Traveling with the young couple as Bonejangles soon discovered was awkward at best. Downright sickening at worst. It had been nearly an hour of jostling in an uncomfortable carriage, having nothing to do but wonder how long the horses' spindly legs would support them all, and watch Victor and Victoria flirt innocently across the way. Not even an hour and it still felt longer than all the years he had spent in the land of the dead, which is an assuredly large number of years. It might not have been so tortuous if something had actually been accomplished in the flirting, but it was all so damn innocent that any progression was all but impossible.

"… And when I told them about the stories I read all my cousins laughed at me. One of my cousins, Lucy, suggested sweetly that I must be a changeling myself because I'm so… different." Victoria laughed nervously, "needless to say I stopped telling them about my fantasy stories after that. Lucy loved to compete with me. I suppose it was because I was never any competition."

"Your cousins must have been afraid of you." Victor assured her.

"Afraid…?"

"That you would rise up against them when you discovered your strength. And your beauty." Victoria smiled and blushed.

"I never saw myself as beautiful."

"That's because you never saw yourself." Victoria looked into Victor's eyes, and smiled again. He placed his hand on hers and laced their fingers together. They were so swept up in the beauty of the moment that they were entirely surprised to hear an irritable cough from across the carriage. They looked at their other traveling companion.

"I swear, you two are lucky I don't have a stomach…"

-X-

"If only that little bird would sit still."

"Victor, how many more details can you put into that drawing"

"I suppose you're right, Victoria."

"This really is a beautiful drawing. I don't understand! You draw, you play piano… what don't you do?"

"Well…"

"Oh, no, don't answer that."

"I don't… wear corsets."

"Very funny Victor. Bloody hilarious…"

-X-

Victoria wasn't exactly certain how it was even possible but, somehow… Bonejangles had fallen asleep. She wasn't even positive how she could tell, but his eye was nowhere to be found and he was slumped still as death against the jostling carriage window. The affect was chillingly bizarre, and made her wonder just how bored a dead man must be in order to fall asleep.

She waved a hand in front of his face and looked about, disappointed that no one else could share in this phenomenon (Victor too was fast asleep). Her eyes fell on his bowler hat gripped only loosely beneath his bony fingers. That hat… it was a thing of great curiosity to her; absurd, yet eccentrically stylish. She had never seen a bowler quite like this one, and as it twitched and bounced beneath its owner's icy fingers it seemed to mock her.

She tore her eyes from the silly hat determined to ignore its hypnotizing effects.

She noticed that it was very uncomfortable in the small carriage compartment. It was boring, dusty slow and though it was spring, very, very hot. The sun was setting right at the level so that it shined right into the small space. They would soon need to find a place to stay; they would never get all the way to Whitby all in this one day. Because it was spring, Victoria also had the most terrible allergies. Trying to ignore all this and the hat proved to be too much for Victoria's self-restraint.

It was still being held loosely in Bonejangle's sleeping grip. It was so loosely held that it looked precariously about to fall. In fact it looked as if it was just about to. It seemed complete sin, Victoria thought, to allow such a lovely hat to touch such a grimy floor. Just as soon as she thought this the hat slipped in slow motion from under its owner's fingers towards the vile carriage floor. Victoria gasped and lunged catching the hat right before it hit the ground... it was now in her hands.

Victoria looked around once again and saw that everyone really was asleep. She looked back down at the hat and began to carefully place it on her head.

"NO!" Bonejangles knocked the thing from her hands and clutched it to his chest. Victor awoke with a start,

"What is it? What's going on?" He looked from Victoria who was opening and closing her mouth and looked absolutely horror stricken, to Bonejangles who was still protectively grasping his prized possession to his chest. "What's going on?" He repeated. The two ignored him.

"I'm so sorry." Victoria said swiftly. "I'll never touch your hat again."

"I don't care if you touch it." He snapped peevishly.

"I- what?"

"You just can't put it on like that, there's an art to putting on a hat like this" he held it up where it glowed in the golden sunlight and gestured to it as though it were a holy object. "It requires skill and panache. You can't just slap it on your skull like some common…"

"But-"

"It Just. Isn't. Done." BoneJangles flipped his hat gracefully onto his head and crossly folded his arms as if to say the matter was settled and that was that. Victoria looked over to Victor thoroughly astonished. Victor was still confused.

-X-

Two days later the odd traveling companions finally arrived at their destination: a moderately busy seaport.

"A seaport?" Victor said incredulously.

"When you said Whitby, I didn't think it was for the seaport." Victoria said wonderingly.

"Well, yeah, this is where I landed. This is where the Ruby Darling left me; see I used to live in San Francisco. I left for my own reasons… Shocking that the boat ride didn't kill me." The three stood staring expectantly at their anticlimactic destination. Victor and Victoria shifted uncomfortably and looked at the hatted skeleton as though expecting something to happen. Bonejangles was resolutely not looking at them. It had only just occurred to them that they had no idea what this "moving on" would entail.

"Is there… anything specific you would like to do… now that you're here?" Victor asked.

"Um… it has to be in the afternoon…" Bonejangles said examining a sign posted nearby. "… Of next Tuesday"

"Next Tuesday?" Victor asked uncertainly. Bonejangles nodded.

"Yes, next Tuesday should be about right." Victor, ever practical, looked concerned.

"But do we have a place to stay?" he asked. Victoria took a step away and bit her knuckles.

"I do hate to…" she said. Victor turned to her.

"What?" He said. She smiled tiredly at him.

"It just so happens that my cousin Lucy lives right nearby."