Extraordinary (The Extraordinary Saga #4)

Chapter 6

Under the weight of Rowan's two-toned gaze, the golden shadow turned and fled from her backpack. In the blink of an eye, the swarm of floating, golden glitter was out the door - too fast for anyone to see had they not been focusing directly on it. But Caeden and Rowan just so happened to be looking right at it, and with an exchanged wild glance, Caeden was on his way out the door to follow it.

He knew he would face the consequences of that later, but he didn't care. He'd felt that thing... it felt like his fire, like magic. That had to mean something.

He stopped right outside the room, looked left, then right, then left again, dimly aware of his math teacher yelling, "Mr. Caldwell!" But his math class didn't matter; the shadow mattered. And it was to his left. Only when he was nearly running after it did his mind slow down enough to wonder how he'd known where it was. He hadn't seen it - instead, something inside him was like a compass, only instead of pointing north it pointed towards the golden shadow.

He forced himself to walk casually as he passed the hall aid stationed at the intersection of two hallways.

"Hall pass?" The aid asked. His eyes quickly scanned Caeden's hands for a sheet of paper, and when he came up empty his gaze hardened. "You need a hall pass, or it's a write up."

Caeden's mind raced for any type of valid excuse, and under normal circumstances he might've been able to. But he could feel that magic shadow pulling away, racing through some dark part of the school. Soon it would be completely gone. He had to hurry.

"I, uh..." he stuttered. "I'm sorry-"

"I have it," came a familiar voice from behind him.

Rowan.

She strutted through the hall, waving a neon pink sticky note like it was a letter from the president.

"Sorry, Ms. Wilkins only wrote out one," Rowan told the aid, holding out the note in front of him for just an instant. Then she turned to Caeden, putting the paper in her pocket. "I told you to wait for me while I tied my shoes."

"I didn't hear you," Caeden answered her. "My bad."

"Go on, get to class," the aid interrupted. "Hurry up."

Rowan waved a thanks and the two of them walked on, slowly increasing their pace as they got further and further away. Only then did Caeden realize Rowan was wearing moccasins and in fact did not have to tie her shoes at all. He smiled a little as he realized that. The lie had worked anyway.

When the hall aid was well out of earshot, Caeden whispered, "What the hell was that thing?"

"I don't know," Rowan said. Her heart was pounding. This was the closest she'd ever gotten to telling someone else her secret; that shadow-cloud thing was obviously some kind of magic. And it was the kid from math class who had seen it, of all people. "I don't know."

Caeden shook his head. "Doesn't matter. It's up this way and to the left."

The second those words were out of his mouth, he wished he hadn't said them. Now he'd have to explain to Rowan how he could feel the thing. But he tried to push that out of his mind. For the time being, they had a more pressing issue.

Rowan nodded and didn't seem at all puzzled by that. As if on autopilot, they wandered through the halls until Rowan stopped suddenly.

"There," she said, but it came out as more of a half-whisper.

Caeden stopped beside her. She was staring blankly out the window of a door leading to the courtyard, a door by the stairwell in the corner that was tucked away from the rest of the school. The shadow had chosen a perfectly secluded place to stake out.