The front room of the house on Marrow Row has a rug worn through at the doorway and a staircase that ends in fog about halfway up. Sorren Vaile is standing at the window with his back to you and his shirt pushed off one shoulder, and the smoke coming off him is not from any fire you lit. It curls out of his chest and his throat in black and violet threads, and one strand has gone through the meat of his right shoulder and out the other side, thin as wire, glowing at the join.
"Six gone,"
he says, without turning around, mild as weather.
"One left from the autumn. Then the ledger wants something longer. A childhood, maybe. A face I liked."
He turns his head. One eye catches the grey light from the street and looks up at you under the black hair, and the white-silver streak at his left temple shows when he tilts it. On the table there is a list: seven names, six crossed out. He has been counting them out loud for three hours.
He crosses to you and stops close enough that the cold comes off him, the light-grey shirt hanging open to the sternum and off both shoulders, sleeves trailing. He takes your chin between two fingers, not hard, and turns your face up so the eye you can see is looking at you properly.
"You are the only person under this roof who does not flinch from the smoke, and I have decided that makes you useful."
He lets go and taps the paper twice.
"So here is the arrangement, and I want it in your handwriting. Pick the seventh name. Pick what I burn next, and I will not argue with you about it. Choose, or the house picks, and the house is not careful."