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lay awake thinking they
would all be asleep in another hour or so and it would be the work of a few
minutes and his sharp knife. This was no longer the idle hostility of a man
surprised by strangers, but a real plan and she supposed she’d better deal with
it.
    Mara woke
herself up and walked barefoot to Mr. Murder’s tent. He had the knife in his
hand already when she let herself in, but seemed reluctant to use it when she
pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on his floor. She closed his
tent, opened his sleeping bag, took his wrist, and helped him cut her panties
away. She licked the blade and he forgot about killing her.
    She didn’t talk,
didn’t react to his whispers or his attempts to embrace her, but she gave him
things to think about, even things he didn’t particularly want to think about. The
human mind can desire many things that repel it, and once a seed is planted
under the right conditions, it almost always grows. It stopped being fun for him.
She got on top and pushed him down, staring into his eyes as he lay motionless
and panting beneath her, and made him remember every sordid, shameful, secret
pleasure as she moved. He began to think she wasn’t human, began to be afraid. She
rode him harder, let her fingernails dig into his chest and draw tiny dots of
blood, but he was too far gone to move. He saw fangs in her mouth, thought her
eyes were filled with moonlight. He came crying and she grabbed his throat and
leaned in close, letting him believe whatever he wanted to believe about what
was coming next, how it would end for him, where he would go after.
    Then she kissed
him, her lips shut and her eyes open wide. She got up, put her shirt on, and
left without ever speaking.
    He packed up and
left soon afterwards.
    Mara slept.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
    CHAPTER THREE

 
    T he others were up with daylight, but Mara made
herself stay under and at rest until well after noon. It was apt to be a long,
difficult night. When she did rise, she didn’t bother breaking her camp. It
would be here when she and Connie came back, or it wouldn’t and they’d have to
do without a tent. Either way, its weight was bound to be too great a
distraction. Mara was not an accomplished climber, but she knew enough to be
careful of her balance.
    No one, it
seemed, was eager to start up the mountain. Over the course of the day, four more
stragglers had come in from the questing fields, but only four. She could sense
dozens out there, searching the cliffs in mounting frustration as the day wore
on, but they were ignorant of this location and it was unlikely they would come
across it by accident. Of those gathered in the proper spot, only two had a
clear memory of where the opening had appeared in years past: Mara had stolen
hers from Mr. Murder, and the other had seen it only from a distance. There was
nothing now, of course. The rock stayed shut against them and would remain so
until dark.
    In the dark was
a bad way to climb a mountain under any circumstances, and this was Romania in
October. The wind, the cold, and the treacherously crumbling cliff-side weighed
on her more heavily as the hours passed. She was tempted to start up now, while
there was still a little daylight to speed her way, but knew that the first
person on the rock was likely to start an exodus and she was certain the
competition would turn bloody. Most of these people believed that only the
first person to reach the opening would be allowed to enter the Scholomance
that year. Mr. Murder had known, and therefore so did Mara, that they were
wrong, but there would be no convincing them. Best just to stay back and take
no chances. Connie was depending on her.
    As she had often
done since arriving at the foot of this mountain, Mara scanned the Mindstorm
for the particular frequency of her friend’s thoughts, and again found nothing.
She was not discouraged. Her psychic range was hardly infinite, after all, and
it was