Phrontistery Of Monster Kind - Six Feet Deep

Chapter 39

Families of prospective students flew in for the week to attend the orientation and testing days. The otherwise vacant hotel was booked out, and the excess was graciously housed with local families or offered out by the real estate agents for promotion. Both Ophis and Mayor informed me that occasionally the primary school took students as well, however, they could only care for a few, and usually, those children travelled alone.

The gorgon arranged to pick them up on the school bus on the required days. It was unsettling to learn that vehicles were one of the many unregulated aspects of the law, anyone could drive a heavy machinery without a licence because our side of the island was considered 'unpopulated'. Blatantly disregarding the thousand or so students, teachers and those who live in surrounding forests. I begged her to take someone with her on the trip over. "There is a lot of activity in the forest as of late."

She took my concerns as a joke but complied and informed me she would take her girlfriend. "Between a gorgon and a gargoyle, a few faeries can't get past us."

They weren't who I was worried about.

"There aren't any ghosts, Esmay, otherwise we would know. No ghost would willingly stay in that forest."

"They might not be ghosts."

She thought for a second, before laughing, "Good one, but Marchella would have told us if there were any." Unless she didn't know or wasn't from that part. "Anyway, jokes aside, the hotel staff will point those in town to our bus pickup. Our actual bus driver will pick them up on..."

She waffled on about the schedule for the next week. The year twelve dorms were changed into rooms for people travelling with one parent. The coordinator sorted that out for me, checking them over with the hired cleaners, before approving them.

One student was left unaccounted for: Sylvester Sutherland. I spent the previous week complaining to Mors about the parents' inability to inform us of where they were staying for the week. Each family, regardless of where they were located, had the ability, so why not them? They refused to answer the phone, running between one-four minutes per call to voicemail.

"Is it a possibility that they're not fluent in our language?" Mors asked.

At least one person should know the language if they are shipping their nearly teenager to a school a twelve-hour flight away. Even if it's a child.

"If I knew what language they spoke, I would talk to them in it. I tried Portuguese and even the specific creole for that area-"

"The human or the monster one?"

"There's a difference?" Mors tilted his head as if to ask if I was stupid. I groaned, "There's a difference."

"There is most likely an abandoned staff quarters you can assign them in." He had a point; we had an abundance of them we didn't lend out to inaccessibility issues. "That can be Miss Ridae's problem."

We left it to her. The next time I saw her, I brought it up, earning a quick nod, and was informed that she was already on it.

Sometime during the week before the child Mayor was worried about was said to arrive, the deputy informed me that she would send me an email when she got the pickup details. She and the social worker would have to fly over and travel northwest to get to the school, giving me ample time to rush down to wherever the pickup point was decided.

"They will give us a day's warning at best. If it clashes with any of your classes, I'll assign a substitute."

We had a substitute available? Ophis was too busy with her own work to take over mine as well. "Is it an actual substitute teacher and not one of our own?"