Well, once again, I've found my way back to this story. :) I'm going to try to pound out a couple more chapters in the weeks ahead before I get distracted by something shiny. Reviews would help me stay focused!

Unrelated to anything: I went to an anime convention last weekend with some friends in order to sell my origami art. While I was there, I saw SO MANY cosplayers from Kuroshitsuji. They were all really good, too! One Ciel/Sebastian pair even re-enacted the scene where Sebastian was trying to teach Ciel to dance. Hilarity ensued. XD

Now, on with the story!

"I'm really not sure this is a good idea."

"Master, I assure you that no one has yet died from this sort of practice."

"Well, no, I don't think I'm going to die. That would be a little too dramatic. But I am going to get a splitting headache, you'll see…."

"You will also greatly improve your posture if you can learn to carry this bearing naturally."

"And what proof do you have that this actually helps improve bad posture? How do you know it isn't just a silly practice from a long-ago era? That's what it seems like to me."

"Master, if you focus more on your complaining than you do on your carriage, the books are going to keep tilting regardless of how 'proven' this method is."

Lydia huffed and reached up to push the topmost book back onto the pile that was currently stacked on her head. She glared down at the line on the ground which she was trying to walk on. "I think you're just doing this to make me look stupid."

"Master…."

"All right, all right," she grumbled, steeling herself for another attempt. "Here goes disaster." Pulling her back up into a ramrod straight position, she flattened her shoulders back and attempted to walk down the line which ran past the bay windows of the sitting room. She could not help but feel that her sense of balance was completely off. Whenever the books tilted, she had to re-adjust her whole body to keep them from teetering off her head. In the end, this resulted in a weird, swaying side-to-side gait which was very different from the straight-backed, dignified posture they were trying to achieve. Lydia didn't even want to think about how she must look at the moment. Drunken, probably.

Trying to stare straight ahead, Lydia did not gauge the distance of the carpet approaching her feet. One moment she was wobbling along; the next moment her big toe had hitched on the rug and she staggered forward, a cascade of books tumbling down in front of her eyes. The moment after that, a wall of black loomed ahead of her and Lydia found her face ungracefully smushed into the chest of Sebastian's swallowtail jacket. The demon propped her up and handed her the books which had been in the air a moment ago, now neatly stacked and (she couldn't help but notice with a grimace,) alphabetized as well.

Sebastian grimaced as well, and led her back to the starting point. "It seems unthinkable, master, but I do believe that your walking skills are rival only to your brother's dancing skills in terms of their sheer catastrophic nature."

"I do not have bad walking skills," Lydia argued, glaring down at the books in her arms. "I'm just not used to walking with books on my head, that's all. Who does that, anyway? That's not what literature is for. This is why I say this practice is ridiculous."

"There are women in India who can walk while balancing full jugs of water on their heads, and without spilling a drop."

"Well, those women must be magical. I have no idea how they do that." Lydia straightened up and prepared to try again, even while knowing she would fail.

"Wait, master. Let us try a slower approach." Sebastian took the books out of her gloved hands and stepped behind her, placing the stack on the center of her brown head. "Now hold your arms out to the sides. Higher. Good."

"You realize this is just going to make it harder….?"

"Please trust me," he murmured, and spread his arms out as well, eclipsing each of her palms with his larger hands. "Now, lean your back very slightly against my chest. Not so much that you would fall over if I were to step away….just a little…."

Lydia did as he asked, and felt the weight of the books on her spine dissipate. His fingers were long and slightly clawed at the moment. She rubbed her thumb curiously against one of his black claws. His chest did not move in and out with breath, but she could feel it rumble gently as he spoke, bending his head down over her ear. "Good…. Now, walk straight ahead, and I shall steady you."

Lydia took a breath and stepped forward, keeping the air collected in the upper part of her chest and her back ramrod straight. The demon's body was as strong as iron, but as lithe and graceful as a tender shoot of grass. Together they moved elegantly across the room, and to Lydia's great surprise, the books stayed firmly attached to her head the whole way. When they reached the carpet, she could not help but laugh. "We did it!"

"All that fuss, and now she's happy," Sebastian murmured lowly. Lydia could not see his face, but she could bet that he was smiling in amusement. "You see, master, you must keep your shoulders back and your back straight in order for your center of balance to be perfect. Imagine that you are leaning ever so slightly against a wall behind you. Proper posture takes courage. You must walk as though there is something behind you to catch you if you fall, even when there is not."

"Thanks, Sebastian," Lydia said honestly, smiling at the carpet in front of her. Sebastian lowered their entwined pairs of hands down to either side of her waist and said nothing. The thumb of his right hand was rubbing slightly over her palm. "Don't move the bandages," Lydia warned him, although she knew there was no way he could have forgotten. His hand tightened over hers for a moment, feeling the hardness of apparent flesh underneath the concealing gauze.

"Someday, I'll know you complete again. All your secrets," Sebastian murmured, his chin grazing the top of her head.

"You'd like to think so, wouldn't you?" Lydia murmured back, and for a moment afterward there was pure silence. She couldn't hear anything except a sound like the wind passing overhead. Lydia closed her eyes and held that moment and allowed it to stretch out into many moments. Neither demon nor human moved. It suddenly crossed her mind like a beam of sunlight that she was exactly where she needed to be. This unexpected, inexplicable knowledge felt warm, like perfection, as if she had just completed a long assignment for school or finished a dance which she had performed flawlessly. Good. This is good. I don't exactly know why, but this is good.

Eventually, her body registered the tiny nudge of pressure against her back as Sebastian's chest pulsed in and out, tilting her slightly forward, backward, then forward again. She realized that he was breathing softly along with her, even though his body didn't need the air.

/

Ciel was in a considerably sour mood as he sat in his office and waited for Lydia to arrive. He had just received some bad news in regards to a certain case which he was following privately. The alibis of several people whom he had been investigating had all checked out indisputably, leaving him back at square one with no idea how to proceed. Ciel glanced between the letter from Scotland Yard and his own private notes for the umpteenth time, as if he could somehow make them say something different. Then he sighed and laid his head down on his desk in a rare display of weariness. He had been up late last night in yet another frustrated attempt to conduct an investigation. The mystery of the trunk that had been delivered to Lydia had been bothering him since he'd first learned of its existence. Not only was their late grandmother's request that Lydia should open the trunk in secret mysterious in and of itself, but Lydia's understated reaction to the old woman's bequests was also troubling. Not only that, but he was certain that there had been an uncomfortable atmosphere in the air when she had come downstairs to lunch afterward. Since that time, no one had mentioned the trunk or the will at all, which he found odd, seeing as they were in all this trouble precisely because of the will.

Ciel had thought about this for awhile yesterday, and he had come to the conclusion that he would not be dishonoring his grandmother's last requests if he looked in the trunk after Lydia had already opened it. After all, she'd said nothing about that. Therefore, Ciel had taken a candle last night and once again snuck down into the basement, to the storage area where the surplus wealth of the estate was kept. The trunk had not been hard to find, placed right at the front of the collection. In the hanging, dusky darkness, the young boy had knelt down on the cold stone floor and carefully pried open the lid, holding the candle close to his face and peering down into the black. To his slight disappointment, all that had been revealed by the lifting of the lid were laces, lapel pins, jewelry, and filigree boxes….exactly as Lydia had reported. Even so, he'd felt uneasy about the chest, so he had lifted out every item and inspected it, opening the boxes and unfolding the laces and silks. He had even felt along the bottom and sides of the chest for secret compartments. He found nothing intriguing. Rather, the only thing that had intrigued him had been the discovery of a narrow, torn strip of paper with a crease in the middle. It looked like the top of an envelope which had been torn off when someone had opened it. However, Ciel had not found either an envelope or the presumable letter within during his search of the chest. He found it highly intriguing that grandmother had apparently written Lydia a letter. Was that why she had wanted her to open the chest in private, so that she would be sure to find it before anyone else did? And what on earth had she wanted to tell Lydia anyway, three years after her death? What could be so important that she'd had her manservant carefully keep the chest all this time, waiting for a safe moment to deliver it to his sister?

Ciel wondered if Lydia would show him the letter if he asked about it. However, the young aristocrat was uncomfortable with admitting that he had snooped through her inherited possessions, and also with implying that he wanted to read her mail. He certainly wouldn't tolerate it if someone else did that to him. However, he knew these questions were going to bother him until he found an answer, one way or another….

Ciel looked up as the door turned open and the brunette head of Lydia peered inside. Sebastian was right at her heels, and he signaled for the pair of them to come in. Sebastian was holding a stack of books in his arms, and the young heir raised his eyebrow expectantly. "How did it go?"

"I would never have believed it would actually work, but it did. I managed to walk with books on my head!" Lydia exclaimed in a pleased tone of voice. "All thanks to Sebastian, of course." She was once again wearing the green, ribboned dress that the demon had repaired for her, making Ciel wonder if she owned any other calling dresses.

"Very good," he said gruffly, flicking his wrist at his butler. "Sebastian, go and prepare tea for us now. I would like cinnamon scones, as well. What- would you like?" he asked his sister haltingly.

Lydia shrugged (another habit that they would need to break her of.)"Scones are fine. I haven't had Sebastian's scones in such a long time."

The demon bowed and exited the room silently, glancing back once as he left. The closing of the door brought the space in between the two siblings into focus. Ciel eyed the surface of his desk. "Where have your father and Madame Red gotten to?"

"They're catching up in the parlor. They haven't seen each other in quite awhile." Lydia smiled faintly. "I walked past there three separate times this morning, and they were still in there each time, talking away."

"Ah. Well, that takes care of them, then." Ciel made to sweep the gathering of letters to the side of his desk, only succeeding in making them swirl around on the surface. Lydia caught one and handed it back to him. "Thank you," he mumbled lowly.

"Say, does this letter have Sir Randall's signature at the bottom?" Lydia eyed the letter she had caught, the one from the Yard. "Sure enough, it does. Are you working with him on a case, then?"

"Ah….somewhat," Ciel replied, glancing between her and the letter. "You know him?"

"My father works under him for Scotland Yard. I'm very familiar with him. Pretty uptight man, but he usually gets the job done," Lydia assessed comfortably, tucking her curls of hair behind her shoulders.

It suddenly occurred to Ciel that of all the people whom he had hunted down, harangued, and generally questioned for information on this case, Lydia was the one person with whom he had never spoken. This was mainly because she had vanished more than a year before the case had begun, but even so, she was the daughter of an investigator. There was the chance, however slim, that she might know something without even realizing she knew it…. Ciel finished stacking the papers and set a paperweight on top of them, then leaned forward slightly. "Actually, the case that I'm investigating….is about my father."

"Oh." Lydia sat up straighter immediately. Ciel felt something inside him wince as the twinge of dark memories crossed his sister's face, and he suddenly felt cruel for speaking of that man in front of her. But he needed to know. The older girl took a steadying breath and continued. "I did not realize that there was an ongoing investigation around your father's death."

"There has always been one," he replied tiredly. "Although recently I have had some….disappointing results."

"But Ciel," Lydia said, very gently, "I thought I heard that your father was killed in a fire at the Hotel Royale, where he was staying. They said that he left his candelabra too close to the open window in the night while he slept- the wind knocked it over and the fire caught onto his rug and spread all the room before he could wake up. That's very, very tragic, for sure, but there's nothing criminal about that. It was an accident."

"That was just the official version the newspapers reported," Ciel replied, his voice lilting in irritation. "What they failed to take into account in their story of my father's 'tragic accident' was that his head was crushed when they discovered his body. And the window was wide open."

"But….couldn't his head have been crushed by the falling debris from the ceiling? I was told that it took the authorities awhile to excavate the room because the whole ceiling had caved in, all the plaster and furniture from the room above had fallen through. That would seem consistent with Vincent's injuries." Lydia pointed out, still in the overly gentle tone.

Ciel huffed impatiently. "Yes, but think about it. It doesn't add up. You know how light a sleeper my father was," he insisted, and Lydia nodded thoughtfully. "It's not possible that he could have slept through his entire suite catching fire. It's obvious that he was awake at some point that night, because they found his body on the floor, several feet away from his bed. But why wouldn't he have gone out the window to escape his flaming bedroom? The window was wide open, there was a fire escape just outside, and there were no curtains to block his exit. Why wouldn't he have gone that way and saved his life?" Ciel questioned, pressing forward the thoughts that had been on his mind ever since he had first been awoken to the news four years earlier by a distraught Madame Red and a stoic Sebastian. "I don't think he was alive to escape the flames. I believe my father was murdered that night, his head bludgeoned, and then his suite was set ablaze to cover up the scene of the crime."

Lydia stared at him quizzically, then frowned and rubbed her chin. Ciel glanced down at his desk again. "It's all right if you think I'm pulling evidence out of nowhere," he mumbled in a low voice, glancing toward the parlor. "I've been told that by certain others before."

Lydia didn't reply for several moments, staring off into the empty space above Ciel's head. Finally, she said, "Vincent was a very light sleeper. However, I think it's still very possible that after waking up to find his room on fire, he simply became disoriented by the smoke and flames and….went the wrong way. It happens. He would have passed out due to smoke inhalation before too long, and then the ceiling would have collapsed on top of him. It isn't difficult to explain it that way. Although…." She paused for a moment, looking vaguely unsettled. "Although, for the sake of supposition, if you were right and there was foul play involved….I think I might just have a clue."

Ciel sat up out of his slouch, looking her in the eye intently. "Really?"

Lydia nodded slowly and leaned forward over the desk, hugging her arms close to her chest. "On the night that your father died….I wasn't aware of what was going on, of course. I was in another part of the city, close to the place where my father and I were living at the time. But something very troubling happened to me there, something I've never yet been able to explain."

"What happened?" Ciel demanded, squeezing the hard nib of a pen in his hand. Without realizing it, he had pulled a piece of paper and a fountain pen out of his desk drawer, and was now poised to begin jotting down notes.

"Well, it wasn't nighttime yet when it happened….it was still evening." Lydia recalled, staring off into space again. "I had been running errands all day, and I was finishing up my last one. I was at the blacksmith's on Abernathy Road, picking up a hitch for Thoms Weatherstaff, a family friend of ours," Lydia recalled, obviously meaning herself and her father. Ciel's hand was already moving, scribbling down every important detail. "It was terribly hot in his shop, because of the furnaces he had going. I was sweating and I hadn't had a drink, so I felt a bit dehydrated. I left his shop with my bag of things in hand, and-"

"Which way did you leave the shop?" Ciel interrupted.

Lydia blinked. "I left through the gate that led into an alley. It was a pretty wide alley, and it opened into the gardens of the people who lived in the houses on either side."

"Were you alone?"

"Yes- well, at least I thought I was," Lydia replied, frowning. "But when I turned around, there was a man behind me."

Ciel's lips thinned. He did not like where this story was going. "You can give me a detailed description of the man in a moment. Right now I want to know what he did."

"Well, he didn't do much that was out of the ordinary. He offered me a glass of ginger ale. He seemed very nice. Now, I know you're going to say that I should have known better, and I do know better now. But back then I was new to the city and very naïve. Anyway, he had a tray of glasses that he was holding, and he was very nicely dressed. I figured that he might be a philanthropist, going around handing out food and drink. At the very least, I thought it would be rude to refuse."

"So you drank the ginger ale," Ciel summarized, thinking that it would be useless to berate Lydia for something that had already happened.

"I did," she nodded. "I didn't drink it all. I got past a few sips, and then I started feeling very….dizzy."

"Oh no," Ciel mumbled, laying a hand over his forehead. After a few moments, he summoned the courage to ask, "Then what?"

"I dropped my bag and fell against the wall. I apologized to him…. I said, "Sir, I'm very sorry, but I suddenly feel faint. I think it's the heat." And he held my hand as I slid down the wall, and he smiled and said, "That's all right. Go to sleep, young lady. When you wake up, you'll feel much better."" Lydia frowned, rubbing her forehead as if teasing the memories out of her brain. "He looked very calm. He didn't look like someone who was watching a young woman faint. I remember my hand was shaking, my left hand, and he was holding it, and I was watching to make sure he wouldn't go near my other hand, because I'd put the bandages on very loosely that morning….and that's all I remember. Nothing more until I woke up."

"Where were you when you woke up?" Ciel asked insistently.

"I was still in the alley," Lydia replied softly, "only I seemed to have moved a few feet. Instead of lying against the wall, I was in the middle of a flower garden on the other side of the alley. The sky was very dark. All my clothes were still on," she assured Ciel hastily, making the younger boy blush. "My bag of things was gone….I never did get them back. I was unharmed, relatively speaking. But the strangest thing….the strangest thing was my dress. I had been wearing a dress with a white border and hem along the bottom. It sounds very odd, but as I looked over myself, I discovered scorch marks running up my dress and petticoat, almost to the knees. It was as if…." She paused, and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. "As if….someone had tried to set fire to me while I was unconscious."

Ciel gaped at her, his pen hand falling still. This was definitely not where he had expected her story to go. Lowly, he inquired, "Were your legs burned?"

"Not the flesh, no. Just the clothing."

"And what did you do after you woke up?"

"I went back to the blacksmith's gate and banged on their door. They were very annoyed at first, but when I told them what had happened, they called my father and gave me a blanket. But they weren't able to help beyond that. They hadn't seen anything. My father was frantic when he picked me up. He took me right home, and we stayed awake all night. The next day, he went back to Abernathy Road and started interviewing everyone who lived around there or had been there on that evening."

"What did he find out?" Ciel asked.

"Nothing." Lydia shook her head glumly. "According to everyone my father talked to, no one had seen me lying in the alley or had any idea that anything was happening. A few people remembered seeing a man like the one we described, but none of them knew his name or where he'd come from. Which is very odd, if you come to think of it. I'm not sure if you've ever been to Abernathy Road, but it's a very busy thoroughfare. People milling about at all hours of the day and night. Mind you, the flower bed did somewhat conceal me from view, but you'd think at least one person would have walked down the alley and spotted me lying there. It was several hours between the time I drank the ginger ale and the time I woke up."

"Which makes it also very odd that someone would try to commit a murder on such a busy road. And a murder by fire, no less." Ciel murmured, beginning to think critically. "Fire is a very blatant and obvious way to kill someone. Why didn't he just slip poison into the ginger ale instead of a sleeping drug? He could have done away with you quietly and easily right there."

"That's what I was wondering," Lydia answered lowly. "We thought that he might to have wanted….to burn my body in order to do away with the evidence. However, maybe he got scared off by the large crowds passing nearby, and decided to flee. But your question still stands; why not use poison to make sure I was dead before trying to burn me? Whether he succeeded or failed by that point, I'd still be dead. He doesn't seem to have been a very intelligent murderer."

"And you had no enemies in the city to speak of? No one who might have wanted you dead?" Ciel inquired, knowing that the obvious answer was right in front of them.

"Well…." Lydia trailed off, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "To be entirely honest, for the first day or so afterward, we suspected that Vincent was probably behind it. He was rather good at trying to kill me, after all." Ciel's ring finger twitched slightly. "But then the newspaper arrived on our doorstep….and we saw the headlines. After that, we just didn't know what to think. We still don't."

Ciel leaned back, closing his eyes quizzically. "So you remember nothing after you fell unconscious in the alley? No voices, no sensations, no flashes of images….?"

"Nothing." Lydia stated. "All I remember is the face of that man." She sighed lowly. "I thought that Vincent's death at the same time was an accident, a horrible coincidence. This was something I never wanted to think about again. But if he really was murdered, then there might be a pattern here somewhere. Vincent was burned to death on the same night that someone tried to burn me….maybe a mutual enemy of the Phantomhive family? But who?"

"What did the man look like, first of all?" Ciel questioned astutely.

"He was….dressed very well. A well-to-do man, for sure. He was wearing a blue vest and a black overcoat. He was fairly plump….and he looked kind. He had a jovial sort of face. That's why I didn't suspect…."

"What else about his face?" Ciel inquired, writing furiously.

"He had a round face….glasses….a fine head of hair. Sideburns, and a thick moustache." Lydia bit her lip. "I don't remember the color of his eyes…."

"Anyone man can change his clothes or his facial hair." Ciel commented reasonably. "We need something more concrete."

"There is one thing," Lydia said, sitting up straighter. "It was a ring he was wearing on the hand that was holding mine. It was the last thing I saw before I passed out. It was on his pinky finger, and it had something….ah….I made a drawing of it, but it's at home….I'll do my best to draw it now." She pulled Ciel's paper toward her and sketched an oval with his pen. "It was an oval surrounded by a frilly sort of outline. Inside the oval….on the bottom, there was this weird swirly thingamabob that I didn't understand very well." She scribbled the pen around until she had what looked to be the shape of a cloud. "But on top of the swirly thingamabob, there was an animal standing upright on a pedestal. It was standing on one of its hind legs, and its other limbs were up in the air like this. It had a tail like a lion's." She drew the tail flowing out behind the creature. "I remember thinking, what a funny ring. It looks like a circus animal." She stopped drawing and glanced over at Ciel. "I don't suppose this looks familiar at all?"

"Not at all," the young aristocrat shook his head. "But I will certainly have Sebastian look into it right away. Finally, we have a clue that could get us somewhere." He stood up from his desk, feeling energized and strong, the exact opposite of how he'd felt this morning. He decided that investigating his grandmother's mysterious letter would have to wait. "Of course, our first priority is to find the people who ordered the hit on us at grandfather's funeral. But it could be that the two cases may connect somehow."

"Well, I'm glad I was able to be helpful," Lydia concurred, standing up as well. "More helpful than carrying books around on my head, at any rate."

"Our practice can continue later today," Ciel declared, striding toward the door. "Right now, we need to find Madame Red and Aberlaine and fill them in. And let's find out if Sebastian has procured any more information, as well."

Just outside the parlor, Ciel ground to a halt and stared at the wall in indecision. There was something which he felt he ought to say, and he didn't want to say it in front of any more people than was necessary. He twisted the ring on his finger, once again hating himself for feeling so nervous.

"Ciel?" Lydia asked, peering over his shoulder at his bowed face.

Ciel sighed and turned around. "I know that my father was not a very kind man to either of us, and especially not to you," he stated bluntly. "The things he did when he was alive….are things that are going to haunt us all for a long time. Particularly for you and your father….I know that he affected your lives in very negative ways, and I want you to know that I do not….condone his actions." He drew a much-needed breath of air. "Even so, if he was murdered, as I believe he was, I want to know who did it and why. He was not a very good man, but he was my father, head of the Phantomhive household. It is my duty as his heir to strike back at all those who would besmirch the name of this house. That is why I want to find his killers, no matter what."

Lydia frowned slightly, stooping down to lessen the height difference between them. Ciel was reminded strongly of his mother, who had used to lower herself down to his level whenever she wanted to tell him something really important. "I understand," she said softly. "I want to find out the truth about how Vincent died as well. I don't believe anyone should get away with murder, no matter what kind of person the victim was. Just remember, Ciel- you don't love someone for a name."

"Whoever said that I loved him?" Ciel scoffed, squeezing his other hand over his signet ring hard enough to imprint the mark upon his skin.

Lydia smiled, and her smile was like falling leaves, and her eyes were like drifting cherry blossoms. "You did," she stated simply. Her voice was so gentle, and yet somehow there was no room in it for argument. She had lived with them for fourteen years. She knew.

Ciel huffed, turning his face harshly toward the wall. "All right, fine, I did. I did. And what of it? Something once lost can never return." He thought of the morning he had been woken up to the news that his father was never coming back, of seeing the man's things lying broken and useless all around his empty study, the first night he had truly understood that he would be an orphan for the rest of his life. He thought of cold gravestones and colder dreams, wild anger and creeping despair.

Lydia laid her hands upon his shoulders, the normal one and the bandaged one. Her eyes looked a deeper blue in the lowering light of the mid-afternoon sun. "Then don't lose it," she intoned quietly, and then she straightened up and she was much taller than him and she wrapped her arms around his thinner frame and held him close to her like she had used to do when they were much, much younger, before anyone had died, before either of them held the contract, and for the first time in years Ciel closed his eyes and let her embrace him. He didn't know what he felt, but he knew that it was not fear.