Sorry it took so long! I was having immense writer's block, but I'm back! And I know this chapter's short, but it's good, trust me. Unless my partner is lying.

Ignore that last part. I'm sure she told the truth... right...

The boy whirled around, a look of terror on his face.

I paused. Was I really that terrifying?

He's just surprised, the girl reassured. I didn't know who she was kidding.

"What the heck, Tamara!" the boy hissed, scrambling backward without taking his eyes off my shadow. He seemed to be getting over his surprise fast, though; now he looked angry. "First you keep stuff from me, now you're hiding a killing machine in the very room that we're standing in –"

"Calm down!" she snapped with startling force, her voice reverberating in the waterlogged room.

Everything seemed to freeze while she composed herself. The boy just stared at her.

"I mean," she continued evenly, "we need to take a deep breath and understand each other right now. I don't have all the answers, and neither do you, but maybe we can just try to figure things out. Okay?"

The boy looked daggers at her, and I thought he was at his boiling point, but he simply said, "Fine."

The girl took a deep, trembling breath. "Okay. Hollow, my name is Tamara, and this is Evan."

I cocked my head. What was a name?

The girl sighed. "You have got to be kidding me."

"What?" asked the boy.

She glanced from me to him. "He doesn't know what a name is."

The boy blinked. "You're joking."

I watched this exchange, feeling frustrated. So what if I didn't know some random word? I could still bite off their heads in under two seconds.

The girl heard this and stopped grinning. "Are you sure you don't know what a name is?" she inquired.

I concentrated (which is hard for a Hollow to do, in case you didn't know). It was there, the word, in my mind, but I couldn't drag it into the light.

The girl rolled her eyes. "Please, let me."

As though reaching a hand into my mind, she raised one arm, mentally plucked a thought from the recesses of my ravaged memories, and made me remember the word "names".

Wow. You're names. Your names are Tamara and Evan, I said.

"What's it – what's it saying?" the boy named Evan said fearfully. Evan. A name. I could call them by names.

The girl smiled. Tamara. The name of the one who could read my mind. The one who could help me. Tamara.

"It's a he, Evan," she said. "And he's just learning our names."

Names, I said again. I wondered if buildings could have names. Or trees. Or Wights.

Suddenly my happiness drained away. I was a monster, like a Wight. And I didn't have a name.

Tamara frowned at me. "One sec," she said, gaining a confused look from Evan.

She reached into my mind again. This time, she was looking farther back, to a time when I couldn't even recall.

And she pulled out another word.

Peter.

I blinked. Was that my name? I asked.

Tamara nodded slowly. "Yes, I think." To the terribly confused Evan, she added, "I think our Hollow's name is Peter."

I sat there, stunned. For a moment, the normal torturous agony of being a Hollowgast didn't affect me, and I was a person in my mind. I had been a real person years ago. I had a name.

Peter.

Thank you, I said to the girl. Thank you.