Evading The Dark

Chapter 2

The crisp early autumn air was the first thing to greet me as I slammed out the back doors of the gym, but even the cool breeze couldn't calm my temper. It wasn't fair. I spent the better part of a half hour arguing with Eli about going to Snow's class, but no matter how hard I pleaded or begged, he refused to budge.

"I don't even know why I have to take that dumb class. All it does is give the other kids yet another reason to make fun of me." My voice broke on the last sentence, and I cursed at how easily I let my emotions get the better of me.

"You know why you have to go," Eli said, his voice now gentle. "That class will teach you about your heritage, and about your powers, once you get them. Both are very important, Casey."

My foot caught on a twisted root and my body met the ground with a hard Oompf. Well, hasn't this day been just great. I spit dirt out of my mouth and looked up at the now darkening sky. The path was barely visible in front of me, no wonder I tripped. It had gotten darker without my noticing and was getting steadily darker by the minute. The backlight on my watch flicked on, revealing that it was only six, which meant sophomore Study Hall just started.

I should be training with Eli right now, like I normally did at this time. But after his lecture, he decided I should spend this hour "calming down" in my room. Which now had me here, in the woods, alone, with the trees blocking out more and more light the deeper I followed the path. Standing up, I brushed the dirt off my pants with a huff and continued walking.

Why couldn't this school have a normal campus, one with all the buildings in one place? Were path lights that worked too much to ask for? How about a shuttle between campus and the dorms? The three main buildings of our school were all spread out, each one marking the point of a triangle and surrounded by thick woods. None of the buildings matched either; it was like the administration bought whatever building was abandoned at the time and brought them all here.

The girl's dorm was a large Victorian era mansion that was renovated to accommodate forty rooms. The boy's dorm was the same, only it looked like the classic dorm one would find on a university campus, all stone and gothic windows. The last building housed all the classrooms, lunch room, gym, library, and teachers' housing; it resembled a giant wooden mess hall, straight from its last day of summer camp, I bet.

"Stupid Luthos Academy. It just has to be all secretive and ... and so rural." I kicked a rock as I walked, my anger now being taken out on a poor clump of minerals. "This stupid school is the reason my life sucks."

Okay, so that may sound a bit childish, but it was mostly true. Luthos Academy wasn't your average private school, although I wished it was. We belonged to a world divided into two: the Supernatural and the Normal. Both coexisted side by side with the truth of our world hidden in shadows and fairytales.

It's ironic because the other students make fun of me for being weird, but none of us are normal; none of us are even fully human and we can't be to go here. At this school, there are Witches, like Cedric, Tony, Eli, myself, and every other student in the training class I just made a scene in, and then the Shifters and the Fae.

The young children of each of the races attend hundreds of these schools across the world, hidden from the prying eyes of the Normal world by various spells and clever placement. If you call spreading three giant buildings across the top of a mountain "clever placement." We were so deep into North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains that it's an hour long hike to the nearest road. Cars couldn't even reach us here. Now, I could agree that the secrecy and isolation was needed. It wouldn't do to have the locals close enough to watch students make trees talk with the wave of a hand or morph into a wild animal at will, but I shouldn't have to be subjected to this; I don't have any powers to speak of.