"Witch-blood?" Ms. Bilal raised her left brow in a judgmental fashion, the succubus's ivory orbs flashing with a mixture of curiosity and disgust while partly obscured by silver half-moon spectacles. Unfortunately for myself, I wasn't being hyperbolic. My new school's guidance counselor was indeed a literal sex-demoness, albeit a 'modestly' dressed one at that.
I fumbled, "Yes. Blame my mother."
While my single mom was indeed a bit 'eccentric', I'd always presumed her hokey tarot-reading, California-hippie, half-baked Buddhist-spiritualism to be nothing more than what it appeared to be on the surface: phony. Well, I was wrong, as it had been revealed that my vegan, herb-enthusiast mother was much more learned in the ways dark magic than I previously assumed; my entire matrilineal side was, in fact.
Mind you, the news of my magical heritage seemed like an elaborate joke...until she callously transferred me from my very much 'human' school and shipped me off to this nightmarish parody of 'Monster High'. Had she lost her mind? Perhaps I was losing mine.
"Well," Ms. Bilal shuffled some files to the side with relative disinterest, "you'll need to shadow someone on your first week."
St. Nosferatu was relatively indiscernible from any other middle to upper-class high school, bar the ghoulish student body it hosted; from lycanthropes to manticores and everything slimy, scaly and even alluring in between.
I tried to make the most of a poor situation and approach the opportunity with a scrap of optimism, "Sounds alright with me, I guess, a guy to follow around would be–"
A chuckle from my newly appointed school counselor, "Sweetie, half of these boys would tear you apart, trust me." She paused as if scheming some cruel prank while I mulled over the torrid implications of the previous statement. "No, you'll need a girl to show you around," with that she sized me up like a slab of meat before faintly smirking, "I know just the clique."
'Clique'?
---
"What a runt." A few inches taller than myself, a scruffy haired girl with wolf-like ears chided; her fanged mouth curled into a disappointed snarl.
Her companion, marginally less blunt but exponentially colder, added, "You wouldn't be too far off in your estimation, dear Lupita; he smells like..." An all too long pause as the pallid, ebony-locked schoolgirl sniffed along my jugular before snickering, "...A+, a plebian blood type, no less."
Was I missing something? Were these my guides? Lupita was obviously a werewolf, though exceedingly more feminine than I'd previously conjured in my mind's eye. Her snotty companion a vampire, Vivian de Montane, as I was corrected several times; yes, she demanded the 'de Montane' be included every time.
Lastly–
"I kind of like him...," an ethereal voice chimed in, followed by an otherworldly chill that filled my soul. I inadvertently spasmed as some ghostly being passed through me, "It's been so long since I've had a human to play with!" The last of the trio, a specter named Madeline, became semi-opaque; uniform and all. She was quite beautiful and looked the most 'human' of the bunch, though heavy bags beneath her phantasmal eyes conveyed a great restlessness.
These were to be my guides at this hellish boarding school. Oh joy.
The trio of girls looked me over in unison as if deciding who would lead me around for the day; I was hoping for a little more in the way of direction.