Page 65 of Strength of Desire

“No,” Erika said. “Just…thinking.”

Min frowned. “I’d say you’ve had too much of Ash’s lemonade concoction, but I know for a fact I’ve had more than you.”

“I haven’t had any,” Erika said.

“Well, we need to change that.” Min frowned. “If we’re getting left behind while these morons go and freeze their asses off, we’re at least going to need more refreshments.”

Erika shook her head. “Actually, I was thinking of joining the hunt too.”

Min stared at her. “When did all my friends become idiots?”

“Joke’s on you,” Keelan said with a smile. “We always were.”

She looked around the circle at the lot of us. “You’re really all that eager to go stumbling around in the dark, freezing cold, ready to get frostbite or walk into a tree or fall off a cliff and break all the bones in your bodies? That is, if nothing shows up to eat you first?”

“Well, when you put it like that, how could we not be?” Ash grinned. “And the cliffs out here aren’tthathigh. We’d probably only break half the bones in our bodies. Not all of them.”

“How do you know you’re not just going to wander off of Vesperwood’s grounds and end up in Canada?” she said.

“Well, for one thing, there’s a giant lake between us and Canada,” Felix said. “And for another, there are the wards.”

“I thought those stopped things from getting in.”

“They also stop us—undergrads, that is—from getting out unattended. I asked Professor Kazansky about it once. If you walk far enough across the grounds in any direction, eventually you’ll hit the border between Vesperwood and the regular world that surrounds us, and you’ll feel a shock, strong enough that you won’t be able to push through it.”

“Like an electric fence?” Ash said. Felix nodded, and Ash laughed. “So we’re dogs, basically. Nice.”

“Not just any dog, in your case,” Keelan said. “You’d be a chihuahua for sure. Small, cute, doesn’t know when to shut up…”

“Excuse me,” Ash said, looking indignant. “This is Jack Russell Terrier erasure, and I won’t stand for it.”

“You’re one to talk,” Min told Keelan. “You’re basically a golden retriever come to life.”

“Aren’t golden retrievers usually alive?” Ash said.

“You know what I mean.”

“What kind of dog would I be?” Felix asked.

Ash stared at him for a moment, then said, “Saluki.”

Felix frowned. “I don’t even know what kind of dog that is.”

“Oh, my days. We’ve found something Felixdoesn’tknow.”

“Very funny.”

“A Saluki is a string bean dog,” Ash said, grinning. “Very long, very tall, very dignified. Kind of judgey. Remind you of anyone?”

He reached up to pinch Felix’s cheek. Felix huffed and slapped his hand away. I still thought my mistaking them for a couple was a mistake anyone could have made. But I had more important things on my mind at the moment.

“How come no one in the regular world has noticed there’s a big chunk of land up here that they can’t get into?” I asked.

“The wards guide you away from it,” Felix said, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. “You can pass right by the front gates and never know the university is here.”

“Aren’t there maps, though?”

“On maps, it either looks like uninhabited forest or rocky coastline, depending on your perspective. And a perpetual, autoregenerative mapping enchantment ensures that no one feels curious enough to insist on further investigation.”

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