Margo Halbeck, the shopkeeper who once drove staples to close cosmic doors, now faces the Unfastened—an ancient hunger for release that lives within her. As the clock ticks backward and ordinary objects hum with wrongness, Margo struggles to hold onto the people and things she loves. Lily, her young employee, begs her not to disappear. The cat watches. The Archivist, keeper of the record, awakens from his rest to witness the Unfastened's rise. Margo chose to be both stapler and release. Now that choice is tearing her apart.
