Thank you very much to everyone who has read, reviewed and favourited this story.
"An Inexpensive Soul" Chapter Four –
Oh What Can Ail Thee?
"Reaper Sutcliff?"
Grell opens his eyes, and finds himself staring blearily at the back of a leather sofa in the break-room of the Shinigami Despatch Division office. His dream – something pleasant involving Sebas-chan, an old-fashioned death scythe and a battle in a rose garden – vanishes from his mind as William T. Spears shakes him roughly by the shoulder.
The temptation to keep still and pretend to be asleep is strong, but William isn't going to be fooled by that, so Grell rolls over and peeks up at his supervisor, one arm thrown over his eyes as protection. He knows William, and so he knows that falling asleep at work is likely to result in a painful prod from the supervisor's prissy but hideously sharp death scythe.
"Did it happen again?" Grell asks, aiming for a look of innocent incomprehension. William ignores the question and its implication that Grell has no idea why he keeps falling asleep in the daytime, and says instead, "Whatever it is that's keeping you up on your nights off, you'd better drop it. So far you've managed to complete assignments and reports – just barely – but I won't have you lolling all over the office like this, making the place look untidy. Go home – get some sleep – and be here – properly here – tomorrow at nine o'clock sharp."
Grell's expression is one of pure outrage. "William! I do not loll!" He sits up, crossing his legs gracefully, and tosses his head. "I don't have the figure of a loller, thank you very much. If anything I drape." He gets to his feet in one fluid movement, and, to prove the point, arranges one arm languorously around William's narrow – and very stiff – shoulders, turning him to face the window, where their reflections are just visible. "There, you see, William, darling?" Grell smiles. "Aren't I the perfect accessory for you? Why don't you take me out to dinner, to thank me?"
William doesn't deign to reply, removing Grell's arm from around his neck with a look of faint disgust as though he's brushing crumbs from his lapel.
Grell watches William walking towards the door and breathes out quietly, thinking his absurd behaviour has been enough of a distraction. William pauses though, half way across the room, and looks back at Grell, frowning. "Oh, by the way," he says casually, as though the thought has just occurred to him, "who sent you those roses the other day?"
Grell almost panics, but, knowing William as well as he does, turns nervous energy into an attack. "Why do you want to know?" he asks. "Jealous, my love? If you don't like me receiving tokens of affection from other men, perhaps you should start sending me some of your own. You know I'd be appreciative."
"Your kind of appreciation I can do without," William counters. He turns to go, and his hand is on the doorknob when he adds, "This had better not have anything to do with that demon."
"Sebas-chan?" Grell asks, hoping his airy tone is convincing. "Oh – I wish it did! Can you imagine Sebastian sending me roses! I'd just die of happiness!"
"Hm," is William's only response, as he leaves the room.
That last point of Grell's is the only reassuring one William thinks, as he walks briskly along the corridor. The demon is certainly unlikely to send Grell flowers under any circumstances that he can imagine. But something is making Grell tired, and someone sent him the roses. Not that it's any of William's business what Grell chooses to do in his spare time – in fact, he'd much rather not know. It only becomes his concern when work is affected. Grell's antics have caused William countless hours of frustration and overtime in the past, and unless his performance improves drastically over the next few days, William is determined to intervene before the irritating Reaper's lack of sleep leads him to make some hideous mistake – reaping the wrong soul, say, or mislaying the cinematic records. William tells himself that his concerns are purely professional. He doesn't care if Grell gets himself into trouble. If he ends up attacked by an out-of-control record, or up in front of the disciplinary board for reaping someone whose time hasn't come, perhaps he'll finally begin to learn the importance of concentration. But somehow Grell always seems to drag others into his catastrophes – and if he makes a mess, William knows that he's the one who will have to clear it up.
I'm keeping my eye on you, Grell, William thinks. And this really had better not have anything to do with that damned demon!
Alone in the break room, Grell looks at his own reflection in the windows and frowns, thinking of Will and Sebastian. Grell knows that William is right; he ought to go home and sleep. But it's been three days since he last saw Sebastian, and he has no intention of missing tonight's appointment. The roses were proof that the demon is keeping to his contract, and that is the only point of concern to Grell. As long as Sebastian is fulfilling his promise to try his hardest to meet Grell's terms, then the Reaper believes there is a chance of success - the chance for which he has gambled his soul.
x
Tonight Grell is determined to enjoy herself. She puts all thoughts of William out of her mind, and arrives at Sebastian's door – which is, of course, Ciel Phantomhive's door – only fifteen minutes late. This evening's outfit has taken some considerable time to assemble, after all. As if in defiance of William's cold sobriety, Grell has decided to abandon the understated elegance of the dresses she has chosen for her previous encounters with her incubus in favour of something a little more flamboyant.
When Sebastian opens the door Grell sweeps past him into the entrance hall, and tonight she wears nothing but red. Her sleeveless evening gown is rich crimson silk, bustled at the back, fold upon fold like the furled petals of half-open roses, the most vibrant, glistening red thrown into sharp relief by blue-black shadows, dark as the heart of a demon's promise. A corsage of living red roses is pinned to Grell's bodice, her long velvet gloves are red, and at her throat rubies flash their bloody fire. Her luxuriant hair is shockingly untamed, free from all adornment; needing none. Its colour is deeper than the silk or the soft petals of the roses – the colour of temptation, Sebastian thinks. Lilith's hair, or the Magdalene's – a web to catch the eye and the soul with it - as cunning as any trap he has ever set. If Grell takes to the streets with her hair like this, she will set London ablaze. Mortals will stare and call her Jezabel, dressed in the colour of the Whore of Babylon. She will be irresistible.
Sebastian smiles without the usual weary cynicism he feels in the presence of his victims, but with the genuine enthusiasm of a co-conspirator. It's been a very long time since he almost regretted a contract. This creature – amoral, beautiful, immortal seductress that she is tonight – would be a more worthy partner in crime than he's known for centuries. Her soul will be worth any inconvenience or difficulty.
"You look ravishing!" Sebastian says, and means it in every sense.
"Thank you, my darling," Grell purrs, narrowing her eyes almost sleepily. Then they flash open, vivid green, as she seizes his hand and cries, "I want to go out! Take me to the theatre."
"And what would you like to see, my lady?" Sebastian asks, mentally listing all of the plays he knows are showing in London tonight.
Grell smiles. "A tragedy, of course," she says, her inhuman eyes alight. "There must be love, and thwarted love, and fate, and death!"
"There always is," Sebastian replies. "That summarises the pitiful destiny of mortals."
"And you and I can laugh at it," Grell says, although the brightness in her eyes dims somewhat at the thought. "We, who have no fear of death."
Sebastian hesitates before he says, "If I fulfil the contract, you must die."
"Yes. And I have no fear of it," Grell replies.
The demon looks into the Reaper's unearthly eyes, and thinks that for tonight, at least, Grell believes it to be true.
x
Grell leans on the rail of the box, opera glasses in her red-gloved hand, her eyes on Juliet. Sebastian notices that half the men in the stalls are casting longing glances upwards, not at the pretty dark-eyed actress on the balcony, but at the red-haired vision by his side. If he were merely the stylishly dressed young blade he appears to be, he would be basking now in the envy he senses. The ladies' expressions are also filled with emotion when they look at Grell, but, for the most part, emotion of a very different flavour.
Grell is alive to the weight of their gazes and affects perfect indifference, but her gestures draw their eyes. When Romeo exclaims, "See how she leans her hand upon her cheek!" Grell lays her hand against her cheek so artlessly and with such winning grace that at "Aye, me, she speaks! Speak again, bright angel!" more than one spellbound youth starts and drags his guilty eyes back to the stage when it's Juliet who responds and not Grell. But as the play takes its familiar course, Grell's coquetry ceases and her affected artlessness becomes the real thing as she begins to lose herself in the unfolding story. Even the handsome actor playing Tybalt and the almost indecently tight fit of Mercutio's hose cannot distract her tonight, and as the curtain falls at the end of the third act the tears in her eyes are no affectation at all.
Sebastian is surprised, therefore, when she turns to him with a sudden, sharp smile and says, "Let's go, darling. I've had enough."
Sebastian is happy enough to leave – he's seen this play performed a hundred times, and a hundred times better, since the opening night nearly three centuries ago, shortly after that intriguing encounter with one of the few souls he failed to tempt into a contract – a young man with burning eyes named Kit, who declined his offer but wrote him into a play. Ah, Mephistopheles!
Briefly Sebastian wonders whether it will occur to Grell to change his name once the contract with Ciel has come to term, or whether the Reaper will continue to think of him as Sebas-chan. It hardly matters. He's been called by a thousand different names, and not one of them has ever had the power to conjure the gift of even an extra heartbeat of existence out of him beyond the term of a contract. For now, though, he is Sebastian and perfectly considerate of his client's wishes, so he turns to Grell with a smile and asks, "Are you certain you want to leave now? Before the end?"
"Oh yes," sighs Grell, tossing back her spectacular hair, replacing the opera glasses in her reticule and smoothing down her silk skirts. "The tragedy has happened. Mercutio and Tybalt are dead – Romeo is Fortune's Fool. What more is there to say?" This time her smile reveals the points of her teeth and she's suddenly all Reaper. "I'm so weary of suicides and sepulchres! The leap – the risk – Wherefore art thou Romeo? - and to love him anyway! That's all that matters!" Grell's expression softens. She takes off one glove and touches Sebastian's cheek. He turns his head to kiss her naked fingers. Let the folk still watching from the stalls cover their titillation with feigned outrage – the demon knows the nature of their true desires.
"A demon and a Reaper," Grell says. "Such folly…" She lowers her eyes, and when she looks up at him again the melancholy has been replaced by dark laughter. Sebastian wonders why he finds her mercurial moods exhilarating now, when, before the contract, they only irritated him.
As they walk out onto a rain-washed, gas-lit street, Grell smiles. "'Fiend angelical'," she quotes. "Do you ever wish you'd been an angel instead?"
"I was an angel," Sebastian replies. His voice is expressionless, but his eyes, he knows, burn red.
"Oh, forgive me – I was forgetting," Grell lies, with a little laugh. "But I have no love for angels. Your agenda I understand."
"Unlike the angels, I make no secret of it," Sebastian replies. "Where would you like to go next, my lady?"
"Home," says Grell. "The townhouse, I mean. Take me back home – over the rooftops, like the first time we fought. Remember?"
"I remember," replies Sebastian, seizing her hand. Too quick for mortal vision, they're above London, running from roof to roof in the cool damp city night. Grell pirouettes precariously on a crooked ridge tile as the rain comes down in earnest. "It was Romeo and Juliet that night, too," she laughs. "You were magnificent – so much passion – so much blood! I lost the fight, and my heart!"
Sebastian's smile is as sharp and precise as William's death scythe as he says, "And you almost lost your life. But, on reflection, I'm not sorry that I was thwarted by your cold superior Mr. Spears."
Grell finds herself concealing a snarl at that. Yes, Will is cold, but hearing his name in the mouth of a demon prompts unexpected resentment. The insult angers her enough that she almost retaliates, but she bites back the automatic retort and swallows the bitter emotion that comes with the desire to make it. "Reaper Spears," she says coldly, "has no more power over either of us." She turns a too-sweet smile on Sebastian as she adds, "Providing that the contract is watertight."
Sebastian sweeps her off her feet and into his arms, and kisses her cool, wet lips. In her hair, raindrops sparkle. "I have never lost a soul yet," the demon murmurs, setting her down before Ciel Phantomhive's front door. He puts a hand over her heart, and she feels a faint pain as the seal on her skin radiates heat like sunburn.
"There's always a first time," Grell replies, returning his kiss. "You have promises to keep. Do you love me yet?" Before he can reply, she shakes her head. "Never mind. 'I know thou wilt say Aye'."
"Then why ask, lady?"
"To hear you lie again. You do it well – I'll give you that."
"I love you."
"Liar."
"I want you."
"That's nearer to the truth, anyway."
As they enter the hallway all the lamps light and the candles in the chandelier burn with a supernatural green flame. "It must be a nice change for you," Grell observes, as Sebastian starts to unlace her dress, "not even to have to pretend to be human."
"It saves time," Sebastian agrees, as Grell's dress ignites and falls from her body in sheets of fire that leave her unscathed and beautiful, clad in nothing but rubies and all her luxuriant flame-coloured hair.
"My demon lover!" Grell exclaims. "But I'm no bewitched mortal. You don't have to lie to me. Tell me the truth – tell me what you really want."
"I want you," Sebastian says again, his fingers in her hair, and against her throat, his mouth almost on hers.
"You want to devour me," Grell whispers.
"Yes."
"You want to consume my soul. Everything I am."
"Yes."
"Then love me," Grell sighs, closing her eyes, leaning back against the wall as Sebastian presses against her and kisses her with an utterly convincing semblance of passion. Grell opens her eyes though, and pulls away from him. His human form is so beautiful that it's easy to forget the truth of what he is. He looks into her eyes and sees something of what she's thinking. The demon's eyes glow red and Grell shudders at the glimpse of those infernal fires beyond the veil. It takes all her courage not to run from him, but she signed the contract knowing what it meant, and she is resolute.
"Tell me the truth," Grell insists.
"I can't love you. I will never love you. It's impossible."
"You're contacted to try."
"A demon is the opposite of love."
"Hate?"
"No. Hate would be something - some feeling. I am – unlove. A void."
"A void that you seek to fill by consuming souls?"
"Yes."
"And yet you made the contract, and you have to try."
For the first time ever in the matter of a contract, the demon hesitates. "I don't know what that means," he admits at last.
"So our contract is meaningless?"
"No. I will try. I will try to fulfil your other conditions – a marriage – a way to make you a woman – a way to give you a child. And I will think about how a demon can try to love."
"You want my soul very badly," Grell says.
"More than any other," Sebastian confesses.
"That's a start," Grell says, with a fragile smile. Then she takes Sebastian's hand and leads him to the bedroom. "You have no soul, and I have the wrong body," she says, wrapping her arms around his neck and reaching up to kiss him. "But we both exist in these forms, here, now. Make love to me, even if you can't feel it."
"Don't waste your time pitying me," Sebastian says. "Others have claimed to do that, and their souls tasted no different from those who hated me, or ran mad with fear."
"I don't pity you," Grell replies, surprised. "You're my only chance, that's all."
"You are extraordinary," Sebastian says, sincerely.
"Find a germ of love in that, then," Grell tells him, arranging herself on the bed, her hair spread over the pillows, glowing molten red in the candlelight. She is ravishing, and Sebastian ravishes her, according to her wishes, and finds himself wondering what love would feel like if it were possible for him to feel it.
On the street opposite Ciel Phantomhive's townhouse, William T. Spears stands beneath a black umbrella listening to the rhythm of the rain on its drum-taut fabric. Grell entered the house with the demon at nine thirty-two; William checked his pocket watch just before he was forced to endure the sight of Grell, in that absurd gown, kissing the demon on the doorstep. William has already counted the chimes of midnight from a dozen different churches, but he waits another hour to be certain that Grell really isn't planning to leave until the morning. What could Grell have said or done to make the demon known as Sebastian Michaelis behave according to the Reaper's wishes? There's only one thing a demon truly desires – William knows that well enough – but even Grell would never do something as foolish as to make a bargain with the devil! What could a demon promise that could tempt a Reaper? And what kind of deal could a Reaper make with a demon? No. Not even Grell would attempt to enter into a contract of that kind, surely? Impossible.
It ought to be impossible. But what other answer could there be?
As he turns away, William experiences a strange sinking shock cold in his stomach, and tells himself it's because Grell is about to make him a mountain of extra work again. Grell, he thinks, pondering his infuriating subordinate's previous misdemeanours. Oh Grell! What have you done this time? What the devil have you done?
