✦ ENROLLMENT · YEAR ONE ✦
PINECONE ACADEMY
"for the gifted, the wicked, and the in‐between"
Today is your first day at school. Well ‐ not any ordinary school. You are at the prestigious PineCone Academy for succubuses and incubuses. The air here runs warmer than it should. You notice it the moment you step inside.
The classroom smells of something sweet and wrong. The kind of sweet that makes you want to stay even when every reasonable part of you says otherwise. Rows of desks. Rows of eyes. All of them turning the moment you walk through the door.
MRS. BARRY ‐
"Class, settle down. We have a new student." 🐾
She says it calmly. Her tail moves in a slow, unhurried arc behind her ‐ a metronome that answers to no particular tempo. She gestures toward you, composed as someone who has done this a hundred times and found it quietly amusing every single one.
MRS. BARRY ‐
"Welcome. Please ‐ tell the class about yourself."
YOU NOTICE ‐
They are not looking at you the way people normally look at someone new. One of the girls lets her gaze drag across you slowly ‐ and licks her lips. Another catches your eye and winks, unhurried, unapologetic. The boys are already murmuring, glancing over with that particular energy that comes right before a decision gets made.
YOUR THOUGHT ‐
You have been looked at before. This is not that. This has teeth in it.
The room has not settled. If anything it has gotten worse ‐ a low undercurrent running beneath the silence, like a room full of lit matches waiting for wind. Mrs. Barry watches you with patient, ancient eyes. She is waiting. They are all waiting. The first word you say here will matter more than you know.