Toby, where are you, love? / Nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around...

  ____________

  Darkness seemed to fall over London slowly that night. Toby tried to warn Mrs. Lovett, he did. But nothing he said seemed to be getting through to her.

  Until she gave him a penny for some toffees...from a purse he'd seen before.

  "That's Signior Pirelli's purse!" he blurted out.

  "What? No it's not," she said, glancing at the small purple bag.

  "Yes it is!"

  "Now, now, Toby, it's just something Mr. T gave me for my birthday!"

  "Mr. Todd give it to you, and how did he get it?" When Mrs. Lovett protested, Toby said again, his voice rising in panic, "How did he get it? Two quid was in it, two or three...the guv'nor giving up his purse with two quid? Not for a minute. Don't you see...?"

  "Toby," she said, trying to calm him with a hand on his shoulder. But Toby wasn't listening. His mind was adding it all up, like the pie sums at the end of every day.

  "Pirelli's purse here," he said. "And it was in Mr. Todd's parlor the guv'nor disappeared..."

  Mrs. Lovett took his arm and sat him down firmly. "Toby, that's enough. Boys and their fancies," she scoffed. "Whatever will you think of next? How could you think such a thing of Mr. T, when he's been so good to us?"

  "Good," Toby muttered. The room went all blurry and he sniffled a little. "Good, is it, when you do everything in the world for him and he can't even listen? Can't even see you? Much less fancy you back!"

  For just a moment, anger flashed across Mrs. Lovett's tired face. But then her eyes grew bright by the firelight, and she embraced Toby without another word. Next thing he knew, she was inviting him down into the bakehouse to help her make a fresh batch of pies.

  ____________

  The bakehouse was dark, damp, and smelly. Good Lord, it stank. Mrs. Lovett led him across the room toward an oven with a blazing fire in. "See that drain? Goes straight to the sewers and the smells drift up," she explained. "Probably a couple rats gone home to Jesus too."

  She showed Toby the oven, and the meat grinder. It was dark, but he could see the reddish lumps inside the barrel. "You know the secret to getting the meat all juicy and tender?" she asked him. "Three times; you've got to put the meat through the grinder three times." She turned an enormous crank, and Toby stared as the pinkish grind slithered out the other end like snakes. At a nod from her, he scooped it all up and put it back in the barrel, and then he gave the crank a try.

  "You keep at that a bit," Mrs. Lovett said. Her voice cracked a little, and Toby looked up at her. She stood in front of the door, light from above making it so he couldn't see her face. "I'll...I'll be back in a while." She left, the iron bakehouse door slamming behind her with a great bang.

  Toby kept at his task for a while. After grinding two times more, he scooped the meat bowl away and off to the side like she'd shown him. He wiped some sweat off his brow. It was damned hot in here, with the oven and all.

  Mrs. Lovett wouldn't mind if he took a break, so he left the grinder and plucked up a pie from a tray nearby. "Sweet Polly Plunkett" sounded from above, twice, and Toby sang along cheerily: "I am a lass who alas loves a lad / Who alas has a lass loves another lad / Who once I had in Canterbury / 'Tis a row-dow diddle-dow-day, 'tis a row-dow diddle-dow-dee."

  He took a bite into the pie, and his eyes near rolled back in his head. Stronger flavors, this one, more coriander and some sage to boot. Tasted like Christmas! But the rapture was broken with an odd crunchy feeling. Curious, Toby pulled the bite back out of his mouth. Something sharp and off-white poked out of the meat, and he took a closer look.

  A fingernail? "Clumsy," he muttered to himself, taking a look at his nails. He took another few bites before another something strange hit his teeth. Something half squishy, half hard, with a solid core. Toby pulled the thing out. He had to hold it close to his face in the dim light.

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  It was a man's toe.

  At first, all Toby could feel was a sense of disgust. He tossed it and the pie onto the floor, exclaiming, "Ugh!" How on earth did that get into food? A human toe, of all things! He couldn't figure it at first, just stood there staring blankly at it, trying to get his head around it.

  But slowly, oh so slowly, things started to add up. Mrs. Lovett's flat refusal to share the pie recipe. The lack of meat receipts in the shop. The odd taste of the pies...unlike any meat he'd ever had...and Mr. Todd's vanishing customers. Toby's stomach turned and felt like it fell out between his legs.

  No. No, it's not possible. Mrs. Lovett wouldn't...would she?

  Shaking now, Toby looked slowly round the bakehouse. In a far corner, where Mrs. Lovett hadn't let him go, he saw a glimmer of something white. Something shiny. He went towards it, a pile of them under a tarp. It took every ounce of strength he had to reach out, to push that tarp away. Despite himself, Toby let out a shriek.

  Stashed under the tarp was a pile of bones – ribcages, arm and leg bones, hands, and even a skull – every last one of them human.

  Then Beadle Bamford's corpse fell through a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  ____________

  They would find him soon. It occurred to Toby as he was banging on the bakehouse door, screaming to be let out. Tears streamed freely down his face and bits of vomit still dribbled from the sides of his mouth. Just as he was thinking it, he heard the trapdoor slam shut above.

  Get out of here.

  But how? The bakehouse was small, the only doors the great iron one (locked) and the trapdoor high above. No ladder or nothing, no windows, and the chimney was too tight, he'd already tried it. There was nowhere to go. Toby tried to slow his breath, gasping in the dark, his brain whirling. He'd be next. The stench of the bakehouse stung in his nose and made his throat tighten. Raw, rotting human flesh. Fresh blood. The foulness of the sewer below.

  The sewer.

  Just an hour ago, the thought would've made Toby chuck. But now he tugged the heavy iron lid off the grate with a glad heart. Down below, the soft rush and dribble of water. He was thin enough to slide down it, but couldn't replace the lid. He tumbled down onto wet, smelly brick and scrambled to his feet, looking around.

  The London sewers were high as a church, and as echoey. Every step Toby took was frightfully loud as he sprinted as far as he could away from the lid. He couldn't go very far. Not unless he wanted to be lost down here forever. Rats squealed and scurried near his feet as he ran, trying to remember the directions. Left. Right. Another right. Straight. Left. Hurtling round a corner, he found a small hole in the brick and squeezed in, dislodging another rat. He could only pray they didn't bring torches.

  Faintly, echoing in the silent brick halls, he heard Mr. Todd calling, "Toby! Where are you, lad?"

  Toby shut his eyes and prayed silently.

  ____________

  It seemed like hours before they came near.

  Toby kept quiet, hearing his two guardians' voices. He tried to wrap his head around it all. Todd was killing his customers, Lord knew how many, and why? Toby had no idea. And Mrs. Lovett. His lovely Mrs. Lovett was in on it the whole time. The woman who'd clothed and fed him (he gagged a little), taken him to the park and wanted to move to the seaside. She'd got rid of the victims, the evidence, for a man who gave her nothing in return. And together, they'd fed all of London. They'd baked people in pies.

  They called his name, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Two demons come to torment him, rip out his guts and slice up his limbs and grind him up nice and juicy. Toby bit on his knuckles to stop from crying out as they came round the corner. Small mercy: they weren't carrying lights.

  But closer and closer they drew. Closer. Mr. Todd, stained up to the shoulders in blood, the beadle's. A silver razor, also stained a vibrant red, in his right hand. Mrs. Lovett behind him, red hair-band holding her curls back like always. Trailing Todd like always, a look of mixed terror and determination on her face. Toby shut his eyes as they passed within an inch of his hiding place, ready for the hands yanking him out to his fate –

  And they passed by him. Forcing one eye open, he watched the two shadows wander down the great arching halls of the sewer. Mr. Todd rounded a corner, beckoning impatiently to Mrs. Lovett. She nodded, and Toby relaxed a little.

  His hand brushed a pebble loose. It fell to the brick floor with a little plink, and she came back toward him. Mrs. Lovett's dark eyes met his, him squeezed into the hole. His heart stopped as, for a long while, she stared at him.

  Then she got close. She was crying, her cheap eye makeup running, a curl sticking to one cheek. Toby hardly dared to breathe. Slowly, very slowly, Mrs. Lovett raised one finger to her red lips.

  Then she turned, with a soft swish of her dress, and ran back down the sewer after Mr. Todd. Faintly, he heard her say, "Can't find him, love. Probably a rat, that. Let's keep looking." Their footsteps faded into the distance.

  To be safe, Toby waited long after they were gone. Counted to one hundred. Then he extracted himself from the hole. They'd gone off to his left, and then the other way from the path he'd used. Much as he'd rather not, going back toward Fleet Street was the only way not to get lost down here. On shaking legs, Toby started to wander back the way he came.