(A.N. Thank you, kareso for the review ^.^ Reviews make my day *wink wink hint hint* :D Anyway, if you couldn't bother to read the disclaimer in the last chapter, you probably know that ONLY Yana Toboso owns Black Butler/Kuroshitsuji, not some random girl from Freaking Nowhere, USA. 'Nuf said.
EDIT: 3-13-12 I had to fix some plot holes. Hopefully it makes sense now :))

Now, before I go into what happened next, I will take a few moments to describe what the ruins looked like. Like I said before, there were black scorch marks that hadn't faded over 120+ years of weathering and such. The more superstitious ones say that was because there had been a devil dog on the grounds. A devil dog. Please. Nearly all the windows were cracked or broken, and most of the shingles on the roof were gone as well. In places, you could see the wooden supports to the roof, slowly rotting away. There was ivy completely covering the ruins. At one time, it had probably given the manor the look of a stately old house worthy of a noble occupant. Now, it just looked like the ivy was the only thing holding the ruins together. Some people have reported seeing strange lights and ghostly apparitions in the ruins after dark. Those types of people were usually superstitious twats who would believe anything. I was not a superstitious twat. Most likely, it was just an old house with a sad past and NO ghosts or demons or devil dogs or anything out of the ordinary.

That was before I entered the house.

All the stories were true.

All of them and more.

But anyway, back to the story. Almost immediately after I rang the bell, I heard footsteps behind the door. At the time, I didn't believe in the paranormal. That was to change as the night wore on. The door opened, showing an attractive young man (he couldn't have been more than twenty or twenty-five) in a tailcoat. He bowed and gestured for me to come inside, making his long-ish black hair swish forward. The initiation rites said that I had to spend the night in the ruins. I might as well spend the night with a cute guy. I doubted that the sorority knew that some guy lived in the ruins or they would have made the pledges sit in Busby's chair or something, but what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. I went "inside" (through the door frame, really; there wasn't much roof/walls to really call the ruins a house, in my opinion) and he gestured for me to go up the rickety old staircase. I shook my head and told him "Are you sure those will hold my weight? They're falling apart." It was his turn to look at me funny. "Are you sure they're falling apart, milady?" Oh. My. God. He had the sexiest voice I had ever heard in my life. At that moment, I didn't care whether the stairs were falling apart or not. I knew that I would be safe with him. I nodded, and started to walk carefully up the stairs, avoiding the parts of the staircase that had rotted away. Finally, I got to a landing where the staircase branched off in two directions. The cute guy said "To the left, please, milady." and I went left. After all, what did I have to lose by taking the left staircase instead of the right? I got to the top of that staircase, and I started to go down the hallway. The guy opened a door to reveal what had probably been a splendid guest bedroom, but now only had the remains of a four-poster bed with threadbare blankets thrown over the top, two rather stained and dirty pillows, and an old rug that had large burn holes in it on what was left of the floor. I could tell from the pattern that it had been an oriental rug, and I vaguely remembered my old history teacher telling the class that in the 19th century, pretty much anything from Asia was all the rage in high society. What a shame. It would have probably been museum quality if it had been taken care of well. He gestured for me to get into the bed, and tentatively, I took off my shoes, pulled back the blankets, and got into the bed. I don't know what possessed me to do that. It was obviously almost rotted away, and it probably wouldn't have held my weight, but I did anyway, and surprisingly it held. "Have a good night's sleep, milady," the guy said, bowing, and started to leave. "Wait," I said, and he stopped. "Who are you? Why are you in the Phantomhive ruins? Are you some frat brother dressed up?" He bowed even lower at this. "I am the butler to the Phantomhive household Sebastian Michaelis. I do not know what you mean by 'frat brother', but I would hardly say that the Phantomhive manor is in ruins." At this, he gestured around the room, and I saw a glimpse of what the manor must have looked like in its heyday. I felt a lump rise in my throat. It had been beautiful. Off in the distance, I heard someone say "Sebastian!" and he perked up at that. "Excuse me, milady. I have to tend to the young master." Hold on, by 'young master' did he mean Ciel Phantomhive? I pulled out the copy of the photograph that I had been given by a sorority member. Looking at it, I was surprised that I didn't recognize the butler sooner. He was in the photo, standing beside a small boy (probably in his early teens) dressed in Victorian finery who was asleep at his desk, and there was some random naked guy standing outside on the windowsill that had probably been photoshopped in. The butler left, and I decided to have a look around; to see if the rest of the household looked as splendid as the bedroom.
(A.N. So, as Grell would say, was the chapter to DIE for? Or was it deadly boring? Let me know so I can help my writing along :D btw, if you are interested, the photo was the one that was taken by the Talbert camera at the end of His Butler, Phantom Image. Yay Pluto! meep)