Chapter 2

The Blank Record

When I woke up, Ronald was already gone, which came as no surprise to me. There was a note sitting on the dresser beside the crooked lamp, which read:

Stay where you are! William will be there shortly to get you. Be ready when he comes. It sounds urgent, but then again, William always sounds urgent.

-Ronald. K

I slipped on the suit that William had given me the night before, which fit unnaturally well. I stuffed my hoodie and jeans in the drawer marked out for me. I started to feel I might be here for a while longer than expected. As I shut the drawer a glint of silver caught me eyes. I picked it up, unraveling the chain and watched the delicate silver heart dangle back and forth. He seemed to have missed it as he emptied out the drawer for me. I wondered briefly why such an object was hidden away in the depths of Ronald's dresser, but my thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Hastily, I tucked the necklace into my coat pocket, and rushed to join William in the hallway. The necklace was temporarily driven from my mind.

The lobby of the Collections Department building was largely made of marble. The sound of our footsteps echoed infinitely throughout the room. It was so clean I could just about make out my own reflection. Hundreds of reapers could have come and gone easily without forming a crowd, but besides a young, dark haired woman at the front counter, there was no one. Her eyes lit up at the sight of us, and she waved cheerily.

"Good morning Mr. Spears!" She said, as we approached the counter.

"Thea." William gave her an acknowledging nod. "You usually work in General Affairs, am I correct?"

"Usually yes, but Kathleen retired, so I'm filling in until they find someone else." Thea sighed. I watched her eyes flit back and forth, as she spoke. She was visibly making an effort to not stare, which I wasn't sure made me feel any better. "I like General Affairs better though. This job is so boring. Anyways, the others are in meeting room one. Oh, and I almost forgot!" She disappeared behind the desk, presumably trying to find something.

"…William?" I whispered.

"Yes."

"Can they tell I'm… human?" William scoffed.

"Do you take us as fools?" He retorted. "We reapers can identify humans apart from our own easily." I frowned.

"Then why the hell am I disguised?"

"Did it ever occur to you that we are not trying to hide you from reapers?" His finger automatically went to his glasses. I was not going to lie; he was really starting to piss me off with his attitude.

"Your new pass, Mr. Spears." Thea handed him a small slip of paper. "Should be suitable for use with a guest. Have a nice day!" She smiled again, and waved as we departed. William didn't wave back, but she didn't seem disheartened by this. At first this confused me, but then I realized that William had probably treated her this way for a very long time. Such cheerfulness in the face of constant indifference, I couldn't deny that was impressive.

We made our way up several flights of stairs towards the conference room, which was a large rectangular room with a large table in the middle, which took up most of the room. On the table was a sprawling map of London with hundreds of little red pins stuck in it. Around it stood a small array of reapers, most of which I recognized from the day before.

"Slingby, Humphries," The tall blond reaper and the shorter brown haired reaper turned their attention at William.

"Boss." Eric responded.

"You'll be stationed in East London today."

"We've got it covered." Alan said.

"Knox, Sutcliff," This time William faced the blonde teen and tall red headed, erm… lady.

"Can't I go with you William darling?" Grell edged suggestively towards William.

"No." William responded with cold indifference towards his or her request.

"We make such a good couple though. Why not just this once?" Grell pouted.

"No." Grell did not retreat though. On the contrary, Grell flung himself at William.

"You're so cold William, but I can see in your heart you-" William jabbed Grell with the blunt end of his death scythe, not really bothered by how hard. With a pitiful squawk of pain, Grell once again retreated to Ronald's side. I fought down a fit of giggles that threatened to come out when I saw William's sour expression.

"The two of you will take Western London today."

"Ok, boss." Ronald gave Grell a couple hesitant pats on the back.

"Eliza, you're coming with me, we're stationed in Central London." This time I stifled a groan. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the day with this jackass. But then again, it didn't sound like I had a choice.

I'd watched many a horror movie in my life, and they had to be probably some of the goriest ever made, but nothing could have prepared me for today. We tended to a staggering number of deaths. Some were so horrifyingly gruesome, I felt the need to turn away or else be sick. The only bright side of it all was the fact that reapers were very prompt, so there was very little smell other than the coppery stench of thick blood.

"Are all of these going to be so…" My sentence trailed off as I searched for a suitable word to describe the horrors I'd seen. "Gruesome?" He blatantly ignored my question.

"Cause of death Unknown." His voice echoed softly in the alleyway along with the steady dripping of water from rusty pipes. "How interesting."

"What's so interesting?" My own voice echoed eerily along with his as we approached the body of a clearly dead person. Suddenly I knew what was so interesting. There was no blood, not a single drop, but more importantly:

"There are no memories, the cinematic record is blank, but the soul is still intact." He muttered. "This is not the work of a demon."

"I would step away from that body if I were you." It was a child's voice, only low and arrogant. I turned my back from the body already knowing whom I would see. The child was small, standing beside his tall and stoic butler in black. A no doubt finely made top hat perched on his head, a navy blue cloak hanging over his much too small body. Worst of all though was the black eye patch that covered his left eye, hiding the symbol of a demon's contract. Ciel Phantomhive, the Queen's Watchdog. It didn't take a genius to know this was going to get really ugly really fast. But, here I was, an unarmed human girl whose prospect of staying alive had just gone down dramatically.

"I would think not." There was a hint of bite in William's voice that was unlike anything I'd heard from him before. "You are intruding upon an official investigation being conducted by the Reaper Dispatch Association. I demand you cease and desist, or I will be required to use force."

"Well then, we've got a slight problem don't we?" Ciel responded. "I've been given orders by the Queen herself, to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances. It would seem you are the one intruding upon our investigation."
"You underestimate us, Phantomhive."

"Now do I?" Ciel cocked his head and gave us a dangerous smile. He stretched a finger towards his eye patch, and with a jerk he ripped it off to reveal his contracted eye. "I'm not making the same mistakes again. This is an order Sebastian, kill them." Wait… did he say… kill?

"Yes, my lord." The butler's gloves fluttered to the ground, revealing the glowing pentagram etched into his hand. His eyes flashed scarlet for a terrifying moment, and the butler attacked. I dove to the side just in time to dodge the steak knife aimed at my head, missing me by only a hair.

"Shit." I breathed, somehow still alive. I glanced over my shoulder. William was standing not three meters away from Sebastian, gripping his death scythe ready to strike at any moment. His expression was that of the purest kind of loathing. I was fully aware of the animosity between reapers and demons, but the hatred in his eyes said there was something more than just that. This was personal. On the other hand however, Sebastian seemed to be alarmingly calm. His tailcoat lay discarded on the ground. His face broke into a peculiar smile, and he advanced several steps towards William.

"My, my, how little the tables have turned, and after so many years." Sebastian's voice was low and terrifyingly pleasant. "Nothing has changed has it… young master?" His last question was directed not at the child who stood watching with a blank face, but the grown reaper who now stood before him. His words made no sense to me, but the terror that flickered on William's face told me it made all too much sense to him. Several knives flew from Sebastian's hand. William hesitated for one moment too long, what Sebastian said still must have been reeling in his mind. One of them hooked onto the handle of William's death scythe with impossible precision, and flung it out of reach. The other, pierced him in the shoulder. A patch of red quickly formed around the wound. William gripped the knife by the handle, pulled it out and tossed it aside. His face was twisted into a grimace of pain. Sebastian's smile was more venomous than ever. He started towards the pruning pole lying idle on the ground. I knew what he was going to do. I needed to stop him, and fast. I rolled myself into his path, snagging the death scythe from just within his reach.

"Bring it, demon." I said with more courage than I felt, brandishing the pruning pole at Sebastian whether I could truly wield it as a death scythe or not. Every fiber, of my body was screaming at me in terror, telling me not to.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" William's yell bounced off the walls and rang in my ears.

"Saving your life!" I screamed back at him. The demon flew at me with inhuman speed, the bloody steak knife clutched in his hands. I bit my lip; at least it was going to be quick. I scrunched my eyes closed and blindly threw the death scythe in front of me as if it alone would save me from the wrath of a demon. I swore again quietly, not really caring if it was going to be my last words.

There was a deafening bang, and a hissing sound like an electric shock. My eyes flew open in time to watch the knife wrenched from the demon's hand by an invisible force. There was a look of unmistakable shock on his pale face as he too was thrown to the ground.

I wasn't dead. How was that even possible? I repeated the question to myself over and over in my head. My back was to the wall, the pruning pole still clutched in my trembling hands. Was it the reason I was still alive? I looked to William, waiting for his eyes to tell me that what I did was normal, but instead my eyes only met his indifferent stare

"Now, now," A singsong voice called from the roof. My eyes shot up to see the disturbingly feminine silhouette of Grell Sutcliff, "No need to fight over me! There's enough to go around." He jumped from the building like it was a three-foot drop, the red chainsaw raised above his head, aiming a heavy blow at Sebastian. The demon was quick though, and dodged it with ease. It rammed into the ground, causing it to tremble under my feet.

"Need some help boss?" The sound of Ronald's voice along with the revving motor of his death scythe lifted a weight from my chest. It was three against one, odds not even Sebastian could ignore.

"Well, it seems the odds have turned against us." He carefully eyed the reapers who were now standing by our side. His eyes were ever so slightly narrowed at us. "Shall you have me retreat, or shall I continue the fight. The decision is yours to make young master."

"It would be unwise to have even you take them all at once. We shall retreat for now Sebastian."

"Yes my lord." The demon brushed off his tailcoat and slipped it over his shoulders. He bowed low, and as if nothing happened at all, they walked away. I listened to the clicking of their shoes on stone until they mingled with the sounds of the crowd and faded away.