffed, dropping the complimentary biscuit he'd been about to munch onto the scruffy bed sheets. "Clary, we've got to go" he said standing quickly to retrieve his boots and throwing his flannel jacket over his checked shirt. "We've got forty minute to get to the Lightwood's, granted the traffics on our side. You grab your stuff, I'll bring the car around" and before Clary could even respond, he was out of the door, shouting at some poor New Yorker to hold the lift.
"Time to go" Clary said to herself, attempting to tame her ringlets into a bun before shrugging on her dark green jacket, wrapping her home-knitted blue scarf – a gift from her mother – around her neck. Slipping on her shoes, and grabbing her bag, she gave one last look at the hotel room, the first place she would remember about New York, before shutting the door and following after Luke.
"Is she here yet?" Jace heard Maryse shout from the floor above. He was currently sat in the most comfortable position he could manage in his tired, agitated state. Of course, being a teenager, Jace drank, but the hangover's he endured after a night out was nothing compared to the excruciating pain he had to endure after not enough sleep. He couldn't understand how not sleeping affected him this way, Isabelle barely slept; being too busy on the phone to Aline or sleeping with whatever guy she had trailing after her this time.
"No" Isabelle shouted up the stairs before she planted herself none too gently on the sofa Jace occupied. "You could at least pretend to be excited" She said, nudging his shoulder with hers.
"I am excited, this is my excited face, enjoy it, you wont see it again" he grumbled, his eyes shut as Isabelle smirked at him.
"I'd hate to see what you look like when you're mad" she said, poking his cheek. He swatted her hand away half heartedly, his eyes still shut.
"I probably still look radiant" he said cockily, smirking with his eyes shut.
"If only you were this cocky around other people" Isabelle replied faux sadly. Jace cracked his eyes open slightly, giving her a pointed glare. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, they heard the unmistakable sound of rubber scratching with the stone chippings of the Lightwood's driveway.
Isabelle bounded from the sofa, flying over to the window in a flurry of blue skirts and black hair, an expectant smile on her face.
"She's here!" she shouted, so loud Jace was surprised the poor girl in the driveway didn't hear her. There was a clinking of heels on marble, then the thuds of feet on stairs, and before Jace knew what was going on, he had been wrenched to his feet by Alec and was now standing on the front porch, watching with the rest of the Lightwood's (Robert excluded due to being at work) as the girl climbed her out of the battered dark blue, rented car.