The Revelation of Light and Dark (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 1)

My home is like most others, a Cape Cod-style built in the late forties. It’s covered in light blue vinyl with dark blue shutters that could use a new coat of paint, and it has a small, uncovered stoop at the front door. The front yard is plain except for a square patch of grass leading to the road and boxwoods along the front foundation. The backyard is where we hang out on nice days as Dad had built a large deck that holds a grill and a four-piece table and chair set along with a flimsy chaise lounge I like to read books on when it’s warm enough and overcast, as my pale skin burns easily. At the bottom of the deck stairs, there’s a rose garden my mother had planted and which my dad and I valiantly tried to maintain over the years, but neither of us have green thumbs. It’s pretty sickly, but I can’t bear to tear it out as I don’t have much of my mother left.

My twin sister Fallon and I inherited this house when my father died. We were only sixteen, and were fortunate to continue to live here under the guidance of a distant aunt who came to live with us until we turned of age. He had enough life insurance to help pay off the mortgage, cover the utilities and other expenses related to two teenage girls, with enough left over to give us both a significant boost to pay for college.

At almost twenty-eight years of age, Fallon now lives downtown with her fiancé in a luxurious condominium, the epitome of success, and I live in this square box of a family home that I love dearly with three cool roommates.

Smiling, I turn from the window, knowing I need to get going. Layers are required in Seattle, because while consistently temperate, the days can start chilly and end warm. It’s the first week of June, which means early fifties in the morning and lower seventies by midafternoon. I shrug a jacket on over my long-sleeved tee, which is under a short-sleeved t-shirt, take a moment to lace on my white low-top Chucks, and head out of my bedroom.

I cross the hall to Rainey’s room—formerly my parents’ bedroom—and knock on it loudly. “This is your wake-up call. Rise and shine, princess.”

She mutters something back, but I don’t wait around to try to decipher it. This has been our routine for about the entire four years we’ve been roommates here, and she’ll stumble out for a cup of coffee in a few minutes. Rainey’s in my parents’ bedroom because I never felt the need to move out of the one I’d grown up in. Even though her room is larger, there’s something about being in the room where my parents were intimate and I was born a squalling mess on their bed, not two minutes after my twin Fallon, that just weirds me out. Of course, that bed is long gone, but still… I’m happy in my childhood bedroom. Even on the cusp of turning twenty-eight, I still have a Foo Fighters poster on the wall above my bed, my hardback set of Harry Potter books I’d saved up for and purchased myself on my shelves, and a small Tiffany butterfly lamp my dad gave me on my sixteenth birthday that sits beside my bed.

It was his last gift to me as he died less than a week later.

In the kitchen, I find Myles at the round table that seats four, head bent over his laptop. He’s in IT and gets lost in coding with a dopey look of pleasure on his face. He’s cute by any woman’s standards with dark hair that’s shaggy and unkempt, with locks that fall adorably across his forehead. His brown eyes always shine warm and inquisitive through his black-framed glasses, and he rarely shaves, so there’s always scruff on his face. It’s not thick enough to grow into a full beard, and at twenty-six, that’s probably not going to change at this point. But still, it presents a roguish kind of cute that totally works.

There’s a bagel on a plate beside his laptop, and I nab it as I walk by.

“Hey, Finley,” he gripes, head popping up. “That’s my breakfast.”

“And it was feeling completely ignored.” I bat my eyelashes to help plead my case for absolution, but he just rolls his eyes at my efforts. Myles has been secretly in love with Rainey for about the same amount of time I’ve been knocking on her bedroom door to wake her up, and he couldn’t care less if I bat my lashes. In fact, I could probably prance around naked, and he wouldn’t give me a second glance. Myles was second to move in after Rainey, and he has been here for just about four years, too.