Some of the mountains have snow on their peaks. The Raven’s Claw doesn’t, not yet. “Not the south face, where we’re climbing,” Amber tells Dawn. “It all melted away in the summer sun. But when we get to the top and you look down on the north side, I’m betting you’ll see snow. That stuff lingers year-round. No sun to fall on it and melt it away.”

At least I’m learning something, Dawn thinks. Who knew kidnap and torture could be so educational?

From their perch on the spine, the campsite down below looks tiny, the tarn barely the size of a postage stamp. And they haven’t even climbed halfway to the summit yet. Ahead, the spine extends northeast, humping and rising along a thin, narrow crest, with sheer drops and gullies falling away on either side.

“Careful with this part,” Christian calls back as he leads them onto the spine. “And if you have to fall off, fall to your right, so we can collect your body at the campsite when we come back tonight.”

He grins back at them. It’s not a nice grin. He motions to the north side of the mountain, where a long, steep glacier zone culminates in another perfect blue lake, a million miles from anywhere.

“You go that way, we’re not coming to save you,” Christian tells them. “That’s helicopter territory, assuming you don’t die outright from the fall.”

The Pack just kind of stares at him, then at each other. Even Brandon and Evan look worried.

“I think I’m afraid of heights,” Dawn tells Lucas.

Lucas nods back, grim. “Yeah,” he says, looking up the narrow spine to the summit. “Me too.”

Chapter 41

WHATEVER GUIDEBOOK Christian is reading, it’s more fiction than fact.

They’re halfway up the spine when it starts to get weird. Like the spine kind of, you know, truncates at this fifteen-foot-high wall that they’re going to have to get on top of if they want to keep going, and that’s fine and all, it’s just fifteen feet up, BUT IT’S A THOUSAND FREAKING FEET DOWN IF THEY FALL.

(And if they fall the wrong way, even the rescue helicopters might not be able to retrieve their bodies.)

Terrifying.

Christian stops and kind of scratches his head and pulls out his guidebook. “Aha,” he says. “We’re just supposed to edge around to the north side of this wall. There’s an easy chimney to climb over there.”

The Pack looks at each other. They’re strung out on this narrow spine with nothing but a steep, slippery drop on either side, and this motherfucker is talking about edging out onto the steep, slippery bits to climb up a chimney?

Even Amber looks worried.

“Christian,” she says, “maybe we just call it, huh? Go back and try the normal way up.”