Pitching in the dark underbelly of a ship, a storm rattled outside in cracks and rumbles of thunder. Faint light streamed in through the cracks in the ceiling, and occasionally dust would shower him when the footsteps thumped overhead. Voices came and went. He had no care for them. "Lucy," he fought to whisper, but his voice caught in his throat. Bitter cold tormented him. He felt like they'd dropped him barren into the arctic ocean.

But it's summertime. His narrow eyes opened and then squinted against the sudden light as the door to his cell swung open. "Nellie!" He lurched forward against his chains when he recognized her silhouettes, wheezing, his chest grinding in pain. "Nell—I'm so sorry—" Tears started down his cheeks, and he couldn't remember why, but grief and longing tore his guts at the sight of her.

She drew nearer in slow, deliberate strides. He strained onto his knees to see her face in the dim light. The features gnarled into that of Beadle Bamford, and he spat in Sweeney's face. Then he opened his greasy, round mouth, and a child's voice emerged. "Mr. Todd! Mr. Todd, please, wake up!" A desperate wail. "Oh, no!" A fat, warm raindrop landed on his cheek.

"Ugh…" Consciousness returned sluggishly like a steamboat on a narrow river. The pain, acute, pierced his chest with every inhale. His eyelids fluttered, but he couldn't open them all the way. "Toby." A shudder coursed through his person, and he groaned. The shivers wouldn't cease; the snow penetrated all of his clothing and stung his skin.

Small hands roamed him, warm hands. His face tightened in distaste until Toby decided to cradle his cold face, and the warm hands felt very nice there on his swollen cheek and bruised temple. "Mr. Todd, sir." The hot tears continued to sprinkle him. "What happened? Who done this? Where's Mrs. Lovett?" He flopped into the wet slush. "Mr. Todd, please don't die!"

Calm him down. The dull memories leaked back into his brain one by one. Nellie, beautiful in her violet dress, swaying in the light of the ballroom, then in the moonlight. He remembered her most vividly. "I'm not dying, boy," he sighed, voice hoarse and weak. On his hands, he tried to push himself up. Broken glass dug into his palms. His cracked ribs ached, and he puffed out a shallow breath. Toby grabbed him round the shoulders and pushed him up, propping him against the stone wall.

The world spun around him like he rode a fast merry-go-round. Pinching his eyes closed, he bit his lip until the vertigo left him. "Mr. Todd, sir." Toby's meek and frightened voice drew his attention. Licking his lips, he tried to focus his eyes on the child, but several Tobys swayed back and forth in front of him, shimmering like a reflection in a rippling puddle. His mouth tasted like stale blood. He felt a gap where one of his back teeth no longer rested in its socket. "What can I do?"

In the inside pocket of his coat, he fumbled for his purse. "Go hire us a cab back to Fleet Street…" The pocket was empty. "Maybe." The other pocket also was unoccupied. "Stole my bloody purse, thieving greedy bastards." His eyes wandered to the gray December sky, still in the early morning, and cursed under his breath a slew of words that Nellie would not have wanted him to repeat in front of Toby.

"Who done this, Mr. Todd?" Toby shivered. "Where's Mrs. Lovett?"

They've baited the trap, and we're walking straight into it. "The beadle took her," he grunted. His scraped and battered face twisted in thought. What could they do? They had until Monday to find the beadle's home and free Nellie before they would marry and head to god knew where, untraceable. "Help me up." The boy took his blue hands and tugged him to his unsteady feet. Both staggered, Toby from his limp and Sweeney from his dizziness, until he found himself leaning on the wall again, a little more upright than before.

Toby pushed something into his frozen, uncooperative hand. "Your razor, sir." The blade still gleamed without the slightest drop of blood upon it. It left him unsatisfied. "Where are we going?"

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, though his sodden coat provided little warmth. His shoulder relied on the support of the building as he tested his unsteady legs. He took shallow breaths. Anything deeper sent shooting pain through his lower chest. "Home," he answered. Back to Fleet Street where he could collect more money and his thoughts, a plan. But a plan would have to hatch quickly. They couldn't toil on it.

"And what then?" Toby jogged after him.

Pausing at the corner for the boy to catch up, he kept his reply honest and short. "I don't know." The street was quiet, many people still in their homes catching up with the relatives they hadn't seen the day prior, servants unboxing what little gifts they had received from their masters. Of course, Fleet Street and its peasants would bustle about as busily as ever; they could not afford more than two days of no wages.

"But we're going to save Mrs. Lovett, aren't we?"

The snow crunched under his boots. "I'll do my damnedest to bring her home." He wished he would have fought for her. He wished he would have let the beadle kill him, so he didn't have to endure the prospect of losing Mrs. Lovett. The tale had repeated itself in such a morbid fashion that he couldn't bear it: The barber returned home to a different woman, but still she was beautiful, and still he was naive, so very naive.

They started down another street at a remarkably slow pace, and he wheezed with exertion, pausing at every street corner to lean on the building and catch his breath. His numb fingers and toes would barely bend, and the wind chapped his face. "Why would they do something like that to her?" Toby whispered, face apprehensive. "Why would he…" He shook his head. "I don't understand, Mr. Todd."

"It's better that you don't." A few wealthy children down the street howled in play, and snowballs flew about. Toby sank into his coat like a turtle, but Sweeney marched past them. He placed one chilled hand on the small of Toby's back to propel him a little quicker past the group, which paid them no heed. The pain in his knees and pelvis became more pronounced the longer he stayed upright, and his dazed mind wandered. Every few moments, an icepick jutted into his right eye.

How to save Mrs. Lovett. He tried to focus on the subject matter at hand, but whenever he took a step a little longer than the others, his family jewels sang a tune from the crunching they'd received under the boot of the guard. Bloody good thing I'm done having kids. Toby grabbed him by the elbow and snatched him back from the path of an oncoming carriage. "Watch out!" The boy clung to him, but to his surprise, the carriage halted there.

"Mr. Todd?" The driver from last night pulled his horses up tight and cast his whip aside. "Bloody hell, what happened to ya? Where's your lady friend? Christ almighty, trying to walk all the way back home? Go on, get in the cab."

"We don't have any money."

"I don't charge the injured and ill! Go on, hurry. I don't have any appointments for another hour. Goodness! I tell you, you can't trust any of those vultures for nothing. Tell me, is Mrs. Lovett okay? I warned her, I did, but it's hard to get anyone to believe anything about the men who are supposed to be protecting them, you know."

Toby scrambled up into the carriage and turned around to help Sweeney make the step into its bench. "Never been in one of these before," he whispered.

Sweeney kept his arms tight around his chest, unable to answer either the driver or Toby until the pain abated a bit, and then he said, "Mrs. Lovett's whereabouts are currently unknown, but I intend to find her." He put his hands through his stiff, frozen hair, and he wondered how awful he looked in the mirror. His face had swollen with a few bruises. He couldn't walk without a limp. His head ached with a fierce migraine. His split lip tasted of blood; his whole mouth tasted of blood.

"Noble heart and noble cause, sir. I must caution you, though, mind yourself if you're meddling in those affairs above your head…" The horses lurched forward through the slush and the snow at a quick pace. "I won't bother you with small talk, then, but hurry us on back. To Fleet Street, yes, sir?"

"Yessir." Leaning his head upon the window, he gazed at the drab stone streets. Regret curled in his gut. Why had he agreed to go to the stupid ball? He could free Johanna with his information, but it felt empty without Nellie there to appreciate it alongside him. Any assortment of ways could have led them to Johanna or Johanna to them. But he followed the whim of the world around him, and the world snatched away his happiness once again.

His eyelids descended, and in what felt like a mere second, Toby shook him awake. "C'mon, Mr. T. Thank you, sir!" chimed the boy to the driver, and Sweeney echoed, his voice lacking the enthusiasm and genuineness, pale expression dazed. He let Toby lead him into the pie shop. The fire blazed. The chairs had not budged since Mrs. Lovett had tidied them up on Christmas' Eve. The boy pushed him into the oversized armchair. "I'll get you some tea and dry clothes."

The exhaustion swamped him again, and he slumped over in the chair, fast asleep, before Toby could return with either the tea or the clothes, but his rest came fitfully. He dreamed of damp hands roaming his bare torso in a way that wasn't quite sensual enough for any woman to touch him. Toby pulled the binding tape tight around his broken ribs, and he wheezed awake. "Bloody hell!" he gasped. His wet coats and shirt lay discarded in the floor right beside his pants. He sat in the armchair in his knickers.

Toby staggered away in surprise. "S-Sorry!"

"What do you think you're doing?" Sweeney bit his tongue to restrain the stream of unkind words that burbled to the surface so that only his black eyes darkened, cross with rage.

He held up his hands innocently. "I's just binding your chest so the ribs don't move around as much, that's all!" Sweeney pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. His temples throbbed with every flash of light and every word. "Gotta get the wet clothes off so you don't catch the pneumonia and keel over, like. Just like Mrs. Lovett taught me." He limped a mite closer. "Mr. Todd? Are you okay?"

Peachy. "I'm fine." He pulled the bandage taut and fastened it. "Thank you." Toby had pure intentions. He couldn't lash out at the only innocent person within a ten mile radius; Nellie would be furious at him if he dared to leave Toby in a bad state. Casting his eyes aside, he noted the pile of fresh clothes and cup of lukewarm tea on the side table. But where he would go, what he could do, after he indulged in the newness? He drew a blank slate. What could an injured man and a boy from the workhouse do against the beadle in his wealth and his mansion and all his means to guard Nellie locked up tight in his own private fortress?

Alone, they could do nothing. Alone. "Alone," he repeated under his breath.

"Mr. Todd, sir?"

"Toby," he called, voice sharp but eyes bright. "I need you to go upstairs to my shop. Look under my mattress. I've got three or four quid there. Take as much as you need and run to the livery stable and get me a saddled horse and bring it back here. Can you do that?"

"Yessir." He hesitated. "Are we going to get Mrs. Lovett back?"

"We're going to try." He climbed unsteadily to his feet. "Go now, and hurry while we still have daylight." Toby dashed out the front door; the bells chimed in his wake, and Sweeney hurried to dress himself in the firelight. He knew how to free Johanna from the asylum, and with that information, he could barter for Anthony's assistance. And his revenge? It would come. It would come in good time, but it would come. He would not let the beadle walk with a clear conscience, not after what he'd done to Nellie.

The tepid tea ran down his throat in big gulps, and then he held his blue-tinted fingers in front of the fire until he could bend his joints with relative ease. He had slept for longer than he liked; the gray afternoon sun sank lower in the curling clouds overhead. But perhaps the darker the skies, the more plausible that they could avoid any detection. "We must be ready to fly once they're free," he said to himself, eyes to the window on Fleet Street where few people passed by. He stomped out of the pie shop and up to his room where he packed a bag of his valuables—the portraits of Lucy and Johanna, his last razor, two changes of clothes, a blanket—and then rushed downstairs to collect Toby's as well.

Toby didn't have many clothes, he found with some dismay, but he packed what wasn't reduced to rags along with the two mufflers Mrs. Lovett had sewn for him, his wig, and his reader. The box of toffees lay open and empty on the cot. "No self-restraint," he muttered.

But he couldn't linger on his musings, as he flew into Nellie's bedroom and stripped three dresses from her closet and balled them up into a bag, and then he added her work boots, given that she had left in uncomfortable heels. "What else would she want?" He hadn't a clue. She didn't seem to cherish much; she wore no wedding band, and he saw no jewelry box at all in her room. Under her mattress, he found her savings and a neatly folded baby blanket. Moths had eaten the latter so badly that he could hardly discern the color. He left it under the mattress so that she wouldn't know he had found it.

"What is taking that boy so long?" he growled under his breath, stuffing all of their bags into a larger backpack. Down the street, hooves clomped all too slowly for his tastes, and there he caught sight of Toby leading the horse by the reins, limping along at his average pace. "Good lord, lad, why wouldn't you get on him?" demanded the irked barber.

"Dunno how to ride a horse, sir. Never actually been so—ah…" The gelding lipped gently at the side of Toby's face. "So close to one before." His countenance paled in discomfort.

Sighing, Sweeney fought for his patience. "Of course you haven't." He threw the pack at Toby. "Put that on your back." Loosening the stirrups, he hauled himself onto the back of the sorrel horse, which circled and puffed at the foreign rider. "C'mon, give me your hand." Bending over, he extended his arm to the boy, but Toby backed away from him.

Big brown eyes gazed back at him with a marked fear. "It—It looks awfully high up…"

"Toby." He said the name in a soft but firm tone. "I need you to trust me. Come here and get on this horse with me so we can go save Mrs. Lovett. Give me your arm." He maintained eye contact, hoping to look genuine and trustworthy. The boy approached him, and he bent over to lift him onto the back of the horse. The gelding danced underneath them, and he tightened the reins.

The sidestepping of the nervous animal drove Toby's arms straight around Sweeney's waist and fastened there, his face planted in the square of the man's back. "Stable manager said he was a—he was a li'l green, sir," he whispered, voice weak as his face was pale. The horse sprang onto his hind legs in a half-rear, and Toby tightened his grip right in the center of Sweeney's bruised stomach. "Gonna fall and bust my head open, that's what I'm gonna do."

"Nonsense." He attempted to sound sure of himself, but he hadn't ridden a horse since the last summer he'd spent in Australia. "Hold on tight," he said, though Toby needed no encouragement to cling to him like a piece of lint. Then he spurred his ankles into the horse's sides, and the gelding lurched forward in a crooked, springy canter littered with small, intermittent bucks of protest at the command.

A blustery wind picked up and pushed against their backs, and snowflakes darted down in a shower of increasing speeds. The gray sky mingled with peach and navy with the sunset. "Where're we going, Mr. Todd?" Toby chattered once he had grown certain of his ability not to fall and die. He kept his face burrowed into the small of Sweeney's back to defend it against the sharp, cold wind.

"The shipyard!" he called in return. The street lamps gassed to light as it grew ever darker and visibility shrank, and he nudged the gelding into a faster gait. Dilapidated streets, broken cobblestone and brick, made their steed stumble; once, he lurched so hard that Sweeney feared he would fall to his knees and pitch them both. But once he had sight of the docks, he hauled the horse up and patted the sweating neck, the legs trembling.

Only one lone sailor walked from the dock onto the street, and Sweeney bumped the horse for him to approach the man. "Sir!" he shouted through the howling winds of the incoming storm. The man jerked to attention and then scrambled in their direction. "Do you know where I may find a sailor named Anthony Hope out of Plymouth on the ship Bountiful?"

The young man unraveled his muffler and removed his hat. "Mr. Todd, sir," the sailor greeted. "What's brought you all the way to this side of the city in weather like this? And on a horse, no less."

"I require assistance that I hope you can offer. Please tell me there's somewhere nearby we can speak privately."

"Let's go to the cabin. Nobody will be in it at this hour, I don't suppose." The shanty he pointed to had dark windows. It had a post for him to tie the horse, and without orders, Toby dropped to the ground. He swayed on his feet but steadied himself before he fell into the wet snow. Sweeney dropped down beside him and tied the gelding there in front of the porch.

The wooden cabin offered little warmth, bearing no fireplace, only a sofa, a teakettle, and a small kitchen area. Anthony struck a match and lit a ring of candles. "Good lord, Mr. Todd, your face! Somebody's beaten the life half out of you." He squinted through the faint light. "What's this about? How can I help you?" Toby sank onto the couch and curled up with his head on the armrest, ignoring the two men.

"I have news on Johanna," Sweeney began.

Eyes alight, Anthony cut in, "Do you?" but Sweeney held up his hand.

"She's being held at Fogg's mental asylum. But wait, listen to me. I need your help, please."

"Anything, sir." Earnest and genuine and so very kind, the young man swept his hair from his eyes and leaned nearer. "What is it I can do?"

"My neighbor, Mrs. Nellie Lovett. She was kidnapped." Spare him the details, he warned himself. "She and I foolishly attended a masquerade ball hoping to hear Johanna's whereabouts on your account." And only on your account; it had absolutely nothing to do with me and my desires. He hoped that Anthony would not question it. "But we were discovered. The beadle took Nellie—Mrs. Lovett—after several weeks of toiling for her favor turned fruitless, and I…" And I love her, and he can't have any of that. He tightened his jaw a bit. "I was in the way."

A vein bulged in Anthony's temple. "There is no justice in this city. The officers of the law are as vicious and as corrupted as their masters." He tugged his coat tighter around his shoulders. "I'll help you get her back, Mr. Todd. You've been nothing but good to me, and I hope we can all escape this bloody city and attend some other wondrous land where the men are kinder and the law more compassionate."

I don't believe in such a place. "Anthony, I must ask you to bear us all out of the port and onto sea. And if we bother you, you can dump us on the nearest shore opposite England, but none of us are safe anywhere on this island any longer." The sailor continued his smooth nods of agreement. "I know where the beadle lives, but I haven't a clue how to get inside such a place, let alone without detection."

Biting his lip, the young man hesitated. "Johanna would know." Sweeney eyed him with skepticism, but he hurried, "She's spent almost her whole life walled up in a mansion with locked doors. She knows how to run away, hide, climb better than anybody I've ever met. But if they've had her locked away in Fogg's for this many months, it must be impenetrable—she would've found a way out by now." His hands shook. "That place is a fortress, isn't it? I've never seen anyone go in or out."

"I know how to get inside the asylum. If you're certain that Johanna can help us free Nellie, but we're on a deadline. The beadle will leave with her on Monday."

"That gives us, what, not even forty-eight hours. How can we get into the asylum?"

Dark eyes transfixed on Anthony's, he said, "All the wigmakers and barbers of London get their human hair from the bedlamites. The right price, they'll sell you the hair off of any lunatic's head. We'll go in together and request hair the exact shade of Johanna's, trusting that you know that, of course." He paused. "Do you?"

Nodding, the sailor murmured, "Yellow—more flaxen—or ashen—perfectly lovely like a the center of a daisy in the middle of the summer." The most professional description of hair ever known. Licking his lips, he asked, "Then we'll make off now? If we can spring her tonight, then we can make it to the beadle's and scope things out."

"Have we time?"

"The night is young, it's only eight-thirty."

Sweeney stood. "Stock your ship, then, with any rations you can find, and I'll get you another horse for you from the livery stables so we can fly with haste once we have freed her."

They shook hands once, and then they split ways, leaving Toby asleep on the sofa.

..

Once he had returned with the second horse, he watched Anthony and Toby lugging a crate between the two of them onto the ship, Toby most recognizable by his prominent limp. Then they carried a second crate and then a third before they returned to him. "I've got rations for maybe a month," said the sailor as he mounted the mare. "It should be more than enough to get us into Belgium or France, where we can make better preparations." He gathered his reins while Sweeney's horse continued to prance, antsy, beneath him, the rider attempting to pull Toby up onto his back. "Which way to Fogg's?"

The boy scrambled and almost dragged them both off before he rested with his face planted snug into Sweeney's back, arms cinched around his middle. This is how the horse feels. "Straight and then a left on Fourteenth Street," he replied, bumping the gelding with his ankles. In response, the sorrel horse sprang onto his hind legs and lashed his forelegs at the air. "Bloody hell, you stupid brute, go forward!" He threw his weight forward to keep them from flipping over backward. A firmer boot and a smack to the shoulder gave them a few crooked jumps until they sorted out the pace, and Anthony kept his mare several feet away from the unpredictable beast.

Howling winter winds muffled the sounds of the hoofbeats on the slushy gray street. Sweeney pulled his steed up a little under a block away anyway, just in case anyone had their ears pointed to the streets in search of racing horses. "Toby, you stay out here with the horses." From the lad's backpack he took a pound coin, and then he used his arms to wheel him around and bent to look directly into exhausted brown eyes. "And if something goes wrong in there where there are officers called, or one of us is hurt or killed, don't you wait around to find out anything. You get on this mare and you gallop her the hell out of London. Don't look back. Do you understand me?"

"Yessir." A fat teardrop rolled down Toby's cheek, and his lips quivered.

Sweeney dabbed it away with his thumb. "Good lad." He patted the boy's shoulders and left him there on the street corner, a set of reins in either hand. "C'mon, Anthony. Do you have a means to defend yourself?"

"A pistol, sir, but I've never used it before. It's never been necessary."

"It may be now. Keep your alert high." He strode confidently, trying to pinch the wheezing out of his breath so he didn't look or sound as pained. "I'm trusting you to recognize her. If we come out of here with the wrong girl, we won't be able to go back inside."

"I'll know her, sir. I wouldn't forget her face if I never saw it again until the day I die."

Approaching the door to the asylum, Sweeney took the door knocker and banged thrice upon the heavy wooden door. Then he waited. A minute passed of fidgeting and anxiety until the lock clicked, and the hatch opened, revealing the candlelit face of a white-haired man in an equally white coat. He squinted out into the winter weather. "How may I help you two gentlemen this evening?" he proposed, voice slimier than the inside of the beadle's mouth.

He cleared his throat and pulled himself up a little taller in spite of the pain in his chest. "Very sorry for the late hour, Doctor Fogg. My name is Mr. Sweeney Todd, and I run a tonsorial parlor on Fleet Street. I had hoped to exchange with you prior to now, but given that my apprentice and I were in the area, I opted to stop by. I have an extreme interest in purchasing human hair from this establishment, and if you would entertain, I can promise it will be worth your time." As a token, he held out the pound coin to the doctor.

Fogg leaned forward and squinted at the coin in a distrustful way, but once he saw the engraving upon it, greed overtook his greasy face, and he tugged the door open. "Come in, gentlemen, come inside. No problem at all." He ushered them into the building. "Any of my children will certainly grant your their hair. Now, you must understand that it is hard to maintain quality in conditions such as these—what, with some of them having a rather difficult mental state—but you can wash and condition it yourselves back at the parlor and give it a proper luster." A pink tongue dashed across his thin lips and left a whitish smear in its wake. "What color hair is it you're looking for, sirs?"

In a voice smooth as a cat's purr, Sweeney answered, "Yellow." Just like I always imagined. His heart surged into his throat, its rapid beats causing pain to his chest, and he worked hard to measure his breathing. "Somewhere between ashen and flaxen. My customer has very particular tastes." A smirk teased his lips. He dared not let it blossom with the doctor's eyes upon him.

"You can have your exact pick, sir," replied Fogg as he led the way down a lantern-lit corridor to a stairwell. "I've got four rooms of blondes: one for young men, one for young women, one for old men, and one for old women. Are you looking for a lady's hair?"

"Absolutely."

"That's excellent! My children have such a fine selection…" At the sound of Fogg's voice, a sudden jostling of noise ripped through the walls. Some shrieked, some cackled, some moaned. A few faces threw themselves against the bars of the window on the door. "Pay them no heed. It's how they demonstrate their love for me." The dungeon smelled of urine and mold, and rats skittered. He paid one glance to the right. The woman he saw there, no older than forty, had great mats of brown hair dangling into her eyes so she couldn't see at all. With one emaciated arm, she grasped the bar. Their love, that's right.

At his side, he felt Anthony's breath waft over his neck; the young sailor flanked him so closely that their legs and arms brushed, and he resisted the urge to snap for personal space. A bead of nervous sweat trailed down the man's temple. "Here, my friends. Children, stand back, stand back. These two lovely men are here to take some hair from one of you."

Sweeney's stomach twisted as he followed the doctor into the room that reeked as badly as Mrs. Lovett's cellar. Whimpering, singing, rocking, few of the women paid heed to the doctor and his words. The ones who noticed him cowered away like sheep from a wolf. The door clanged closed after Anthony. "Take your pick, gentlemen. I do apologize for the poor lighting. I can't allow my girls any access to fire."

They sit in the dark all day long. "Hm." He pretended to consider, eyes fanning the crowd while he waited for Anthony to interrupt. Then he spotted her—she could have been Lucy, a carbon copy, sitting in a threadbare muslin gown with bare feet and eyes cast down. "Her." He didn't intend to say the word aloud, but it escaped. She flinched, her head snapping upward. For the first time in almost sixteen years, he met her eyes, black as his own.

"Mr. Todd, sir?" breathed Anthony.

Before he could even glance back at the other man, Johanna sprang to her feet. She didn't look at Sweeney. She looked straight through him. "Anthony!"

The sailor drew his pistol, and Sweeney forked a razor into his hand. "What is the meaning of this?" demanded Fogg. He bounced back to his feet and leapt at Anthony. In surprise, the young sailor dropped the gun. Light flashed, the bullet cracked, and smoke filled the room.

He shielded his eyes for a moment, and when he looked again, Fogg lay on the floor clutching a wound in the center of his gut. "You're a bloody fool," Johanna whispered. Her hand tremored violently with the pistol still in its sweaty grasp. Her round black eyes moved to Anthony's face. "Will we be married on Sunday?" she sang softly. "That's what you promised, married on Sunday. That was last August."

"And I'm the fool." They embraced and kissed.

Sweeney started out of the cell. "Not to rush your reunion," he growled, "but we are still on a deadline if we are to get to Mrs. Lovett and fly tonight before the law arrives!"

Johanna gazed at him with a peculiar look. He did not make eye contact with her again, carefully diverting himself from her entirely, and Anthony, who did not perceive the uncertain transition between his intended and his friend, dragged her after the barber and slammed the door to the cell shut. "Yessir—" They stalked out of the dungeon and up the stairs, back through the corridor. "Johanna, this is my friend, Mr. Sweeney Todd. He's the one who found out your whereabouts. But we need your help to free his neighbor, who's been kidnapped by the beadle, and then we're all going to sail somewhere far away."

"The rotten beadle," she repeated under her breath. The door to the asylum slammed behind them. Down the street, Toby waited with the horses. "I'll do anything I can to aid you, Mr. Todd, if it's to you I owe my freedom." The boy approached. The streetlights cast him in a glistening halo of silver. "But I can't help but think that I've met you before—heard your voice, perhaps."

"Perchance you have," he rumbled in return. Still, he did not look at her.

"Do you have the time, Mr. Todd?" Anthony rubbed his hands together

From his pocket, he tugged the pocketwatch that Nellie had gotten him for Christmas. Just yesterday. "We've fifteen minutes until midnight." He put it away. "Let's go, then, before we waste our limited time. Toby!" he called, voice sharp. "Get Miss Barker the boots out of the backpack and a heavier dress. Then we'll head to the beadle's house."

Behind, he heard Anthony whisper, "Is that your surname?" and her reply in an equally soft voice, "Yes, but I haven't a clue how he knows it."