Page 50 of The Road to Ruined

"You can look upstairs, and then go back downstairs," he says.

I speed walk toward the staircase ahead of him, scarfing down the rest of the burrito on my way up. Both the staircase and the landing have cable wire instead of wooden posts as a guard rail—every drunk girl's worst nightmare. I pass a sparsely furnished open loft, two bedrooms identical to the one downstairs, both seemingly untouched, and then come to a third one.

This room is also identical; it's clean, the bed is made with the same dark linens, and there aren't any windows. But there's ashelf lined with books and a computer with three monitors set up—all currently dark and powered off. And beside the bed sits a copy ofThe Count of Monte Cristowith a bookmark about two-thirds of the way through.

And there's one more difference—this room has an attached bathroom. I step inside and inhale deeply, immediately hit with the same piney scent of the cologne I noticed on his skin last night. The floormat is still wet when I step onto it, and condensation runs down the shower door. There's a razor and a toothbrush next to the sink. I pick up the latter and run my thumb over the bristles. They're still wet, too.

"I told you."

I almost jump. I look up into the mirror and see Luca standing behind me in its reflection. "Told me what?"

"He drinks coffee, wears cologne when pretty girls come over, and brushes his teeth. He's just a man, Teagan."

"Get out," Bone Saw growls. I drop the toothbrush as he grabs me by my arm. "This is not what I meant."

"I'm sorry," I tell him. "I didn't mean to."

He sighs, releasing me. "Who were you talking to?"

"I don't think you want me to answer that," I say. "I have some medications—at home—that I need. I see things that aren't there sometimes."

"Still?"

"Yeah…"

"Can you tell the difference? Between what's real and what isn't?"

"I think so. It just…makes me feel safe. I'm lonely."

"Were you taking these medications when you spent half a week in bed in a dark room?"

I nod.

"Then I think you're fine without them for a few days."

Days?

I gesture toward the books on the back wall. "Can I look at your—"

"No," he cuts me off. "Get out."

I turn and leave the room without another word, but if those are his books—and he's reading them, so I bet they are—then all of the classical music is probably his, too. And maybe this is more of a home than he's let on.

And if that's true, then Fake Luca must be right. Bone Saw is just a person.

"There are a few places on the body where you can stab someone to ensure they die quicker, or at least make it harder for them to come back at you or call for help. Do you know what they are?"

Bone Saw stayed upstairs in his room for the rest of the day. I spent mine looking through the house, searching for additional evidence of his humanity. When I didn't find any, I started going through his records for the same thing. But there wasn't anything with lyrics—nothing denoting definitive emotion—and when it became clear that was the case, I cracked a few in half for good measure before stuffing them back in their sleeves.

And then he came downstairs, gave me some loose, plain dark clothes to change into, and told me to braid my hair.

"Not really," I tell him. "The mushy parts? I didn't go to serial killer college. Or any college at all, actually."

"Major arteries," he says, ignoring me. He runs a knife over my neck, stopping at that soft spot just below my pulse. "Carotid…" He traces a line down the base of my throat, past my shoulder blades, stopping just above where Declan's initial is carved into my chest, and digs the point of the knife in just enough to draw blood. "And subclavian. This one runs across…like this. That's how close he was to killing you, Teagan; there's no way he didn't know. Maybe he even wanted to."

I swallow hard. Maybe he did—or maybe he was careful. He did say I was squirming too much.

What's left on the inside, this mangled version of my former self with no home and no real place to exist, looks the monster in front of me in the eyes and replies, "Well…he did it anyway, didn't he?"

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