Allies: Chamberlain Codex, #1

By Emery Cole

Morgan's a college dropout with a set of disappointed parents and a part-time job at Shadow Vale Books. Nothing special, right? Especially when she's compared to sister Isabella, who apparently can do no wrong.

 

Nothing special at all, until one day a mysterious codex and an enigmatic ring appear on the bookshelves of Shadow Vale Books. These appearances are intensified when a shadow figure decides to join the party.

 

Matters ratchet up when a hot guy named Azril shows up. A guy who is definitely not human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EmCo
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201897604

Book preview

1

Ididn’t tell anyone I had dropped out of school or that I was coming home. The few other people who got off the train at Shadow Vale immediately started to disperse, off to places they were expected to be.

There was no one to greet me at the train station when I disembarked, so I wandered along Main Street. None of it seemed familiar to me in what little light was left. It was mid-October, and the days were starting to get dark earlier. No matter how many times I go through the seasons, the light change is always disorienting. Like every year, I think it might be different.

I guess that’s why I had to drop out of college. I got sick of waiting around for things to suddenly be different or to get better. It took me twenty years, but I finally made a decision for myself, and even if it was the wrong decision, I was determined to make it work.

That determination finally faltered as I looked around my hometown. I fought the feeling that I had made a mistake, my thoughts rapidly going through a list of everything I had done wrong, from dropping out of college in the first place to not telling anyone I was coming back to the scratchy sweater I had decided to wear for the five-hour trip.

The one thing that was painfully clear to me at that moment was that I wasn’t ready to go home yet. There really wasn’t anything else to do other than go home, especially since I was lugging an overstuffed suitcase and a duffel bag, and it was late enough that most of the stores and shops in town had already closed. So as a compromise, I walked as slowly as I could, prolonging the short amount of time I had left by myself. As soon as I got home, my life would be full of questions again, and I doubted I would have the chance to just sit and breathe when my parents were around.

I quickly figured out that was another wrong choice to add to the list. The town was even emptier than I had remembered it, and in the dark, it had none of its charm. I sped up, so I was walking at a normal speed, but I still had about a half-hour left until I would reach my house.

By the time I started walking down the block where I had grown up, it was completely dark outside. Shadow Vale always felt like a safe place to live, and we pretty much all knew each other. But as kids, we had all been trained not to walk around at night, and especially not alone. I was an adult now, but I still picked up my pace and glanced over my shoulder every third step.

There were plenty of rumors around town of what happened to people who walked alone at night. Strange creatures and shadow figures were known to come up behind you and attack. No one I knew had any experience with this, or at least, no one that I actually believed. But that kind of logic does nothing when you’re walking alone down a street, and literally, everything around you is casting some sort of shadow.

When the streetlamp above me started to flicker, I almost dropped my bags and started running. I was proud that I managed to keep my composure, aside from almost tripping over my own feet. Shadow Vale was where I was raised and was the place that I felt most comfortable in. I knew everything there was to know about the town and the people in it and could probably predict what it would be like in the future, too.

None of that made up for the fact that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with my life, which was growing increasingly apparent with each step I took toward my childhood house.

2

Mom’s voice echoed through the house when she called my name, as good as any alarm clock. Maybe even better. I’d only been back at home for a week or two, and already she was getting on my nerves, and I was pretty sure I was doing the same for her.

My legs stuck out uncomfortably at the foot of my bed. I wasn’t even that tall, but the bed still managed to feel cramped. Nothing about moving back to the house I had grown up in was comfortable, so I don’t know why I was so surprised by how small the bed seemed. Maybe it wasn’t the bed that was too small but that I remembered the room as having been bigger than it actually was.

A soft early autumn breeze floated into my room through the cracked window. I sat up, trying to slowly acclimate myself to the idea that I would have to get up soon but making no actual progress. It was still light outside, but just barely. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing, and I was sure that they would have been a beautiful color if I could see it past the power lines and the rooftops of the neighboring houses.

Morgan, Mom called again, her voice echoing through the whole house. Our house was at least a hundred years old, and the walls were thin. Even if she had only said my name at a regular speaking volume, I was sure that I would have heard her.

I’m coming, I yelled back. I pushed the pink ladybug quilt off my legs but made no move to get up. I hadn’t been sleeping but had climbed in bed anyway. That’s how I usually spent my days off from work at my family’s bookstore, Shadow Vale Books, going downstairs for meals and then back up to bed. Something about living in my childhood room again made me want to sleep it all away like a bad dream. Which is exactly what I did.

Morgan, Your dinner’s getting cold.

It was almost certainly a lie, but I knew it would be true in a few more minutes if I didn’t hurry downstairs. I jumped out of bed, not wanting her to call my name for the fourth time. I knew I would be back there after dinner was over, but that didn’t make it any easier to leave. Once I was downstairs, I would have to deal with my parents and try to make some kind of normal conversation.

Looking around my room, I began to think that going down to dinner wasn’t such a bad thing after all. My childhood room wasn’t exactly the place I wanted to be now that I was an adult. The walls that were once bright pink had faded in the sunlight over the years, and the decorations in the room were a strange amalgamation of all my interests through my childhood and my teenage years, from stuffed animals to band posters.

The faces of my old friends smiled at me through the photographs I had taped onto my walls in high school, making me vaguely wonder if I could call them up and talk as if no time had passed at all. I opened my door and traced my finger over the marks in the doorway where Dad had measured my height until I stopped growing. Maybe that’s the reason I couldn’t stand to be there. All the little memories that had once seemed so important had suddenly become physical reminders that I was doing nothing with my life.

I guess I could have redecorated a bit, but doing that would be like surrendering to living there for a long time. I wanted to move on with my life and thought that by not being fully settled in my childhood bedroom, I would be more likely to find my own place.

When I walked down the stairs, I could smell the frozen chicken parmesan my mom heated up in the oven once a week when I was home. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I became a vegetarian in college, and now the smell of the chicken made me feel sick. She did it just for me, so I forced myself to be grateful.

My parents were already sitting at the dining table, but they waited to start eating until I was in the room. Mom looked impatient, so I was sure that it had been Dad who insisted that they wait up for me. I was both grateful and uncomfortable, glad that he cared but wishing that it hadn’t made Mom already annoyed with me before I had the chance to enter the room.

It’s nice to finally see you, Morgan, Dad joked. I was beginning to wonder if you were still alive up there.

Very funny, Dad, I said, rolling my eyes at him.

He laughed at me, and I couldn’t help but smile. Ever since I was a kid, he had always been good at cheering me up.

I grabbed a plate and shoveled some mushy chicken and tomato sauce onto it, trying to get less chicken and more sauce. Even a few bites of the chicken made me feel sick, but I still had to make it look like I had enough food on my plate.

Did you hear? Mom asked as soon as I sat down. She didn’t give any more hints as to what she was talking about, but I knew that it had to have something to do with Isabella.

No, I said. My sister and I didn’t talk much outside of holidays and birthdays when we were pretty much obligated to.

She was invited to join an honor society. Mom smiled at me, but a part of it seemed forced. Like she was putting on a show specifically to make me feel like an unsuccessful burden on the family. And it worked. I pushed around the food on my plate, suddenly losing any appetite I had left after smelling the chicken.

That’s nice, I said, trying to sound like I meant it.

Isabella was older than me, but only by a few years. We had both been gifted kids, but she had been even more talented than I was. She skipped two grades, and was already finishing up her first year in med school, and had only recently turned twenty-two. I, on the other hand, was twenty and had just dropped out of college.

Before I dropped out, I was earning good grades and was on track to graduate with a psychology degree. My family had expected me to go to a graduate program to become a psychologist, and I probably would have been good at it. But I realized that being good at something doesn’t mean it’s what you want to do for the rest of your life.

One night I’d woken up at three in the morning after a frat boy pulled the fire alarm in my dorm building as a joke, and I realized that I wasn’t happy there at all and hadn’t been for a while. I didn’t even know if I liked my friends or if they liked me. I had been living life only thinking about the next assignment or exam, having that singular goal pushing me through the monotonous weeks and distracting me from the fact that I should have picked a different major. At that point, it was too late to change, and as I pulled on my slippers and evacuated the building that wasn’t on fire, I decided that I’d had enough.

In the morning, I walked straight to the registrar’s office and dropped out. The next day, I had packed up everything in my room into a few small suitcases and took the train back home to Shadow Vale.

My parents let me mope around for a few days in my childhood bedroom before putting me to work in the family bookstore. Thank the universe for nepotism, or I’d be even more lost than I already was.

I pushed my food around on my plate and listened as Mom kept going on and on about Isabella like she did most days. This wasn’t a new thing for her. Ever since it was apparent that Isabella was better than me, Mom had endlessly talked about her successes as if mine weren’t good enough. It was like everything we did was a competition, and I could never win.

As we got older and went to high school, it became even more clear that Isabella was better than me in all regards. She was undeniably prettier, with her smooth blond hair and light grey eyes, looking good enough to date the star jocks without even being a cheerleader. I looked more like my dad, and I had wavy brown hair and golden-brown eyes. I liked my appearance, but whenever I stood next to Isabella, it was clear who the beauty of the family was.

Now that I was basically an adult, I was done living in Isabella’s shadow. I had stopped comparing myself to her years before, but that didn’t mean that the rest of my family followed suit. Whenever my mom was in the room, it was only a matter of time before she brought up how proud she was of my sister.

I started to genuinely enjoy my days working at the bookstore since it was the only thing that got me out of the house. There were just enough customers and busywork that I wasn’t bored, and I could mope around the store all I wanted, considering whether or not I had destroyed my future by dropping out.

It wasn’t all bad, but that didn’t change the growing feeling of displacement I