Basil started panting in great bursts. Amy studied the leather thongs tying his wrists. They had been stretched so tight that their knots were like steel. Then she saw that Basil’s weight had pulled out the screws on one side of the Mungo base plate. She pressed the sole of her shoe against the wall, yanked on the bar, and Basil’s weight did the rest. He fell face first onto the floor, catching it on his shoulder and neck, howling in pain as the bell jangled wildly.

With the tension off his bonds, Amy was able to pick apart the knots. She slipped his feet through the leather loops and gently lowered them to the floor. More complicated was the cage locked around his skull; she tried twisting the bolt threaded through the collar and gasped with relief when it started to turn. After that, it was a simple matter of spinning it loose, opening the hasp, and flinging it across the cell.

Freed from its weight, Basil lay in a tangled heap, panting, with hot tears running down his face.

“I’m going to turn you over,” Amy said.

When she rolled him onto his side, he gasped. Amy grabbed his arms, pulling them out from underneath his body. She rubbed his wrists, trying to restore sensation. “Can you hear me?” she asked.

“My arm,” Basil asked. “Is it broken?”

Amy had no idea. She didn’t know what a broken arm looked like.

“We’re getting out of here,” she said. “The store will try to stop us. It’ll disorient you, get inside your head, try to confuse you and control you. But if you stay focused, you can block it out. You have to fight, do you understand?”

Basil looked pained. He closed his eyes.

“I told you to go,” he said.

“When have I ever done what you told me?” Amy said.

Basil made a face, and Amy couldn’t tell what it was. His lips stretched tightly over his bloody teeth and his cheeks and forehead crinkled up. She realized he was smiling.

“S’responsible,” he muttered.

“What’s that?”

He cleared his throat and spat out blood. “You’re Shop Responsible,” he said. “I knew it.”

With Amy’s help, Basil pushed himself into a seated position and leaned against the wet plaster wall.

“It was the warden,” he whispered. “Josiah Worth. He did this to me. He said I was weak, ineffective. He said he would manage the people in my care.”

“You’re a fine manager, Basil.”

He shook his head. “Where’s Trinity?”

“She’s hurt,” Amy said. “But she’s still in the store. Matt’s trying to find her.”

“He’s safe?”

“Not really,” Amy said. She hesitated, not sure she could say the next part out loud. “I think Ruth Anne is gone.”

“Gone how?”

“Dead,” she said.

Amy swallowed and felt a piece of glass in her throat.