I GOT AROUND TO UPLOADING! YESS!
Disclaimer: Doing this once! I own nought except the plot. No games, songs, singers, places, characters, stores and books mentioned unless otherwise stated!
...Oh yeah. Implied Heronstairs a bit, because they are actually my OTP. NO ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP, STRICTLY WESSA/JESSA, but Tessa doesn't exactly want to ask them outright if they are gay or not... MWAHAHAHA...
"Tessie?" Nate's voice came from the front of the car.
Tessa looked up from the book she was reading. "Yes?" She snapped at him, but then felt guilty. She shouldn't take her anger out on Nate, but he knew that she didn't like to be disturbed whilst reading.
Nate chuckled silently to himself. "Sorry, Lady Grey." He said, and his laugher increased.
Tessa's scowl deepened. After her aunt Harriet had passed, Tessa had discovered that she was the daughter of Sir Richard Grey. Making Nate her cousin, though she called him a brother and he called her a sister. Their relationship was too close to just be considered cousins.
Tessa had also found out that the Grey house in England had been left to her in her fathers will. With her aunt dead, she and Nate had two choices, the house in London or the streets of New York.
Tessa scowled again. She'd rather face the streets. She left her friends behind. Jace, Clary, Simon, Isabelle, Alec and Magnus. She'd miss them all, and their little quirks. Jace's arrogance, Clary's clumsiness, Simon's random nerd facts, Isabelle's fierceness and Alec's protectiveness. But out of all of them, she'd miss Magnus the most. But one thing she wouldn't miss is the glitter that always ended up in your clothes, hair or house whenever you saw the boy.
Still, New York was a harsh, unforgiving, never-sleeping city. Perhaps she'd be better off in England than on the streets.
And it wasn't just England.
It was London.
Wasn't it every girls dream to go to London?
Isabelle was green with jealously (although thinking about it now, it was probably Magnus' glitter) when Tessa had told her she was moving to London and that she'd be attending university there.
"Oh, you're soo lucky!" Clary had squealed.
"Just think of the boys! Hey, any fit ones and you give them my number, understand?" Izzy demanded.
"Hey! What's wrong with me?" Simon said adamantly. *
"Well, for starters, you aren't me." Jace had butted in.
The topic had changed to a daily Jace vs Simon battle, until Isabelle had dragged Clary and Tessa from Java Jones, (a coffee shop Tessa just hoped would be in London) insisting that Tessa needed new clothes.
Tessa clutched the book to her chest. It was to kill a Mockingbird, one of her recent favourites. Of course, a tale of two cities was better, but that was currently sitting in the bottom of her overfilling case.
She'd actually never read it before, but she knew her favourite character was Jem. He just had something that the others didn't that just made him more perfect.
"What do you want?" She asked with a sigh, since Nate had finally stopped laughing.
"We're almost there now." Nate told her.
Tessa looked out of the window, her heart fluttering at all the houses they passed. They were so beautiful.
The Grey Mansion was on the edge of London, on the posh estate, but Nate and Tessa had agreed to sell it, and go for something more their style. The Mansion had sold for the grand total of £545,000000, resulting in a very drunk Nate and a bookshelf filled with new books the morning after, Tessa having caved in and bought them.
The average-sized house they now owned was £600,000, meaning that Nate and Tessa had a lot of money left over. Almost five-million, actually.
So Nate wasn't in a hurry to get a job, and neither was Tessa. Still, she would search for one, she'd have to, just in case Nate did something stupid whilst he was…
Nate had a 'gambling issue'. Of course, for this and many other reasons the money had been put into Tessa's account, for both her and Nate knew that she was more responsible.
But she knew Nate would do something stupid, nevertheless.
On the plus-side, she wouldn't have to deal with him, since she'd been accepted into the London Institute.
Tessa didn't know why they couldn't just call it a collage, or a university. Institute just sounded so…
Frightening?
"Wow." Tessa muttered. The houses had immaculate, green gardens. Not dried, yellow grass. The houses had a beautiful red-brick style. She knew they'd be beautiful inside, too. She opened the window slightly, as they passed a rose-filled garden.
A voice could be heard now the window was open. "Cecily Herondale! That was not funny! What the bloody hell do you think-"
"Nice to know we have quiet neighbours." Nate muttered, closing the window, blotting out the voice.
"Who says bloody hell nowadays?" Tessa asked.
"British people. We will also have to drink tea and eat scones every morning, and have fish and chips every night for dinner." Nate informed her, in a serious voice.
"Really? I think Jace used to live in England, judging by his accent.* He must have been in hell, he can't stand tea." Tessa mused to herself. England had been interesting. First Nate had to realise that he was supposed to be driving on the other side of the road, and next they had to quickly learn what a roundabout was. (Tessa had realised it was a traffic circle, and she remembered what aunt Harriet had done once when she'd come across one in a road, and told Nate to 'give way'.)
Nate had quickly stopped at a house almost at the end of the road. He turned up the small drive, and parked the car just outside the garage.
Tessa got out of the car, looking around, still not able to believe the greenness of the grass.
"James! Are you not even going to back me up on this, since these were supposedly your things?!" The same voice from earlier came, from the house that was next door to them. As in, semi-detached-next-door to them.
The door was wide open, which was probably the reason Tessa had heard him. But still, she had to give the man credit. He could shout, and well.
Nate was currently struggling with the keys. Tessa silently thanked the fact Nate had paid extra money to have interior designers put in all the furniture. It meant less work for them, and the furniture would probably look beautiful. He finally got the door open, and Tessa walked inside.
It was beautiful. They were in a sort of porch that was empty, with dark flooring and rose patterned wallpaper. There was a small, rounded table in the centre of the large porch, with a white vase and red roses in it. To the side, there were hooks for coats and racks for shoes.
"By the angel." Tessa breathed, as Nate swung open the porch door, to reveal the actual house.
Yet again, it was old-fashioned, almost Victorian-like. With dark, comfortable armchairs by the fire, and…
Books. Bookshelves lined the long walls of the living room, with titles Tessa either knew or didn't.
"What do you think?" Nate asked her.
"That I wish we lived here before I did my Victorian project in third-grade." Tessa told him.
Nate laughed and threw himself in one of the armchairs.
"Can I call the bedrooms?" She asked, already walking up the staircase.
"Do whatever. I'll be going out tonight, you'll have to find something for tea yourself." Nate called back.
Tessa rolled his eyes at his words, attempting to lug her case up the stairs behind her.
A/N: Now then. If any of you lovelies happen to be English, I know we don't have Tea and scones in the morning, and Fish and chips every night, but I was attempting a stereotyped English person.
A/N2: My American readers! (And any of you that aren't British) I'm sure 90% of you don't think that British people are like that. (For the record, we aren't) But anyway, I wanted to set out a stereotype because it was fun to write.
A/N3: How many of you guessed who Tessa's neighbour is?
*1: We'll see the progression of Sizzy throughout the fic. And if you haven't read TMI, there won't be spoilers! The TMI people just aren't frequent enough in the story to make it a crossover, but Tessa does skype them regularly.
*2: Jace used to live in Idris in TMI. Loads of people forget, but Clary does say he has a British accent underlying the American one. So yeah. Just a bit more fun for the story!