Hate. Swirling dark, naked hate, bubbling in its own blackness like viscous oil disturbed in a vat. But it was not a hate that stemmed from anger or fear or jealousy: it was that familiar thing again, a malice that was happy being malice itself, the way a rock is happy being a rock. It was something that lived to hate and loved to hate. And it had looked at Sam for a long time as though it knew him.

He pulled his head up off his arm, as though those pale blue eyes were boring into him again, and took a sharp breath of freezing evening air into his lungs to clear the vision. It was snowing down in the valley now. The yellow lights that had started to twinkle into life in the distance were obliterated now by the thick cloud dumping its white load. Home. He had to get home.

Sam stood upright, gripped his poles and pushed off over the cornice. He dropped into the icy trail and got his speed up with a path straight down the fall-line. The trail narrowed ahead, and swept left through a gap between the tall pines, and he made three short turns to check his speed as he approached. It was nastier than he had anticipated, and he grunted as his thighs burned, cutting the blunt edges of the old skis into the shiny unforgiving blanket of blue green ice. The wind ripped at his face as he flew down the mountain, alone on the trail, and the sound of his skis slicing into the snow was all that accompanied him.

He burst through the trees onto the wide part of the trail that snaked beneath the stark pylons of the Serendipity Chair. Sam was surprised to see it still running. It was well after four now and those guys closed it at three forty-five on the dot. What was weirder was that there was a solitary figure in the chair, swinging his way up slowly towards Sam, poles clutched over his lap and swaying one ski lazily beneath him like a pendulum. That made Sam turn his skis side-on to the hill and sweep to a halt in a wave of snow the height of his waist.

Not a patroller. Just a skier. A man by the look of it. What were they doing down there, letting a member of the public up the hill so late? The tortured, confused portion of Sam released him for a moment, and he slipped back into Silver Ski Company-employee mode.