Monster High: Season of the Witch

Ghastly Guidance

Beatrix sat on a large rock jutting out over the dark surface of the Black Lagoon on the east side of campus.

Monster High itself was hidden on a secluded mountainside near a normie city called New Salem, and this corner of the school provided a peaceful spot for Beatrix to wait for Autumn to finish her last class that afternoon.

With Beatrix's lunch duties done for the day, she flipped through the well-worn pages of a cookbook she'd borrowed from the school library.

However, Beatrix was only half focused on the recipes for delicacies like Swamp Ooze Stew and Bat Wing Crumble. Her mind kept wandering to the stack of letters stuffed into her crossbody satchel — letters her aunts had sent over the past month, urging Beatrix to leave Monster High and return home, insisting that her "rebellious trip to Oregon" had dragged on long enough.

Despite her aunts' nagging, Beatrix wasn't planning on leaving Monster High anytime soon. Sure, a month ago, Clawdeen and Draculaura had warned her about weird things going down at the school after dark. But after the Gilda incident, nothing else had happened.

In fact, the entire situation surrounding Gilda was bizarre — her memorial photos had disappeared from the walls, her locker stood empty, and her cause of death was still unknown. Nobody even talked about her anymore. It was like she'd never even set foot in Monster High.

Beatrix and Autumn had hashed it out for hours, and yes, the whole thing gave them the heebie-jeebies, but they ultimately decided to stay put. Because what were Beatrix's other options? If she returned home, she'd be forced to sign her soul away to some devil. And Autumn couldn't stop raving about how much she loved her classes — she was finally feeling academically challenged, something she'd been craving since she was little.

That's why staying at Monster High seemed to be the lesser of two evils, no matter how weird the Gilda situation was or how many nasty looks Beatrix got for being a witch.

Plus, working in the creepateria had given Beatrix a sense of purpose she'd never felt before. Whipping up grub had quickly become a passion for her, and she was hell-bent on making the perfect Key Slime Pie. She felt like she was finally discovering her true calling. Maybe her witchy blood ran deeper than she thought; she excelled at concocting things.

Beatrix looked up from the cookbook in her lap and out over the Black Lagoon. Its black waters lapped against the shore, just a stone's throw from the iron fence that ran around the school's perimeter. The fence, tall and topped with sharp spikes, separated the school grounds from a dense forest of fir and pine trees.

Beyond the spiked fence, the forest was wild and foreboding. Gnarled, mossy tree branches reached out like claws in the sky. All kinds of monsters could creep around in there and nobody would even know, Beatrix thought.

Beatrix tried to picture what Gilda Goldstag's final moments must've been like out in those woods. What had the doomed girl been up to? What or who did she run into past the fence? Beatrix shuddered and tore her gaze away from the treeline.

The Black Lagoon looked as sketchy as the woods, if you asked Beatrix. Its murky waters completely obscured its depths.

Suddenly, right next to the rock Beatrix was sitting on, a pair of white orbs popped up out of the dark water.

Beatrix leaned forward and squinted at the orbs, unsure of what she was looking at.

The orbs blinked.

Beatrix jolted upright. She was looking at two eyes. Two big, sea-green eyes.

The next thing she knew, a beautiful blonde fish girl sprung out of the water.