Plot Twist...

Alec and Isabelle

(Clary POV)

I woke up for the second time on the morning after my eighteenth birthday, to a girl with ink black hair standing over me.
"Isabelle," I thought, trying to remember through the haze of a few hours ago. Her name was the only thing I could remember clearly. Blinking, I sat up carefully, squinting at the brightness above me, glaring, fluorescent, lights, burning my eyes. Isabelle held something in her hand. "Isabelle - what's up with her tattoos? Is she in a cult?"
I was blinded by the light shining off her serpent bracelet winding up her tanned arms, curling around the marks, strange yet oddly beautiful tattoos to me, almost mesmerising. They were the same colour as her hair and her eyes, like night just before sunrise, endless, and so easy to be lost in.

"Clary?"
"Hmm?"
I raised my head, tucking some hair behind my ears, glancing at her, listening. I hadn't quite caught what she had said the fist time, which was, I thought, probably why she was looking so exasperated. "Why does she look amused?"

"Are you okay?" She said waspishly, glancing down in my direction. "As I was saying, you had a bad concussion earlier. You might not want to get out of bed again, after, well, you know, fainting."
Fainting? Memories started to swarm my head again, the sharp pain reappearing in my neck, as I tried to get out of bed.
"I - I couldn't have passed out."
Cooly, she picked at her long fingernails and raised an eyebrow. "You fainted, yes." Glaring, I sat up to clear my head, pressing the back of my head against the cool wall behind me. I couldn't see a clock amongst the animated chaos of the room, but it was clearly about midday, indicated by the light streaming in through the windows. The stained class created beautiful blues, purples and pinks on the wall behind her, a confusing kaleidoscopic, as if to distract me. I swung my legs out of bed and rubbed my neck, a hot, sharp constant pain bringing the room into focus for me, and then out again. "No," I thought. "I won't pass out again."

To steady myself, I looked at Isabelle, and held the bedpost, looking around at the room that seemed like both a familiar and alien place. "I didn't faint," I uttered, looking her in the eyes. "I passed out. There's a difference."
"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow. "And what's that? Because I seem to remember you fainting in my arms, like an old-timey damsel in distress."
I'd hardly a chance to respond before a man around the same age as me, maybe older, who looked a lot like Isabelle with his raven dark hair and piercing blue eyes strode into the room, papers in arm, running a free hand through his hair as he yawned. He barely looked at me before depositing the stack of papers on a table. "What's the mundane still doing here?" He asked, as if I weren't in the room at all, but on the other side of a two way mirror, not looking in on a conversation about me from a few feet away.
Isabelle played with the stick in her hand. "The wand. Stick. Whatever it is," I thought. "But it's glowing."
"Not a mundane, Brother. The rune stayed on, didn't it?"
Rune? Blinking, I looked from Alec to Isabelle, trying to decipher when they were saying from the expression on their faces. Unfortunately for me, both siblings seemed to share the same talent for having a face impossible to read.
"Well, whatever she is, the little girl can't stay here much longer." He turned to face Isabelle, walking towards us.
"I don't care who she is, she's taking up space and doesn't need to be at the institute now. Not when we have to find him, Iz."
"Hey," I stood up. "I don't know who you are, but I don't plan on staying here any longer than I have to," I replied clearly, looking around me. This place, this institute, wasn't helping my headache, my familiarity yet complete lack of understanding about this place making my head swim. "I don't even know where I am, so you can have your room back, for all I care." "And," I glared, "my name is Clary. Not little girl."
Alec looked ready to retort before a fair haired boy entered the room, dressed the same as Alec, with the same winding tattoos as him and Isabelle. "Ready?" He asked Alec, slapping a hand on his shoulder, despite the other boy having at more than a few inches of height on him. He practically had to stand on tiptoe. Alec rolled his eyes before leaving
with the boy, shooting an exasperated look at Isabelle, who turned away to busy herself with the papers Alec had left on the table behind her. It might have been my imagination, but when I had talked back to Alec I was sure that I had seen her hiding a smile.

                                         With her back turned, I could look at Isabelle properly. Despite her standoffishness towards me, I had a feeling she was hiding more than her cool attitude suggested. Whatever I was feeling aside, Isabelle was a mystery  beneath an uncaring smile, and in that moment, as I could see her in the corner of the room, I was determined to get to know Isabelle. I wanted to solve this mystery, to find out what those tattoos meant, if this really was the old church, what it was being used for, who these people are, and I realised that cryptic, inexplicable, Isabelle was my only way of finding all this out.
She didn't know it yet, but to me, Isabelle was a mystery - a mystery I was determined to solve.