Author's Notes: This popped up into my head. Couldn't resist. A one-shot.

Disclaimer: I don't own xxxHolic or Yami no Matsuei :(

The smoke choked the room, but thankfully didn't cause Hisoka to cough up a lung. He had been irrevocably pulled here, his feet carrying him as if they had their own mind. Two cheerful girls had greeted him as he intruded accidentally. One had sugar pink short hair and the other had long streams of blue silk hanging from both sides of her head; both were dressed in strange outfits similar to what Yuma and Saya often tried to put him in. "Welcome!" They said. Something was suppressing his empathy. It was both a relief and a bad omen.

'Welcome'? Where the hell am I? Shit, I knew I shouldn't have wandered off. He had tried many times to leave, but his legs had folded underneath him without his permission in the traditional formal sitting position. A very tall, lanky woman with extraordinarily long black hair wearing a carelessly loosened kimono sat on the couch, smoking her pipe. "Boy, what is your name?"

"Don't call me, 'boy'," Hisoka snapped through gritted teeth. While he couldn't sense others' thoughts or emotions, he felt her mind or whatever it was pressing against him coaxing him to relax and tell her. Tell her, it whispered seductively.

She chuckled warmly, flicking an eyebrow up as she sat up. "Very well, Shinigami. May I ask what your heart's desire is?"

He remained silent, dropping his head down and closing his eyes, his body refusing to cooperate and leave as he wanted. When he opened them, she was there tilting his head up with a finger under his chin.

"I know you have something you desire. Else you wouldn't be tied to this plane while your body is in a grave somewhere dead."

"My name is Kurosaki Hisoka," he gritted out abruptly.

"What a beautiful name." She pulled back, sitting down and taking up her pipe. "Hisoka. I am Yuuko, and my shop deals in bartering. In exchange for your wish, something of equal value must be given back."

"My cursemarks. I want them gone," he mumbled numbly, even as he wondered if that really was such a smart thing to ask for.

She smiled, reaching out and opening her hand palm up. "Give me your hand."

The moment his fingertips touched hers, the room filled with a red as dark as blood. Lifting through his clothing, the markings floated up and away from him landing on a flat, square obsidian slab she held out for it with her free hand. The marks settled itself on it creating an image of a caterpillar covered with wicked thorns, then disappearing back to a seemingly ordinary slap of obsidian.

She handed it to the girls who had greeted him, and held out her hand again.

He took it, and suddenly there was a soft green light that filled the room. Her hand pulled away and the light went out leaving a very large piece of unrefined emerald in her hand.

"The deal is made, Hisoka." She stood up, smiling ominously.

He also stood up and was escorted away by the girls.

Kimihiro Watarnuki watched the blank-faced teen leave. "What did he trade for whatever that.." He hunched over shuddering remembering that thing crawl up and off of the boy and the way his senses screamed 'EVIL!' at him. "For getting rid of that?"

"His secret," she stated simply smiling eerily at the green stone.

"Hisoka?" Watanuki murmured slightly puzzled, since 'Hisoka' was both a girl's name and meant 'secret'.

"Precisely. You understand more than you think you do." She closed her hand over the stone.

--

The first thing Watanuki noticed about their newest guest was his startlingly amethyst-colored eyes, and just as he was about to greet said guest, the witch Yuuko interrupted him and gestured the man to her sitting room, purposefully shutting the sliding doors on her dutiful 'part-timer' dressed normally with his apron on and handkerchief keeping his hair out of his eyes.

"Watanuki, sake and horse sashimi!" She called through the paper doors.

"Who eats horse of all things anymore!" He retorted, then 'hmphed' when she apologized half-heartedly and asked for chocolate mint ice cream with chocolate syrup on top. "You're impossible!" He sighed, knowing half a dozen things she'd try to blackmail him with if he refused. "Right away, m'am." He trudged off, grumbling under his breath about how expensive her requests always were.

It took him a good fifteen minutes to find a vendor who sold such a ludicrous product. When he turned the corner back to the house, the man who had entered was standing outside looking as if he had lost something invaluable. Seeing Watanuki, he cracked a smile stretched thin over his face, and vanished into thin air before the boy with the power to see spirits had taken another step towards him.

"Watanuki."

"What did he lose that made him look like that?" His tone of voice completely serious and intense in curiosity.

"Whatever made you think he lost something? He gained something of equal value you know."

His teeth snapped together audibly. "What did he exchange for whatever he gained?"

"His love, for the person to regain an important extension of themselves. It was an inevitable conclusion," she answered cryptically.

"What do you mean 'inevitable'? Wait, you can take something that intangible away from someone?"

She smiled and turned, walking back into her comfortable home while her temporary servant followed her. "Watanuki, you may want to eat that before it makes a larger mess on your hands."

Looking down at the sticky, green globby mess of ice cream streaming down his hands he swore up a storm, just as Maru and Moro scooped the ice cream cones out of his hands and ate them suggestively at each other giggling. He ran to the kitchen sink as the two girls laughed and giggled at his irritated embarrassment.

End.