Hello. Thanks for reviewing and for coming back. Yes, I like Rob, too. But I really enjoyed what's coming up.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sebastian, Ciel, or any other characters featured in or related to "Kuroshitsuji" ("Black Butler"), I don't own "Kuroshitsuji" itself, and I do not make money from this.
Chapter 4: Basic Snuffability
Tom and his small band lived in an abandoned counting house. It was a four-storeyed building near the docks that had once been painted red. The paint had bleached and was coming off in flakes. Parts of the roof lay on the pavement, and the men stumbled over the debris on their way into their hide-out.
They occupied the rooms on the first floor, and they had prepared one of them for the demon in their company. Someone had fixed a horseshoe above the door. Someone had used white chalk to draw pentagrams on the steps. There were peacock feathers, symbolizing the ‚Evil Eye', and a little horned puppet, made of straw and pinned to the window frame. There were four-leafed clovers, mistle-toe, various religious symbols and even a statue of some naked goddess whose endowments would, in a real woman, certainly have stopped any male creature with a reasonably human mindset from going anywhere.
All in all, the room radiated a great uncertainty of what to do with a demon after the thrill of the actual capture had passed.
They did not attempt to restrain Sebastian by worldly means. However, they heaped orders and commands on him that all boiled down to one message: He was to stay on the very spot they had placed him. No tricks, no noise. Just stay put.
Maybe cringe a little, if he must.
Time and again, Sebastian felt the tug of the contract that bound him to the Earl Phantomhive. Time and again, Ciel's call was counteracted by the new restrictions that had come with the new name. As triumphant as the demon had considered himself when Tom had restored to him the use of 'Sebastian', it now proved a very inconvenient arrangement. You obviously couldn't be 'a little spellbound' and take your pick, when the spell messed with your very identity. 'Samiel' resided within the black symbol, and his struggles for supremacy left 'Sebastian' feeling disoriented and almost feverish.
To make the dizziness bearable, Sebastian huddled against the wall and sat with his eyes closed. He tried to relax, and he tried somehow to pass the message to Ciel that he'd be doing what he could to return to Phantomhive, but please, please, young master, stop calling out like this. I can't think, I can't move, sometimes I can't even remember who I am, only that I am starved for souls, and this is bad because, well, no one wants a demon to be reduced to that...
Then, after an unmeasured time, the disturbing sensation actually ceased. Sebastian remembered Ciel's schedule for this morning, and yes - he'd probably preside the board meeting of directors now. Sebastian could not tell for sure whether he actually lost consciousness or just slipped deeper into his half-dreaming state. But the world faded, time passed, and he did wake with a start when Tom spoke to him, "Hey, demon? You awake?"
Sebastian opened his eyes.
"Gee, you look sick, mate," Tom said. "Is it because of the spell?"
Sebastian didn't answer.
"Listen. We didn't want to hurt you. It's just, well, we're in trouble. Long story. We can end it tonight though, living happily ever after. If you help us, that is."
Tom's prisoner kept looking at him with an indifferent expression that was somehow even harder to bear than the demon's occasional sinister smile.
"But before we get down to business, I'll have a personal favour to ask," Tom continued. "You see, there is this girl. Josy. I – she promised she'd wait for me. But I learn there's this guy. Living at her place, making out with her, probably even now as we talk."
"What are your orders?" Sebastian asked, getting fed up with this simpleton talking to him. "Do you want me to scare him shitless? Hide his clothes? Spirit him to the north pole and maroon him on an iceberg?"
Tom looked cheerful, "Sounds good, all of it and in that order. Yes. I wouldn't mind if the bastard snuffed it. That would teach him to keep his hands off another guy's sweetheart."
"Very well." Sebastian climbed to his feet. "Do you want me to leave immediately?"
"We're coming with you. I guess there's orders that would make you do exactly what you're supposed to. But I'm not sure I know how to put them. So all I can do is watch you as closely as I can. Right?"
"You're certainly not easy to fool, master," Sebastian said, his voice thick with sarcasm.
Tom beamed.
Noon had already passed when Sebastian and the band of sailors reached the house where Josy and her lover had made their nest. There was nothing romantic about the place, however. It was a three-storeyed building, set in a dead end and surrounded by higher buildings. The sun never reached the pavement to dry up the rain, so the street was covered in slimy filth and reeked of foulness.
Since Tuna Tom had located Josy's rooms in the third floor, his hit man climbed the wall. Due to the old, withered stones and some handy iron hooks let into the brickwork to attach shutters Sebastian encountered no problem with this first part of his mission.
He climbed through an open window and stood in a living room. There was a ragged sofa, its seats and cushions threadbare and bleached, and a cupboard, darkened with age. A roughly built, square table occupied most of the room. It had no cloth, but there was a vase holding a bunch of dry flowers, and a yellow bee-wax candle in a brassen stick. That was about all. The room looked neat, but Sebastian suspected that the main reason for the lack of personal fancy and disarray was the fact that the inhabitants owned nothing to stuff and litter their place with.
Josy and her lover were in the next room, shouting at each other.
"I'm not going to sleep in a bed that has rats under it," a girl's voice yelled.
"Pipe down, will you? Here! I've got your blasted rat," a man's voice replied.
"Don't stick it under my nose, damnit! Get the other one! The other one!"
"So get out of my way!"
The door burst open and the fighting, rat-chasing couple bolted into the room. Seeing the butler in her parlor, Josy stopped and stared. She was no older than eighteen. Her face was heavily made up, her hair long and tousled. Her dress was patched in some places. Sebastian remembered having seen her in the pub where she had quarrelled with Tuna Tom.
The man on her heels wore a sailor's outfit and a floppy hat with a wide brim. He was tall and slender, and he moved with a dancer's grace. He had a dead rat in his hand. His nails were sharp, and long, and black. As he recognized the visitor, his jaw opened slightly, revealing sharp teeth.
Sebastian, too, grew wide-eyed, "Charlie? Is that you?"
"Yes, but...er..." Charlie, the self-made klabautermann, tipped back his hat and scratched his head. He had soft brown hair that curled on his shoulders. He had made himself to look somewhat older than when Sebastian met him last time. His face was sunburnt, with high cheekbones and a square chin with a cleft in it. An adventurer's face. A ladykiller's face. But his red eyes would always betray him for what he was. In a world of changing shapes and appearances, it was good to have something reliable to recognize your kin by. The colour of the eyes for general identification. And smells, for individuality.
Not wanting to spill his previous names and identities in front of the girl, Sebastian waited until Charlie had finished double-checking his perception and matched it with memory.
"Yes, it's you, cousin," the other demon said two seconds later. "Er...what's your present name?"
" 'Sebastian' will do, I guess."
The crucial matter of name-giving settled, the two demons quickly recovered from the surprise of meeting on this day and in this location. Stranger things had happened.
Josy, however, still kept her suspicious look, as she snuggled against her lover.
"That's the butler I told you about," she said. "Him, who scared Mandy."
"No kidding." Charlie looked Sebastian up and down. "I hate to disappoint you girls and your vivid imagination. But Mandy's thoughts were all her own. Sebastian here has never really gotten the hang of telepathy. Worse yet, he's old school. No peck without a pact."
It was Charlie, all right. Sebastian could feel himself move from surprise and relief to a state of exasperation that he typically and exclusively felt when in the presence of his cousin. Considering his present predicament, he was, however, determined to contain his growing impatience. "Charlie? What are you doing here? How did you get here?"
"Got shipwrecked a few seamiles off Cornwall," Charlie said. "Terrible accident."
"With you aboard, I bet it was," Sebastian dead-panned. "How many casualties?"
"An awful lot," Josy said, staging a shiver. "His crew-mates all getting eaten by stingrays and dolphins and such."
Sebastian frowned. "But those animals are not known to eat human beings."
"The more terrible to watch, if they do!" Charlie insisted, casting his relative a warning glance. "Needs must, if the devil drives. And you, cousin? What brings you here?"
"My master, Tuna Tom, doesn't approve of anyone but himself courting Miss Josy. I'm supposed to put you off it." Sebastian returned his cousin's cool glance. "He has made it quite clear that he wouldn't mind, if you 'snuffed it' in the process."
"Snuff it? I see. What's 'it'?"
Sebastian shrugged. "I am nothing but a hit man."
"Listen, you two," Josy said, creasing her pretty brow. "I don't know what you're going on about, even though you seem to get along perfectly. But you freak can't just break into a girl's room and claim that you've come to murder her darling, courtesy of a thick-skulled idiot she hoped had sunk along with his bloody bleeding heart - "
The two demons exchanged glances. There was a lot of things you could get across this way, if you'd had centuries of practice.
Does she ever stop for breath? Sebastian silently wondered to his cousin.
Charlie sighed, "Josy, love? Why don't you go and see, if you can catch the other rat yourself?"
"But he said - "
"Josy-cozy..."
She was suspicious, and worried, and she didn't want to go. But she went nevertheless, pouting. Sebastian remembered that that was Charlie's way with people. Some of them fell for him. Some of them wanted to kill him. Either of them, he had to control.
Charlie was almost never in control.
But he was good at pretending confidence, and because of his general superhuman abilities, his shortcomings were usually only ever noticed by other demons.
"So we're looking for something to snuff. Basic snuffability." Charlie looked around, searching. "Basic snuff-... ah!" He spotted and grabbed the candle stick. He lit the bee-wax candle and snuffed it out in the same breath, then held it out for Sebastian to inspect. "There. Works for you?"
"Did it teach you to keep your hands off another guy's sweet heart?" Sebastian asked.
Charlie raised his hand as if to take an oath. "I'm not interested in people's hearts, whether they be sweet, or sour, or anything. It's the immaterial aspect I'm after."
"That's all right then, I guess," Sebastian said. "I can sell it to my master. Anyway, Charlie, I need your help. Look at this."
Sebastian brushed back his hair to show Charlie the black mark on his brow.
"Oh," Charlie said, which was perfectly within the range of reactions Sebastian had expected.
Then he added something amazing, "Why, that damned bastard!"
"Who?" Sebastian asked, surprised.
Nonchalance came down over Charlie's face like a mask. "What do you mean, 'who'?"
"Charlie? What do you know about that thing?"
Charlie looked to his left and right - anything to avoid Sebastian's glance. "Oh, you mean, because I said 'that damned bastard'? It's just a saying. That damned bastard. I, I mean, anyone who put that mark on a demon would have to be. Er. Wouldn't. He?" His voice trailed off, as he watched Sebastian narrow his eyes. Charlie knew that look on his cousin's face. He knew it only too well. There were things about Sebastian that never changed, no matter his name or appearance. One of the more vital traits was that you could always tell when he was starting to lose his temper.
"Er...Sebastian, I, er, need to tell you something." Charlie steered Sebastian toward a chair and made him sit down. Then he seated himself at the other side of the table, careful to keep a distance that would give him at least a small head start. "You see, I know Tuna Tom. We've been on the same ship."
"The one you sank off Cornwall?" Sebastian asked icily.
"You're catching on really fast. Er. We had been on our way for three weeks. It was a dull journey. No coast, no storm, no other ship. One day, Tom finds me on the quarter deck. He pushes a slip of paper under my nose and asks me to read what it says... The letters were of an ancient script I hadn't seen in a long time. The words were Babylonian. I read them. I translated them into English." Charlie eyed Sebastian warily. "They went, 'With my voice I summon you...' "
"The spell he used on me!" Sebastian nearly toppled his chair over. "Are you saying you read it to him? Aloud?"
Charlie made a face that was supposed to show contriteness.
"You," Sebastian said, exasperated, "read it to him. A demon reads an ancient spell. Aloud. To a human being."
"I...boy, you're not going to like this – I even repeated it for him the better to memorize it."
Sebastian just sat and looked on, his face blank. Every five or so seconds, he blinked in a very controlled, slow way.
"You know how dull it is, being stuck on a ship," Charlie defended himself. "I was bored. I was hoping we could get a little game going."
"You were bored," Sebastian repeated, carefully pronouncing each word. "I'm going to make you suffer, you don't know how much. We didn't part on the best of terms. But maybe, I can yet borrow that shinigami's death scythe, if I promise he gets to watch..."
"Well, we got a game started, all right," Charlie continued, pretending not to hear. "But it was not with Tom. It was with the captain's steward. I found out that he was far more skilled, even experienced at spells, than that poor bugger Tommy. Eventually, the situation was really getting out of hand. So I sank the ship. I thought it would take care of the problem. I was wrong. But I cannot turn back time, can I?"
Sebastian drew a deep breath and blurted out, "You could switch on your brains before you teach something that might destroy you to someone who might enjoy the idea of destroying you!"
"Now you're exaggerating," Charlie said. "By that logic, no human should read ghost stories, since one day they might be haunted themselves or turned into ghosts."
"Most humans nowadays don't believe in ghosts," Sebastian pointed out.
"As I didn't believe a genuine Babylonian spell and artefact to exist in modern times. Aboard a sailing ship on its way to Cardiff," Charlie countered.
"Wait! No one mentioned an artefact! How do you know that there – " Sebastian stopped as he perceived a shadow passing outside the window from the corner of his eye. He turned his head, then looked curiously at his cousin. "Did you see that crow?"
"What crow? Oh, that crow!" Instead of following Sebastian to the window, Charlie focussed on a rat that peered around the ajar door.
Sebastian leaned on the sill, looking for the bird. "That's strange. I've never seen a crow slam into a solid wall."
"The world is full of strange things, isn't it?" Charlie tossed the candle stick at the rat, then turned and clapped his hands, just as another bird tried to land on the sill. Using his preternatural speed, Sebastian caught the bird before it collided with the brickstone, and he caught the candle before it hit the rat. Bringing both back to the table, he slipped on to his chair. He put the candle stick on the table and released the bird. "Charlie? What was that about?"
Sourly, Charlie watched the crow flap across the room and leave by the window. "Look, Sebastian, if you think you're the only one with problems..."
"It's Grandmother, isn't it?" Sebastian asked, suddenly seeing the light. "She knows what you've done. Of course she does. She came to London to look for you. She's sending out her messengers. Rats and crows, lending her their ears and eyes. And you are killing them! Have you finally gone crazy?"
"On the contrary. Considering how she is when she gets mad, it's only reasonable to lay low, isn't it?"
"Lay low, so someone else can do the dirty work for you. I," Sebastian said slowly and with emphasis, "am soo going to murder y- "
"You know," Charlie cut in quickly. "The problem with you is that you probably could. And you would, if I ever let you finish that phrase."
He got up and opened the door, calling Josy back in. She came, a fierce look on her face and a broom in her hand.
"All right," Charlie put his arm around his girl's shoulder, caressing her as much as he was preparing to use her as a living shield, in case Sebastian decided to come at him. "I don't suppose you can go to your old master's place on your own, or you'd have done so by now. So I'll go in your stead and confess everything to Grandmother." He heaved a sigh. "I don't like to do this, I really don't. But, no, I'm not crazy, and I know that you're in trouble, and if anyone can remove that spell, it'll be she."
"Thank you, Charlie."
"Screw you, Sebastian. Where do we find you?"
Sebastian described the old counting house.
"I know where that is," Josy said. "But let me understand this, Charlie: This freak pops up out of nowhere, and you get yourself involved in his business?"
"He's family," Charlie said with bravado. "It's my damned duty."
"Screw you, Charlie," Sebastian whispered very, very softly, as Josy rose on tip-toe to kiss Charlie on his mouth. Charlie immediately dropped any other occupation, including the conversation with his cousin. Sebastian sighed. That was the problem with demons. You simply could not get them interested in anything but the game and the prize at hand.
"I'll pass that sigh for plain jealousy," Charlie mumbled, his lips against Josy's skin. "Close the window when you climb out. I wouldn't want Grandmother's messengers flocking on the sill right now."
Snorting, Sebastian retreated. He could hear Josy giggle and a chair crush on the floor.
"The immaterial aspect," he muttered. "Don't make me laugh."
But they were both of demon stock, and he, too, sneered, picturing to himself the look on Tuna Tom's face when he learned how this assignment had been duly fulfilled.
Basic snuffability.
The things you did to comply.
***End of Chapter 4***
A/N: A long chapter that was immense fun to write. You can love Charlie or you can want to kill him. He was not in the story, not even in my (pretty vague) draft when I started it. But when he showed up, I had my answer to why it seemed so absolutely important to mention a demon who'd be loosely in touch with Sebastian and who'd taken to the sea in the first chapter. There'll be definitely no more relatives popping up. But this one was necessary. If you keep reading, you'll find out, why :)
