Page 66 of Strength of Desire

“Salukis are also fond of long, fancy words,” Ash said with a snicker. “Never use one syllable when six will do.”

It felt like it took forever, and no time at all, for it to be time to slip outside and meet up for the hunt. My stomach tightened as the time to leave drew closer. Though some of that might just have been the tugging at my core that arose any night I was due for a lesson with Professor Romero.

I felt guilty about skipping it tonight. That might have been the most dangerous part of all of this, not the possibility of moraghin or tenelkiri or death by idiocy and frostbite. But surely skipping just one night wouldn’t hurt? After all, I’d been through weeks of lessons with Romero. Shouldn’t my tolerance have increased a little bit by now?

When it was time to leave, we slipped out of the ballroom in twos and threes, so as not to attract attention. I walked out with Keelan, while Felix and Ash went with Erika.

“Have fun freezing your balls off,” Min said, raising the glass of lemonade she’d gotten from Ash. “Try not to get eaten by a bear!”

“So you celebrate Imbolc?” I asked as Keelan and I walked through the deserted hallway towards the foyer.

I lowered my voice. Not because anyone else was around, but because sneaking outside when we’d explicitly been told not to seemed to suggest that whispering was appropriate.

Keelan paused when we reached the foyer, sticking his head out, then waving a hand to hurry me after him. We turned down the hall that led to the back entrance of the manor, the same one we used every time we went to Combat.

“I did growing up,” Keelan said when I caught up to him. “My mom’s big into that kind of stuff. Getting in touch with her Irish roots. Mostly I think it was an excuse to break out some magic and have a party.”

“What do you mean, break out some magic?”

He shrugged. “Well, you know what it’s like. When you live in the regular world, trying to get along with regular people, you can’t do big, showy magic. It might interact weirdly with people’s cell phones and computers and wifi and all. And there are only so many times you can chalk an explosion up to a gas leak before the authorities start to get suspicious. So you have to keep your magic small, most of the time. But for Imbolc, we’d gather outside, away from town, and let loose.”

We grabbed our jackets from a storage closet where we’d stashed them, and I pulled mine on.

“I didn’t know that,” I said, as I stuffed an arm down my sleeve. “But it makes sense, I guess. Do most witches do that? Try to live like normal people—I mean, non-witches?”

Keelan shrugged again. “Some do. Some live in little enclaves, or try to separate themselves from the world, so they can do magic more openly. My uncle’s like that. His philosophy is, why bother to learn magic at all, if you’re just going to hide it? But my mom doesn’t think that’s right. She thinks living away from the mundane world gives witches a superiority complex. So we live in a regular town, and she just keeps her magic very subtle.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Though I can kind of see your uncle’s point. Magic is…I mean, it’s magic, you know? It’s this amazing thing, and once you know it’s there, why wouldn’t you want to be around it all the time? Use it all the time? It feels like choosing to live in black and white, once you know you can see in color.”

“Maybe,” Keelan said, and I could hear the shrug in his words. “But I don’t think magic’s the only thing that gives color to the world. It would be kind of a sad life if it were, you know?”

A rough circle had formed in the woods behind the gym when we arrived. Sean and his friends were already there. Sean was leaning back against a tree, arms crossed. Tim was kicking the trunk with his boots, and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to get snow off them, or if he just felt like kicking something. Rekha stood farther forward, hands jammed in her pockets, coolly surveying the others in the circle.

“I think Sean’s staring at you,” Keelan said after a minute.

I tried for nonchalance. “Yeah, he doesn’t like me for some reason.”

Keelan shrugged inside his soul, I was sure. “His type gives Hunters a bad name. I’ve never been a big fan of him either.”

I laughed bitterly. “Well, that makes two of us.”

We waited a few more minutes in the snow as the last students joined the circle. Finally, a senior girl named Monica stepped into the middle.

“Alright, everyone. You all know why you’re here. Legend says that the Spring of Irylis will reappear tonight. Water from the spring has the power to heal any wound. A single flower from the spring’s glade will grant a wish. And for those of you who are freshmen, your conduct tonight will be noted by your upperclassmen peers when the time comes for you to apply for a haven. You don’t want to disappoint.”

A murmur ran through the crowd, and I shivered. Felix and Ash hadn’t said anything about that part. They didn’t even think the spring existed. And clearly neither did most of the freshman class. Out of fifty of us, only fifteen or so stood in the circle with other, older students.

What kind of conduct were they expecting? Was it worse to try to look for the spring and fail, than not to try at all? I looked around the circle, but none of the upperclassmen’s faces gave anything away.

“Remember the rules,” Monica said. “Each hunter stays out ‘til dawn. And everyone hunts alone.”

That quieted the crowd.

Monica held out a hand and a tiny ball of light appeared above it, just like I’d seen my classmates do in Spellwork. But her light glowed red, then orange, then yellow, and proceeded through all the colors of the rainbow until it reached purple.

“You’ll see this light again when it’s time to come inside in the morning,” she said, sending the light high into the air, above the treetops . It contracted, then exploded in a shower of shimmering violet sparks. “Good luck. Your hunt begins now.”

Everyone began shuffling towards the woods, and Ash and Felix caught up to Keelan and me before we’d gone more than a couple of steps. Erika must have already gone on without them.

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