Isabelle was surprised, to say the least, when she discovered a curly-headed girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen years old standing at the door of the Institute.
The girl had almond eyes with dark, curling eyelashes. The color of her eyes was a startling amber in the light of dawn, but looking closer, Isabelle saw that they were like Jace's eyes—golden. The girl had a round face and a delicate air about her. She didn't look short at first, but compare to Isabelle's height, she was little.
Dressed in all black, the only three colors that stood out were the cherry red of her lipstick, the golden flecks in her eyes, and the honey color of her skin. It was clear she was ethnic; something Middle-Eastern, Isabelle thought. The girl had dark manes and a narrow mouth, which curved into a smile when she saw Isabelle.
"Hello…" Isabelle said warily. She had her whip curled around her arm.
"Goodmorning," said the stranger. Her voice was raspy, the way Isabelle's was when she had a cold. "I was hoping I could talk to an adult. Maryse Lightwood, preferably."
Isabelle eyed the girl suspiciously. "My mother is not here. She's gone overseas. Who are you?"
"By the looks of it, I'm… I mean, if you're Maryse's daughter, then I'm your cousin."
Only now did Isabelle see the duffel bag in the girl's hand. A strange feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. There was something… odd about this girl, this girl whom she had never heard of, who was supposedly her cousin.
Isabelle told her to wait at the door as she went to get Hodge, who had been in the library. He dismissed her, telling her he'd handle it. Confused and slightly agitated, she went down to the weapon room, where she knew her brothers would be. Except, only one of them was there. Alec.
"Who was that at the door?" he asked, leaping up from his seat.
"I have no idea." Isabelle made a sound. "Said she's our cousin. She mentioned Mom. I'm not sure what to think."
Alec's eyebrows were knitted together in thought. "I didn't think we had a cousin on Mom's side."
"Well then who is this girl?"
"Did you get her name?"
Isabelle blinked. "No. Hodge is talking to her right now."
"Jasmine Sianoor," a voice said. Isabelle turned her head to see Jace leaning against the wall. He'd slipped into the room without a sound. "So she's here."
"You've met her?" said Alec.
"I talked to her yesterday—on the phone. She called the Institute somewhere around midnight, saying she'd just arrived in New York from Amsterdam, and wished to speak with the Lightwoods," Jace said.
"And you so happened to forget to tell her our parents are in Idris?" Alec asked, raising his eyebrows.
Jace gave him a lopsided smile. "I didn't forget," he said. "I told her to come to the Institute first thing in the morning."
Isabelle frowned. "Why didn't you tell her—"
"I wanted to see who this girl was," said Jace with a shrug.
"Well? Did you?" Isabelle crossed her arms.
Jace's face broke out in a grin. "Not yet. But I plan to."
Jasmine sat in Hodge Starkweather's office—otherwise called the library—her hands in her lap and her back stick straight. She was tense. Nervous. Scared. Hodge leaned forward on his desk, his hands folded. "You're telling me," Hodge started, eyeing the teenager curiously, "that your father does not know you're here."
"No, he doesn't. I Portaled here," said Jasmine.
"On your own?"
"Yes. Well, I… no. I had some help," Jasmine admitted, looking down at her lap.
"Who helped you?"
Jasmine bit the inside of her cheek. "That's confidential information."
"Very well." Hodge tapped the surface of his desk with the tips of his fingers. "But I'm curious to know, what brings you here?"
"I came to deliver a message," she said. "And I don't plan on delivering it to anybody other than Maryse Lightwood."
Hodge was silent for a moment, and then he offered to call Maryse for her.
"No, I don't think that that's—" She cut herself off. "I'd rather tell her in person."
"All right." Hodge sighed. "You said you talked to somebody on the phone last night. Somebody of the Institute."
"Yes. Jace Wayland."
"And you mentioned that you arrived in New York last night?"
Jasmine nodded. "I stayed with a friend. It was late at night, and I didn't think knocking on somebody's door at one a.m. was the appropriate thing to do." She smiled when Hodge did. "So I called first."
"You do know that Institutes offer sanctuary to anyone who requests it, right?" Hodge asked. "You must. You've lived in an Institute your whole life."
"Yes, but I didn't need sanctuary last night. I might need it now," she added as an afterthought.
"How come?"
"I don't plan on going back to Amsterdam for a while," Jasmine said in one breath. "Not until I've talked to Maryse."
Hodge nodded, and suddenly Jasmine liked him a lot better than she had a few minutes before. He stood up. "Well, the Lightwoods won't be back for some time, and I see you've brought a bag with you. I'm guessing you're here to stay." He walked away from his desk, and stopped when he saw that Jasmine wasn't following him. "I'll show you to your room."
Jace was approaching the library from a distance, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His right eyebrow jumped up just a little when he saw Hodge and a smaller girl with wild black hair, dark red lips and a round face emerging from the room. She carried a bag in her hand.
So that was Jasmine.
"Ah, Jace," said Hodge, the girl following him as he walked his way. "This is Jasmine Sianoor from the Amsterdam Institute. You spoke on the phone?"
"Hello," said Jasmine with a smile that was, in Jace's opinion, too shyly sweet to match her style. She wore black combat boots, black skinny jeans and a tight, black top. She should be as fierce as Isabelle with the way she looks, Jace thought. Except this girl didn't carry herself the way Izzy did. She wasn't as bold, or even as loudly aware of her beauty as Isabelle was.
"You sounded older on the phone," said Jace, his eyes half-lidded as he looked down at her.
Jasmine shook his hand, which nearly swallowed up hers in size. "It's nice to meet you," she said. Jace noticed that her voice didn't sound as hushed and mature as it had when she'd been whispering into a phone. Still husky, but less womanly. Like he'd said, she sounded younger now.
"Jasmine will be staying at the Institute for a while," said Hodge, looking between the two.
"At least until the Lightwoods are back," she added, not looking away from Jace's eyes. He found it hard to look away as well. "And then we'll see from there."
"I was just about to walk her to one of the spare rooms—"
"You mean one of the two hundred?" Jace retorted.
"One of the few close to yours, Alec's and Isabelle's," Hodge answered. "How about you take it from here?"
"If you insist," said Jace theatrically. He saw Jasmine's gaze shift away and down to the floor at her feet. Was she nervous to be left alone with him? It wasn't like he could blame her if she was. He was insanely gorgeous—everyone knew it. But this girl wasn't any less stunning. He wondered if this whole shy energy she had about her was an act. "Well, let's get going."
Jasmine looked at Hodge, who smiled encouragingly and said, "If you need anything, or have any questions, I'll be in the library."
"Thanks," said Jasmine, and followed Jace with less hesitation than she'd shown a minute ago.
The two said nothing until they turned the corner, and even now, Jace was the first to speak. "What does Sianoor mean?" he asked. "Is it a Dutch name?"
"It's Persian, actually," Jasmine said, her smile touching her eyes when she looked at him. "Sia means black, and Noormeans light."
"Blacklight," said Jace. "Fascinating."
"It means poison." This startled Jace. Blacklight meant poison? Jasmine chuckled, and it sounded genuinely heartfelt. "Sianoor is a kind of drug in Iran. It kills you instantly."
"Lovely." He grinned at her. "Do you speak Farsi?"
"Fluently," said Jasmine proudly. She was warming up to him, Jace noticed. She had a slight to no accent when she spoke English.
"Well, say something in Farsi."
Jasmine thought for a moment. Her eyes glittered when she said these words, "Vakhti didamet ghalbam vaysat."
Jace felt his stomach lurch, a kind of feeling that he didn't usually associate with talking to a girl. He didn't like the feeling at all. "Sounds good to me," he said. "But I guess I wouldn't know if what you just said was gibberish. Speak any other languages?"
"Just Farsi, German and Dutch. Some French. I tried learning Latin and Greek when I was fourteen, but I lost interest."
"Latin's the most important language for a Shadowhunter," Jace said with an air of superiority that made Jasmine look away. They arrived at a long hallway. "Well, pick any room you like. They're all empty, except for that one, that one, that one and those two."
"Who do the last two belong to? Hodge mentioned three people. You, and Isabelle, and Alex," Jasmine said, approaching the fifth door to her right.
"It's Alec, not Alex. And they belong to Max, the youngest Lightwood, and Maryse and Robert—the parents." He looked at the room she'd picked, and fought the urge to smirk. She'd chosen the one next to his. "Well, I'll leave you alone now. If you need anything, just holler." And he was gone.
Jasmine's shoulders dropped, and she turned to enter her room, which was large and neat and cold and looked anything but cosy. Back in Amsterdam, she'd had a room full of personal stuff. A wooden piano that didn't take up too much space, pictures of the few people in her life, books—so many books, covering her shelves, her desk, her bedside table, even a part of her wardrobe. Her wardrobe had been full of clothes and shoes. Oh, her precious shoes… She'd brought most of her makeup and hair products—Lord knows she needed it; her hair was a tangled mess most of the time—but she hadn't had enough space in her bag to bring even a quarter of her clothes and footwear.
She sat down on the creaky bed and tested the mattress, before throwing her bag on top of it and unzipping it. She wondered how long this would be her home. Her father was in Idris, much like the Lightwoods, and as long as her tutor kept her mouth shut, he wouldn't know she was gone. She didn't know what he'd do if he found out she was in New York. Be mad, probably. Throw a fit. Portal there and drag her back home.
She thought about her father, who was a tall, broad man with tan skin like hers, dark brown curly hair, and black eyes that lacked the warmth of her mother's blue ones. His voice was deep and booming when he raised it, even a little bit. She was afraid of him and she loathed him, but mostly he just terrified her. He always had, even when she was a kid.
He'd never let her cry in front of him, he'd never accepted her for who she was. He'd never accepted her friends—girlfriends, boyfriends, it didn't matter. He'd been mad when she'd dated a male Mundane, he'd been angry when she'd dated a male werewolf, and he'd been infuriated when she'd dated a female Shadowhunter. It didn't matter what Jasmine did, it was never right.
She'd never done well in training—not the way Amir had wanted—and he'd shouted at her every day from age ten. She hated shouting now, and she hated the training room. That stupid high rope she had to walk on when she was deathly afraid of heights, the weights she had to lift to get stronger. She hated the running, the climbing—everything. She hated the whole thing.
And Amir hated her for it.
She distinctly remembered one time when her father's friend had come to visit, and he'd wanted her to show the stranger what she'd learned. She had refused to walk the rope, knowing she'd fall and embarrass herself. And during the knife-throwing, she hadn't been able to hit the right spot because Amir's friend had stared at her in a way that made her incredibly nervous.
Amir punished her that night for making him look bad. She'd been twelve then.
Just thinking about it brought tears to Jasmine's eyes. She stopped unpacking and lay down on her side, shoes and all, hugging a few of her clothes to her chest. She didn't want to go back to Amsterdam, no matter how much she loved the city.
Exhaustion washed over her. She closed her eyes, figuring that an hour or two of rest couldn't hurt, and fell asleep.
Thank you for reading the first chapter! It was probably a little boring, but it's only an introduction. The next chapter will be much better. It's written and ready to be uploaded! Go and check it out :)