note: So, I'm finally back from four days in DC, and more than a little upset about missing four days of 1K and four (make that 8 to 12) cups of tea. I love my routine, alright? Apologies in advance for this chapter... especially to Falco, who is already mad at me (now I'm in hiding).

twenty: release

Unquestionably, the mood in the house the next morning was even more somber than usual. It was no longer raining outside, but the street was full of large puddles and the filth that floated in them. Swifty had built a loud fire that constantly hissed and spat embers and ashes at the crooked wire grate, so that if you were standing too near and not paying attention, you were apt to get burned. That's why I concluded that everyone, including the damn house itself, was in a bad mood.

The exception was Boots, if just for a little while. He was incredibly relieved to find that Dutchy was all better. He seemed concerned about Sofia, but didn't appear to be too worried about it – in his mind, she was just taking longer than usual and would show up sooner or later when we least expected it… like the night she had been in our room at the Brick. I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise, and Swifty wasn't really speaking with anyone, so we left it at that.

I didn't even want to think about how few hours of sleep I'd gotten. We'd gone to bed late and had to wake up early to get a good start on our trip to visit Spot. Boots was less than thrilled about going to Brooklyn, even when we reminded him that he'd never been to this Brooklyn before – that it was the Other Brooklyn. He just shook his head and stared at the fire.

I gave up after a few minutes and left Dutchy with him as I went into the kitchen to consult with Swifty. I didn't feel ready to go and confront Spot. To be honest, I was a little anxious. I don't know why I thought Swifty would help with that. If he was embarrassed about his display the night before, he didn't really show it. His eyes, though, had dark circles and were hauntingly distant. I had to wonder if last night was the only night he hadn't gotten any sleep. I was beginning to think that it really had been awhile.

He was stirring some of his oatmeal when I came in, but he seemed to have been expecting me, because as soon as the door swung closed behind me, he offered one closed fist in my direction. He did it without making eye contact or even turning, but I put a palm under his hand nevertheless. He opened his hand and I caught Sofia's locket as it fell, then looked at him questioningly.

"She left it," he said simply. His voice was a little hoarse, so he cleared his throat and then turned out the stove.

"I thought she had been wearing it?" I said, studying the little oval.

"Yeah, well…" he shrugged. "I found it this morning. So she forgot it." He paused a second. "…or she left it."

"And you think I should bring it to Spot?" I asked. His pointed glance was enough of an answer. He dumped the oatmeal unceremoniously into four bowls and shoved two in my hands, then made for the door. He was about to shoulder it open when he hesitated and took a half step back. He looked over his shoulder and regarded me silently for a moment.

"You should think about getting rid of the kid today," he said. I frowned – I'd forgotten completely, but… a promise was a promise. And we'd held onto him for a while.

"Yeah," I said, troubled for some reason. He disappeared through the door but for a second I was rooted in place. "Yeah…" Then I set the bowls down on the table and took a tiny dish from one of Swifty's cupboards. I pinched out some of the brown sugar and stirred it into one of the bowls, then backed out of the kitchen and handed the bowl to Boots, who accepted it glumly. I sat next to him on the couch and we all dug in. After the first bite he kind of grinned a little, and I winked at him when Swifty wasn't looking.

"So, are you still nervous about Brooklyn?" I asked once I took a breather from stuffing my face. He nodded, mouth full. I looked at Dutchy, then at Swifty, whose eyes were fixed on his breakfast. "Okay…" I said. "What would you think if I told you that you didn't have to go?"

He rested his bowl on his lap, thought for a second, and shrugged. "Dunno. I do wanna help you an' Dutch."

"You've helped us out a lot already," Dutchy reminded him kindly.

"See, we were thinking," I continued slowly. "We were thinking that maybe this would be a good time to drop you off wherever you need to go, now. You know, on the way out of town… so to speak."

"…Okay," he said, and went back to eating. Dutchy and I exchanged glances.

"You know we'd rather keep you around," said Dutchy. "But we can't. We gotta get you to your next home, where you can work and live and all that good stuff you aren't getting just roaming around with us. Besides," he added ruefully, "we did promise."

Boots just nodded. He scraped out the last of his oatmeal and then reached deep into his pants pocket and fished out a crumpled piece of paper, which he handed to me, still not really meeting my eyes. Swifty stood abruptly and went back into the kitchen.

I glanced down at the note. I didn't know the name – Greymalkin – but the address I could find. It wasn't on the way to Black's Drop, the door we would be using to get to the Other side, but it would be simple enough to take a loop around and hit both stops. I folded the paper up and stuck it in my vest, then finished the last of my own bowl and took it into the kitchen.

Swifty was standing at the sink basin, his hands at the edge. His flask was open and on its side beside him. There was a tiny window that showed the tinier yard behind the house, and he was staring so intently out it that I didn't dare disturb him. I set my bowl on the island as quietly as possible and returned to the main room, ready to leave this unhappy house.

Dutch and Boots must have recognized that look in my eyes, or my stance, because they stood as soon as I came back. Dutch glanced at me with a question in his eyes, but I just shrugged and jerked my head toward the kitchen door. I didn't think Swifty would be moving for a while, and I certainly didn't think he was planning on seeing us off at this point. Boots looked more than a little disappointed.

"You can go say goodbye if you want," I told him. He considered it for a second, even took a step or two toward the door, but ultimately he decided against it and turned his back. I knocked the bottom of his chin and said, "Cheer up, kid. It's gonna be fine, you'll be all settled before you know it and you'll have forgotten about the likes of us soon as we're out the door."

He offered up half a smile and I grinned fully in return. Dutchy caught on and cuffed him on the head. They play fought out the door and I followed, shaking my head as I went through the hall. I closed the door behind myself and, feeling the cool weight of the locket around my neck, scanned the street ahead. Yesterday at this time, I probably would have said, "This is it. Now there's a light at the end of the tunnel." Now that Sofia was gone, I wasn't so sure. We would find her, though; we had to. We weren't about to let Specs down when we had already come this far.

The more we walked and the further we got away from that sad place, the more the atmosphere around us changed. We talked more, smiled more. Boots was more animated, and the air seemed almost… charged. I think it was Boots' hope. We were so upbeat about the whole thing that he could only hold out for so long before he began to believe it, began to realize that this was his new start and it was all just the beginning of a big adventure.

He believed it, and Dutch believed it, and I found myself believing it too, despite the fact that usually I would be thinking the opposite way. I wondered if Dutchy was rubbing off on me, if his optimism was contagious. That was a frightening thought.

The address on the slip was a bit of a walk from Swifty's, but only a shortcut away from Black's Drop, the place where Dutchy and I would be departing the Dark. I was more nervous about that than anything. I didn't want to see Spot (especially with bad news of Sofia) and I didn't want to go to Brooklyn. I didn't even want to go to the Other side, though I couldn't figure out why that was.

There was a sort of stale breeze that morning, and a little fog on the streets. Anything was better than the seemingly constant rain we'd had to put up with. I watched the mist wash over my shoes and listened to Boots chatter away as we walked. Dutchy, walking up ahead next to him, was doing a pretty good job putting up with all of it.

"Greymalkin," Boots said, as if trying the word on for size. "I dunno if I like that."

"No last name, huh?" said Dutchy.

"Nope. Guess not. Well, not that I know anyhow."

"Race, you never heard of a Greymalkin?" Dutchy asked over his shoulder. "I thought you knew everyone!"

"Nah," I said. "Suppose we must run in different circles."

"Yeah, you run around in circles," Boots cracked with a cheeky grin. I reached forward to smack him, but missed. "Too slow, old man!" he crowed. I just rolled my eyes and pointed left at the intersection.

"So, what d'ya think it's gonna be?" Dutchy asked him.

"Dunno," he admitted with a shrug. "I guess something to do with my… you know…"

"What?" There was a pause, in which Boots looked intently at Dutchy, who realized and said, "Oh. Oh, yeah, 'course. Your… um, power, or whatever." Another pause. "Say, what is that, anyways?"

Boots smiled widely, probably glad for the excuse to boast. He tapped a finger at the corner of one eye. I sped my pace up a little, curious.

"I can see," he said cryptically. To Dutchy's credit, he waited quite patiently for the rest of the explanation. "I can see… in the dark. I can see… at night." He blinked a few times, grinned again, and then skipped ahead a few paces. I fell back, mentally kicking myself. It was all too obvious. The book at Madame Proulx's library. The locket, buried in ash and debris. Dutchy groaned aloud and I could tell his mind was going through the same steps.

"And I thought I was getting good at this," he grumbled to me.

"I thought I was good at this!" I agreed, shaking my head. We watched Boots stumble along in front, and then I started to notice numbers and landmarks.

"Hey, whoa," I said, throwing a hand in front of Dutchy's chest. He stopped with a grunt and called to Boots. "Yeah, this is it," I said to myself. "Boots! You walked past it, come on."

Boots ran back to us and slid to a stop, almost falling over in the process. The building was grand, but fake, I could tell that straightaway. It was a false front as flimsy as cardboard, maybe one good gust of wind away from falling flat on the street.

Dutchy glanced first at me, then shrugged a little and stepped up to knock on the door, which was a natural wood color and had a bronze plate with the buildings' number engraved on it. There was no doorknob. The door opened before he could even raise a hand. Inside, a short man with a long beard and dark, dark eyes took a good look at us before stepping aside and waving us in. Dutchy went first, then Boots, and then I. The short man pushed the door shut behind us, cutting off the street and the fog and, oddly enough, sending a strange little chill down my spine.

I focused on walking straight ahead, even put a confident hand on Boots' shoulder. He twisted his neck around to smile encouragingly up at me, and that smile was charged just like the air around us had been before. I raised an eyebrow in return and he laughed a little and went to catch up to Dutchy.

We were led into a sort of lobby or parlor type room first. It was large and open, with huge ceramic tiles covering the floor and a tall, tall ceiling. Furniture was scattered all over the place, couches and chairs and end tables all tastefully covered and arranged. The short man held up his hand, indicating that we should stop here, and disappeared around a corner. I took it all in, the room and the stuff, and tried to figure out how much it all could be worth. It was strange. Originally I'd thought that the front outside was just old, something of past grandeur that was supposed to hide the dump that existed beyond the double doors. But now I realized that it was exactly the opposite. The façade was falling apart (or so it seemed) while the inside of the place was bleeding money.

The man came back and beckoned again, never speaking. We obliged and left the large room to go down a very short hallway, which emptied out into a courtyard of some kind.

Everything that followed happened so fast that I barely had any time to process it. A new man, tall and lean and with a long beard like the other's, approached us. He barely gave Dutchy and I a passing glance before turning his gaze to Boots.

"You're Lucas?" he asked. Boots nodded, suddenly shy, and kind of inched back closer to where Dutch and I were standing. The man looked him up and down and then kind of nodded to himself, and said, "Fine. Come with me."

Boots looked up at us and smiled nervously. I opened my mouth to say something, some kind of sudden, last minute goodbye, but before I could get any words out, the lean man cut in. "Come with me," he said again, this time with a little more edge in his voice. So Boots followed him, and then turned back after a few steps to give us a little wave. It was only then, when I glanced up to watch him go, that I got a good look at the place we were in.

It was a large, open air rectangular area of packed dirt and no vegetation. The perimeter consisted of one continuous tall stone building with dark walls and few windows. Each side of the enclosure was identical to the one we had emerged from. The view looking out from where we were standing painted a grim and strange picture. Every ten feet or so, a tall wire fence ran the width of the enclosure. As soon as I noticed this, I began to feel uneasy. These boxed in areas, which had just one gate where they ended on the right side of the courtyard, seemed empty. But as I took a few steps toward the one nearest to us and stared through the wires, I could see darker shapes near the opposite side of the rectangle. I could see bodies.

Dutchy, who was doing the same thing I was, froze a few seconds after I realized this. "Race…" he said slowly, tensely. I held a hand out to silence him. I knew. And I knew that we weren't in a courtyard, as I'd been calling it. No, we were in a corral.

"Where'd they take him?" I asked flatly, feeling something akin to real anger rising up in my stomach.

"Over there," Dutchy said, pointing to the right side of the area.

"Let's go," I said, and stalked off in that direction. Boots was still in sight, and still with that lean man… along with four others, all of whom had the same long beards and dark eyes. They had already gone through one gate into some other area, different in shape and purpose than that long line of cages we had seen before. We stopped right before the fence and watched, trying to figure out what we could do – or if we needed do anything. If we were overacting, or…

No one seemed to notice us, including Boots, who was facing away. One of the men was holding the boy by his shoulders, while two others worked their way around his body with some sort of measuring string or tape. A fourth was writing things down on a pad of paper, while that lean man just watched from a few paces back. Boots kept twisting his head this way and that way, and his mouth was moving but we couldn't hear what he was saying.

"Something's not right," Dutchy hissed at my ear, visibly agitated. "Race, what is this place? Where have we taken him?" As we watched, one of the men grabbed Boots' jaw and forced his mouth open, crouching to get a better look inside. When Boots tried to turn his head away, the man at his shoulders gave him a good shake and held him tight.

I had no answers for Dutchy or for myself, so I did the only thing I could think of. When someone passed our way – short and grizzled with that telltale beard – I stepped out in front of him and asked, as casually as possible, "What's the deal with this?" I nodded my head toward Boots. He paused and gave me quick glance, almost puzzled. Then he looked past Boots to the faraway cages that we had seen packed with forms before.

"Hrm," he grunted. "That group, they's goin' to the mines I believe." He nodded, confirming this thought, and continued on his way. I stared after him, and Dutchy seized my wrist.

There were several seconds when this didn't register with either of us. We stared dumbly at each other, understanding but unable to fit our minds around the concept. The mines. Kids don't work in the mines, not on this side or the Other. Kids don't go to the mines, not unless…

"Slavery, Race?" he shouted, but I didn't even have to answer. I felt sick to my stomach and I knew that my face displayed that. But Dutchy had been loud enough that the lean man with Boots had turned his head. He saw us and recovered quickly from his surprise, in fact he began making his way over immediately.

"Shut up!" I scowled, yanking his hand off. The lean man did not look too happy, and I was at a loss for what to do. Now we'd lost both time and whatever element of surprise we would have been able to use to our advantage. Meanwhile, the other men had not paused in their endeavors. They'd taken Boots' shirt off, and his mouth was moving faster than ever as they continued with their measurements, or whatever it was they were doing. He watched the lean man leave and then noticed us and became even more animated, straining his skinny arms where they were being held by one of the men.

"Race!" he cried, but I could only hear it faintly. "RACE!"

"Boots!" Dutchy yelled back, running up against the fence and pounding a fist against is uselessly.

The lean man had reached us. "What are you doing here?" he said coldly. His voice was loud and pointed and cut effectively through the commotion. "You need to leave this place."

Neither of us answered. I wrapped my fingers around the wires in the fence and shouted to Boots, who was being led away, terrified and now completely naked. He tugged helplessly against his captor's grip and I searched wildly for some way to scale the fences or get around, but it was too late, because now there were two hands on my own shoulders, and Dutchy was being dragged away with a trickle of blood above one eye, and as I felt a blunt pain on my own head, Boots and everything else slowly faded from view and I was left with my own desperate calls ringing in my ears.

We were thrown carelessly out across the street from that grand façade, and fortunately I awoke before anyone could go through our pockets. My head was on fire, my eyes were stinging, Dutchy was still slumped beside me, and two bearded men stood at those double doors and were watching us intently.

I shook Dutch, who came to with a groan, and pulled him up. The men continued to watch us, one even striding forward as we rose. "Come on," I said groggily, pushing Dutchy ahead while I stumbled behind him. "We gotta go." My words slurred together like I was drunk. We supported each other until we turned the next corner, where we collapsed on the nearest stoop. With that building out of sight and the panic fading from my mind, I dropped my head into my hands and allowed myself to think about what had just happened. About what we had done.

We had walked Boots into a trap and we had done it willingly. We had delivered him to some group of slavers on a silver platter for no better reason than a dumb promise to a senile old woman. Oh, he was at a place where he could use his power, alright. If he could see in the dark and was heading for the mines, he would probably never see the light of day again.

I had a splitting headache and I had a rushing sound still in my ears and on top of it all, I was deep in the worst misery and guilt since I could remember. Beside me, Dutchy sniffed loudly. I knew that if I looked up, I would find his eyes red and wet, but I couldn't blame him. I just stared at my shoes, hating myself and the world around me.

A cold wind blew up and knocked my hat to the ground, where it remained, half in a puddle. I didn't bother to pick it up. I don't know how long we sat there in that despairing silence, but as the air turned colder and the fog thicker, I finally forced myself to stand, retrieve my soaked hat. I looked down at my friend.

"We have to go," I said in a voice that betrayed my emotions. He stood, not even raising his head, and fell in step behind me. I moved as if in a dream, not feeling each footstep, not seeing anything around me, just letting my feet take me where I needed to go. I think I just shut my mind off.

When we reached the Blacks Drop building, we went around the back and helped each other up the fire escape steps wordlessly. The building was unremarkable. It was whitewashed brick and not very tall. Its roof was covered with pots of dead plants and rotting flowers. Like our Battery Park entrance a week before, the door was almost impossible to guard, so it remained open to anyone who knew how to use it. Also like the Battery Park jump, it was a one way ticket. We would have to find an alternate route when we wanted to come back to the Dark, but that minor problem was the last thing on my mind.

I brought Dutchy over to one side of the top of the building. Looking down yielded the glamorous view of an empty alleyway. I didn't bother to look up. I was not interested in a view of the city – besides, again, the building wasn't very tall, and there wouldn't be much to see. I stared down at that alley, then knelt on the rooftop, crunching gravel beneath my feet, and lowered myself over the edge. I held on for a few seconds, the fatigue in my arm muscles the first thing I'd been able to feel in hours. Then I let go, and closed my eyes, and wished desperately that I would just keep on falling, wished I would never hit bottom, even if that meant being forever in limbo.