“Haze-fucking,” Simon says, considering it. “In that case, who’s your favorite? Imagine Jet in the heat of the moment—those eyes? I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.”
“Anyone but Rafe,” Dez says. “If I have to spend a whole term working underneath him, one of us won’t make it out alive.”
“Could be hot,” Simon says.
Dez rolls her eyes but not before she gets a flash of Rafe moving over her in bed. It could be hot. If he weren’t so arrogant. She clears her throat. “Have you ever skied, Simon?”
“Once I went to Breckenridge with my ex-girlfriend’s church.”
“Is it hard?”
“Nah. You mostly let gravity do the work.” He points at the slope under their dangling skis. “Speaking of …”
Below them, six last-years appear on the mountain in matching red ski suits. Around each of their necks are golden scarves that match the one Yael wore in their suite. They ski in triangle formation, their swinging hips and pumping arms perfectly synchronized. From the chairs in front of and behind Dez, first-years whoop and cheer them on. They’re too high up for Dez to see if Rafe is among the skiers.
Halfway up the mountain, the opening piano chords to “Nightswimming” by R.E.M. fill the air, and though they’ve never participated in anything like this before, Dez and Simon and all the first-years on the lift around them somehow know to change the opening word of the song from “nightswimming” to “night-skiing.” They sing along, and Dez wonders if this is a part of the ritual, if students sing this every year.
Before the song ends, the ski lift empties them atop a slope so steep Dez thinks it’s inverted. She reaches for Simon’s arm, her chest constricting, but Simon’s spotted Esther and has already slid past Dez to chat her up.
“There’s absolutely no way,” Dez murmurs to herself, peering over the edge. Wind rips snow from the mountain like sheets from a concert pianist’s music stand.
“Actually,” a voice says behind her, “there is one way.”
When Dez turns to see Rafe in a formfitting red ski suit, the motherfucker actually winks.
“Down,”he says, lowering his voice so only she can hear.
Dez gulps, and not just because she’s scared. The way Rafe talks sometimes, his voice lights a fire in her core. He’s wearing one of the golden scarves, too.
“Where’s the bunny slope?” she asks. “This one’s too big for me.”
“That’s the mentality I’m so going to enjoy erasing,” Rafe says. He takes Dez by the shoulders and turns her back toward the outrageously sheer slope. “Skiing is like flying. All you have to do is”—now he takes Dez’s arms and spreads them out like wings—“believe.”
Dez drops her arms. “I need to talk to you.”
“About last night? How much fun you had?”
Where to start with this prick? She looks out at the overcast sky, clouds glowing from the obscured moon. Then down at the slope where a long white seam appears suddenly in the snow. Her eyes widen as she stares.
It’s eight feet long, several inches thick, and itvibrates, migrating upward, toward the summit.
Toward Dez.
“What is that?” she says, edging backward against Rafe.
“Someone important,” Rafe says, all teasing vanished from his voice. “Stand up straight.”
Dez does as the long white seam reaches the summit at an astonishing speed, then stops and rolls itself into a ball, like the base layer of a snowman. It’s alive. It’s uncoiling, snow falling away, to reveal—
An albino cobra, its hood spread, the fruit strip of its tongue darting at the crowd of frozen students on the summit.
“Hello, Dr. Moriah,” Rafe says, and for a moment Dez thinks he’s talking to the snake.
Then the cobra slithers past her, approaching another set of skis. Dez’s eyes follows them up to a frigidly beautiful middle-aged woman with a white bob, white ski suit, and painted red lips standing suddenly behind them on the mountain. The snake slithers up the woman’s body, curls itself around her neck, and blinks at Dez with all the warmth of a stoplight camera.
“The director of Acheron,” Rafe says to Dez under his breath. “Dean Moriah. And her cobra, Hannah.”
“You haven’t been coupled yet,” Dr. Moriah says, scowling into Dez’s soul.
