“It was a little girl.” I stared at the glass of milk but watched Nik out of the corner of my eye. “Couldn’t have been more than seven years old.”

Nik didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched me right back. “One of the kids infected by the Ouroboros disease?” He reached out to do something on the stove, then came around the corner and into the living room. He sat on the coffee table in front of me, his legs splayed wide and his elbows on his knees. I could feel his eyes on me, I but still couldn’t bring myself to look at him. To see him. I wasn’t used to him being so attentive or serious. I didn’t really know how to interact with this Nik.

I nodded. “The girl—she entered the final phase right after another kid.” My face felt numb, my voice devoid of emotion or intonation. “The sedatives don’t always work.” I swallowed. “Nobody was ready when she went rabid, and I was the first to get to her.” I blinked slowly, seeing not the glass of milk in my hands but the hospital in the Tent District. The chaos and fear. The little girl tearing into that poor teenager’s body.

“She’d already killed a couple people,” I continued, “and she wasn’t showing any signs of weakening yet. I—” Another blink, and I cleared my throat. “I stopped her.” Finally, I met Nik’s eyes. “I killed her.”

Nik didn’t reach out to touch me or offer up any comforting platitudes. He simply stared at me for long seconds, his breathing even, his heartbeat steady. I could feel my own slowing to match his, pulled in by the steady rhythm, like he was the moon to my ocean, regulating the tide of emotions within me. “Do you know her name?” he finally asked.

Again, I nodded. “Abigail.”

His answering nod was slow, thoughtful. He shifted his hands to his knees and pushed himself up. “Hang on,” he said, already walking to the apartment door. “I’ll be back in a second.”

After he shut the door, out of the corner of my eye I noticed something shiny on the coffee table, about a foot from where he’d been sitting. It was the little mirror pendant that afforded Dom’s soul a window out to the physical realm. The broken chain was gone, and a thin black leather cord had taken its place. I wasn’t quite ready to face Dom after my meltdown, but it was a comfort to know he was nearby.

Nik returned a couple minutes later with a tattoo machine in one hand and a small bottle of At ink in the other. “Ready to add her name to the list?” he said, sitting on the couch beside me. He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled my left arm out so it lay across his lap, then ran the tips of his fingers over the list of forty names. Of the dead. My dead.