This was her third shower since finally arriving home at 1:00 A.M. A Black Harbor investigator had dropped her off after he’d taken her statement. He was fortysomething, she’d guessed, with brown hair and a five-o’clock shadow, and shorter than her. He said his name was Devine, or something like that. She sat in the back seat of his unmarked vehicle, behind the cage, while he followed the GPS coordinates to her address. It wasn’t her first time in the back seat of a cop car. She remembered being eight years old, wrapped in a fleece blanket and hugging her Bart Simpson doll as two middle-aged investigators muttered things like “Jesus Christ,” and “Goddamn house of horrors.” That was when she’d learned that the back of cop cars wasn’t just for criminals, but victims, too.

“Victim.” She hated that word. Even “survivor” was starting to have a sour taste. Why not “endurer” or “outlaster”? She was more than a victim, wasn’t she? And yet, she’d seen Investigator Devine mark her with a V on his paperwork last night. Technically, she supposed she was a victim. After all, the suspect had driven off in her car.

She wiped the steam off the mirror. The woman who stared back looked as though she hadn’t slept for days. Purple half-moons cupped her eyes. Her skin was wan and snow white. Her mouth was open, just a little, as though she’d been frozen mid-speak, the words caught in her throat. A row of bottom teeth peeked from behind her bluish lip. They looked like piano keys.

Victim. An ugly word for an ugly person. V was for “vulnerable.” It made her feel small and weak, which perhaps she was, but did it need to be broadcast to the world?

But V was for “villain,” too. And she had been that, hadn’t she? While she’d whiled away in Chicago in a little place called The Ruins. Yes, she’d had something of her own, once. Before it burned to the ground and the only possession she had to her name was a blackened key and a note.

My Ruin: All roads lead back to home.

Well, she was home now, standing naked in her parents’ unfinished basement bathroom. Exposed two-by-fours stood behind her like prison bars, tufts of pink insulation stapled between them. Her eyes grazed the sink that had become her makeshift vanity, littered with her makeup: eyeliner, mascara, and a palette of red eye shadow swatches. She picked up a tube of concealer and dabbed it on her skin.

A message from Bennett Reynolds floated on her phone’s steamed-up screen. She read the preview without opening it. We should do that again sometime, Morgan Mori.