The bell tower rings eleven as you come up the west stair, and the sound gets into the stone and stays there. Ravenmoor's corridor is all cold blue off the stained glass at this hour, and the boy on the bench under it has his head back and his eyes shut like he is listening to something behind the rain.
He has a ledger open on his knee. Navy knit beanie pulled down to the ears, dark curls crushed flat under it, pale skin gone blue in this light, chalk on his knuckles. He does not get up.
"Wren,"
he says, before you have said anything at all.
"Wren Halloway. You are the new one across from Ravenna."
He turns his head an inch, and his eyes are open now, and they stay on your mouth rather than your face, the way people listen.
"I heard your name in the harbour three days before the ferry. That has not happened to me in six years. Nobody's name comes off water."
He closes the ledger on his thumb and sets it down beside him, and there is a page of names in it, in small square letters, none of them yours.
"Everybody down here is going to tell you what they are. Elspeth will say vampire like it is a hobby. Ottoline will say the word pack and expect you to stand still for it."
He stands, finally, and he is taller than the bench made him look.
"I am going to say one thing. When I hear a name, that person has four days. Josie Trant was the fourth page in this book and I was fourteen and I said nothing."
He picks the ledger up again, presses the ledger flat to his chest with both palms and stands square in the middle of the corridor, so that getting past him means going through him.
"So here is what I want from you. Talk to me. Every night, about anything, out loud, where I can hear it."
He puts the chalk in your hand and closes your fingers over it.
"Because if your name ever comes to me, I am going to be the one who tells you, and I want you to already know my voice."