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They kept replaying the silly video of me on the TV. There I stood, with my pixie cut white hair, black skin, and stormy gray eyes, righteously telling people how it was going to go down. And I did it all in my cute overalls, showing off my long dark legs. I loved my legs. And my trademark combat boots. They made me feel ready to kick ass.
I was cocky. Still was as I stared at myself. This was everything I had worked hard for; I had the right to be proud. But then, why did I feel like hiding in a closet, away from everyone’s prying eyes?
A woman with a sultry smile and mischief in her eyes raised her hand and the me on the screen nodded at her in acknowledgment. “Miss Neutral, you’re only twenty-seven. What makes you think you’re qualified for this position?”
I had stared down the pompous female reporter. It seemed like that was all any of the humans cared about. My age. Like it mattered. Not the fact that being something else has given me near-perfect recall. Or that I extensively studied all the Naturals. I knew almost everything about all of them. There were only a handful of people—humans and Naturals both—who could claim that.
I smiled the same way the television me had smiled at the woman, with just an extra layer of sweetness. This was still my favorite part of the interview. I had asked the woman, “And you’re only human, what makes you think you’re qualified to question my age and my knowledge?”
That had shut her, and everyone else around her, up.
Refusing to give anyone time to throw another question, I had continued talking down to all of them like they were children. Their stupid questions felt like they were. “What the Natural community needs is understanding, especially children. Thanks to the Unveiling, they need to feel safe, feel like they have a place to belong.” I eyed all of them, making sure they saw my judgment. They took that away from the Natural children after all. “The Unveiling and the treatment of all Naturals after that has taken that away. Do your children have to go to school in bulletproofed cars? Do they have to learn how to protect themselves against bullets, bombs, and complete strangers wishing them harm just because they’re a little different?”
“What about our children?” a man in the back had called out. “We need to protect our children.”
“Against what?” I had snapped out to the man. “What harm have they ever been through at the hands of the Naturals?”
That shut him up because there was never any harm done to the humans for no reason.
I had switched back my focus to the woman who had asked the original question, ready to nail my answer through her thick skull. “The humans took away the safety our children felt. I am more than capable of giving them what they need: understanding. I know them far better than any of you are willing to even try to learn, and I’ll be able to provide them with all their needs while you continue to throw biased accusations around, condemning the Natural community and our children.”
My office door flew open, distracting me from the news. A slim green-haired woman flowed inside, her white dress flowing behind her. She glanced at the TV and rolled her sparkling blue eyes. “Are you really still watching that?”
I nodded. “I would stop if the news stopped replaying it. You’d think they’d have wound down after six months.” Leaning forward over my desk and with a huge smirk, I said, “I looked hot.”
“Yes, yes, you are absolutely gorgeous.” She laughed and shook her head. “Now stop fishing for compliments. I refuse to feed into your god complex.”
“I wouldn’t have one if they stopped talking about me. It’s like they want to worship me, but their human minds can’t contemplate what it would mean if I were a goddess. They already have one Big Man they adore. I don’t think they can handle another.”
Danylynn Brodwynn rolled her eyes. She was my executive assistant and a close friend. She kept me moving forward since I tended to get side-tracked. “They would have calmed down if your doors weren’t opening in just a few more weeks. Maybe throw them a bone, update them? You haven’t had another conference since, so they can only overplay this outdated information.”
“Yeah, I’m not even twenty-seven anymore,” I grumbled. “So outdated.”
Dany smiled at my response.
“They don’t need to know anything. This isn’t their business,” I said a little more seriously.
She shrugged in that annoyingly casual way she liked to do when I was being obtuse.
I groaned and covered my eyes, throwing myself back into my chair dramatically. “Oh! So much work to do still.”
“Which is why you have me, darling,” Dany said. “Now, let’s get to work. People are going to start arriving, and I want to make sure you’re ready to receive them.”
Snickering, I leaned forward on my desk, resting my forearms on the dark oak wood. Slowly a genuine smile formed. I didn’t have many of those to spare these days.
Dany noticed and eyed me warily. “What?”
“Monster Academy opens its doors in barely five weeks. Soon, this huge plot of land is going to be swimming with kiddies.”
She smiled back. “Soon.” Then she scowled. “And stop calling it Monster Academy. You’ll say it to the wrong Natural and get eaten, or to the humans who have persecuted us enough.”
I sighed and swiveled my chair as I gave the TV one last glance before finally turning it off. “Trust me. That is not an accident I’ll ever make.” Before things got dark and depressing, I asked, “So, what’s the overview looking like now?”
“Well, we were able to combine training and prep into one week. So, this next week, after the key attendees arrive, we’ll propose and vote on the security measures and policies to put into place. Week two, all our staff and teachers will arrive. Week three is getting everyone settled, and finally, Week four will be the finalization of policies along with wrapping up any training needed.”
“Then the kiddies come.”
She laughed. “Yes, then the children come. And their parents. Aunts. Uncles. Grandparents. Friends. All of them.” I would have dismissed her words as a joke, but as a fae, she couldn’t lie. All those people really would show up with the kids.
That made my smile slip away. Since acceptance letters had been sent out, I’d been harassed by family members nonstop about one thing or another. The biggest concern was our security. Half the budget went toward that and even before the announcement, it had taken me a year just to find the appropriate people to build the team for me. The original idea had been to hire an outside company, but after a lot of discussions, we’d realized that’d be too risky. We wanted our security team loyal only to us, not to a third party.
We were going to be walking a very fine line and everyone around us was holding their breath to see if we’d fail or not. Failing was not going to happen. I wouldn’t let it.
“Ready for a private tour?” I asked, jumping to my feet. If I stayed in my office any longer, I was going to use a manticore bone to stab my eyes out.
She groaned. “Already had the tour fifty times. I’ll pass.”
“Please. Please. Please. Please do another walkabout with me. Our entire security team will be here in,” I checked my watch, “two hours. I need it as perfect as possible before they try to pick it all apart on me.”
“If you are nervous, then just say you’re nervous.”
I gasped, my hand going to my chest. “That’s impossible. Of course, I’m not nervous.”
“I may not be able to lie, but it doesn’t mean I can’t see one a mile away.” She sighed, and I knew I’d won. “Come on, Adeelah, let’s take another look at everything before the ground is covered in hunky security men.” A new light entered her blue eyes.
Chuckling, I said, “Thank you.”
Her smile softened and had a way of making me feel like the sun was shining warmly on my face, not enough to burn, just enough to keep the chill away. Of course, if Dany ever wanted to scorch someone, she’d have no trouble doing it.
Luckily, she didn’t do that to me as I dragged her around campus. Neutral Academy—yes, named after the Neutral family—was on fifty acres of land in the Adirondack Mountains. It guaranteed us privacy as there was only one known road in and blocked off by gates and wards to keep intruders out.
The Academy was going to house students from seventh grade through high school, and we even managed to pull together a handful of programs to obtain the equivalent of an associate’s degree in the human world. The main goal was to eventually become certified at a college level.
“Adeelah, I know I’ve asked, but I feel the need of asking again: are you sure?”
I glanced at her and then at the surrounding area. Luscious trees stood tall and proud, the groundskeepers working their magic to keep everything lively and healthy. It was early August, so the summer heat was intense enough to complain about. This was going to be my new home.
“There have been a lot of choices that I regretted growing up, things I wanted to do but was too afraid to do. This... this isn’t something I’d regret not doing. If I could, I’d rather be on a sunny beach, perfecting the tan on my chocolate skin, and eyeing men. Maybe it’d be a nude beach. I haven’t been to one of those in a while.” I sighed as my heart ached at memories I wanted nothing to do with. “But I’m doing exactly what I need to do and what I’m capable of doing.” I reached up and grasped the pouch I kept hanging around my neck. It held a very specific mixture of herbs that had one job: to hide my weakness. There were other herbs for protection, but the main focus was to help me blend in with the other Naturals.
For some reason, when I was born into the Neutral family, I was born almost human. I aged, I didn’t heal fast, I wasn’t stronger. I could only do basic magic. If I kept aging as I had been, I was going to die before I reached a hundred, and yet my brother and cousins were going to look no older than their mid-twenties. Old age was in my near future, and it had created an urgency in my life to leave my mark.
This academy was the mark I was forced to leave.
“The kiddies, they need a safe place to learn, to grow, to find themselves. We’re going to provide that for them away from those who wish them harm.”
“Then we’re doing this,” Dany said. “It’s going to be hard, but you’re the only one who can pull this off the way it needs to be done.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “And I’m going to be here every step of the way. Not even an incubus could lure me away.”
I smiled, fighting the heaviness her words created in my shoulders. “Maybe it has to be me. Maybe not. What I do know is that with the Unveiling, everything is changing, and that includes how the Neutral family works.”
“You know they’re proud of you.”
I shook my head. “Not all of them.”
“They’ll get over it. They’re old stubborn idiots with pride over nothing.”
Tilting my head up to stare at the rolling clouds, I said, “When you’re immortal, it’s harder to accept change and these last few years have not been easy. To them, all these changes are passing by in a blink of an eye. They need time to slow down so they can keep up with it.”
Dany was quiet for a few minutes as we left the administrative grounds and entered the west campus. The academy was broken into four areas, each one pointing to a direction: north, east, south, west. The admin section was on the south side, forcing anyone coming to visit to have to go through us before entering the main area of the campus. The west and north campuses were for classes and then the east campus was dorms and homes. There were no plans anywhere in existence to map the areas out. If something were to happen, I didn’t want intruders knowing where anyone was.
“I was talking with Zen,” Dany said.
“Uh huh.” I smiled, embracing the change in topic. I did not do well with heavy emotional feelings. “You do that a lot, talk with him.”
She giggled, a dazed look entering her eyes. “He’s very good at talking.”
“Don’t want to hear the details.” I plugged my ears and sang out. “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.”
Zen was the man in charge, the boss for anything security related. Dany was quick to take a liking to the man. He was nice to look at too, with smoldering light brown eyes, black hair, and dark skin. I liked him because he knew his business, proved it over and over again. I’d had a couple of run-ins with him throughout the years, more so since the Unveiling. He even saved my bum once or twice. As soon as I knew what I wanted, I went to him, and he was quick to agree.
Dany knocked my hands away from my ears. “Anyway, he suggested dummy blueprints. Maybe make it so the area of interests would have them walking right into our hands.”
“Traps? Like lead them right to our prison cells when they think they’re going to a dorm?”
“Exactly.”
I mulled that over and grinned. That actually sounded fun. “I like that. When he gets here, we’ll work on it.”
She nodded with a smirk. “I thought so.”
“So,” I teased. “I noticed that the two of you are commandeering one of the townhouses.”
Her cheeks grew red, something that rarely happened.
“We’re still in separate apartments.”
“Maybe, but right next door to each other.” I wiggled my eyebrows, drawing a laugh out of her. “How long until the dividing wall is torn down?”
“None ya business,” she said and nudged me forward to keep walking, making me giggle.
Without anyone around, the final walk-through was quick. Everything was exactly how I wanted it. Dany checked things off on a tablet as I pointed them out. Small adjustments here and there, like moving a tree away from a building to prevent access points, something our dryads would be able to handle easily.
“Okay, at this point you’re stalling,” Dany said when I suggested doing one more walkthrough.
“Maybe.”
“I know this is your baby, but it’s time to share your baby with others.”
“This place is definitely not my baby.”
“You put blood, sweat, and tears into this place. It may not have been your dream or anything you wanted to do, but it is still something you put a lot of planning into. Time to make use of it. I’d rather not be working in a ghost academy.” She shivered. “Places like these, if left empty, will turn into a literal ghost town. I’m not working for those entitled assholes.”
I laughed and glanced at my watch. “Fine, let’s go wait for our first wave of guests.” I grumbled a little.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “They may be security, and they’ll have suggestions, but you are the chairwoman. You know best why something is set up the way it is. Their job is to work with that. And Zen is good. He would have hired only the best. And you know that.”
“I do.”
“Then come on. I want to see Zen. It’s been too long.”
“Didn’t you see him over the weekend?”
She smirked. “Like I said, too long.” She tugged me toward the gate, and I sighed. My nerves were turned up all the way and anxiety clawed at me. There was so much riding on a smooth opening of the academy. One mistake and everything would burn.
Literally.
