Hello again, everybody! For those of you who are snowed in (like me,) and even those who aren't, here is a new chapter to entertain you!

Also, tell me what you think of the story so far! Or don't. But really, do it. XD

"Great Scott," was the only thing Lydia could think to say as she stared up into the pale face of the cackling mortician. She remembered meeting him at her grandfather's funeral, but after experiencing the strangeness of his personality and the unease his comments had caused her, she had been quite content with the thought that she would probably never meet him again. Now she had hijacked his wagon, a fact which he seemed to think was the most amusing thing in the world.

"Hilarious, that was! Oh hoh hoh, what I'd give to see that again!" Undertaker continued laughing madly, his face tilted up toward the fog-shrouded sky. Lydia adjusted the reins in her hands and kept her eyes fixed determinedly on the road.

"I didn't find it particularly funny. That man was trying to kill me," she huffed in disapproval. She supposed it was better for him to react in a comical way than to be angry that she had forced herself into his wagon….but it made a lot less sense from her point of view.

"Oh, but it was simply diviiiiiine to watch! The expressions on both of your faces! Ah ha ha ha ha!" The gray-haired man dissolved into another fit of laughter as Lydia looked on, nonplussed. She wondered how he possibly did business with the regular civilian population if this was how he reacted to disaster. She leaned her head over the seat-box and scanned the road behind them again for signs of trouble. Nothing she could see seemed to be of any concern.

Undertaker's smooth laughter slowed for a moment, and he propped himself up in his seat. "Hilarious as your driving is, my dear, I'll have to take those reins back now. We're about to miss the turn for the road I need."

Lydia handed the reins over to him and watched as he steered the horses onto a narrower dirt road which looked like it led out of London. She glanced toward the back of the wagon, wondering what was in it. "So….where are you going?"

"To make a delivery," he said simply, still chuckling under his breath.

Lydia shivered and clutched her cloak tighter around her shoulders. She wished she had brought some gloves as well. Now that she was no longer running for her life, the cold of the misty afternoon had begun to seep into her bones. "What are you delivering?"

He grinned, jerking a long, black-nailed thumb toward the back of the wagon. "Coffins."

Lydia stared in alarm for a moment before she reminded herself that he was an undertaker, although a very unorthodox one, and coffins were probably a large part of his trade. She shivered again and eyed the road ahead. "Well then, may I travel with you?"

"I don't see why not," he replied, bouncing the reins in his hands playfully. "You've already provided me with pleeeeenty of payment!"

"But I haven't paid you at all," Lydia protested, reaching into her cloak for her purse. "Do you want me to pay you?"

Undertaker swatted her hand away abruptly. "I won't take a farthing of the Queen's currency!" he proclaimed, and for a moment he seemed quite serious. Then the usual Cheshire grin stole back across his face. "What I want is so much shiner than money- the very best, the most brilliant laughter!"

"Laughter….?" Lydia asked dubiously, and he nodded his head eagerly. "Well, all right then. I do seem to have given you plenty of that. Although I'm not sure what I did…."

The tall man burst into peals of hilarity again, and Lydia accepted that this was simply going to be the way it was with him. Perhaps he was a bit insane. However, he did not seem to want to harm her, and this was definitely an improvement over her previous company. She figured she could take temporary refuge at whatever place he was delivering the coffins to, and send a message to Sebastian to come and get her. Clearly they would need to re-think their tactics for living safely in London now that they knew these assassins did not care at all about attacking her in the middle of the day, and in the most public of places imaginable.

The wagon rolled past fields of cornflowers and wheat and barley. They were out in the countryside now, travelling along a dirt road with wheel ruts worn deep into the soil. Lydia could see grass growing over the dirt, however, appearing to have been undisturbed for quite some time. Wherever they were going, it did not seem to be a place which saw heavy traffic from the outside world. They soon settled in along the river Thames, and Lydia watched the fog dance like ghosts above the swirling water. She dug her fingernails into the seat in hesitation. She was aware that it was generally polite to make small talk while travelling with a stranger, but she was nervous about saying anything to Undertaker, lest it cause him to start laughing madly again. Eventually she settled on, "What's your name?"

"Eh?" he asked carelessly, propping his feet up on the front of the seat.

"Well, do people call you anything besides 'Undertaker'?"

"Sometimes," he said, bursting into a low chuckle for no apparent reason. Lydia waited, but he did not seem likely to elaborate, so she changed the subject.

"And how long have you been an undertaker?"

He looked down at her, or at least she thought he did- with his long gray bangs covering his eyes, it was difficult to tell. "Oh, a loooooong time. Much longer than you would know. I've helped so many customers get all nice and dressed up for their last goodbye party, yes indeed. Especially your relatives. So many of them I've known in life and buried in death." He chuckled again and grinned madly at the road ahead. "Someday I might even bury you."

Lydia did not like where this conversation was going at all. She was beginning to wonder whether she ought to jump out of the wagon and try to make it back to London on her own. But if she ran into the assassins on her way back, then Undertaker's prediction would probably come true.

The gray-haired man leaned forward slightly in his seat. "It was a blow to the head that killed him, you know."

Lydia frowned and raised her eyebrow. "What- killed who?"

"Vincent Phantomhive!" he announced, as if it should have been obvious. "Always bothered me, that one. I like to get my customers' stories right, you seeeeee. How a person dies is an important part of who they are, that's what I think. Your grandfather died as his body gave out of old age and excess. Your grandmother died of suicide by blade. Your mother died of illness. Plain and simple. But with him it wasn't. I tooooold them the results of my examination, but they refused to believe me. All the papers printed that he died of smoke inhalation."

"And you said he didn't?" Lydia asked alertly, her mind flashing back to the conversation she had had with Ciel in his study, when he had confessed his suspicions about his father's death. She was suddenly quite glad she had not jumped out of the wagon. She wanted to hear this.

"Of course not! I know more about the human body than anyone," Undertaker declared with a feral grin. "If he had died of smoke inhalation or burn injuries during the fire, and then been bludgeoned in the head by the collapsing ceiling, there would have been burn marks on his head impacted by blunt force trauma. As it was, his injuries were the opposite. The head trauma occurred first, and then the flames razed him afterward and formed a kind of fire scar over the wound. Furthermore, there were no signs of smoke in his lungs when I took a look. You want to know whyyyyy?" He leaned toward her, as if he were about to tell her a fabulous secret. "Because he wasn't breathing when the fire was started."

Lydia gaped at him in shock. "So it's true, then!" she exclaimed. "Someone had to have killed him before setting the room on fire!"

"Yes indeed!" Undertaker nodded happily. "And such head trauma it was, too. Almost as if he were fired upon by a cannon. The funeral had to be closed-casket because there was simply no restoring the head."

There was a moment of silence while Lydia took this in, her eyes fixed upon the swirling ghosts dancing above the river. "But who could have….and how….? And- wait! If all this is true, why are you just telling me this now? Even if the authorities refused to accept your report on the cause of Vincent's death, shouldn't you have told Ciel what you found? You're a part of his information network, are you not?"

The gray-haired man laughed manically, a snatch of excitement caught in his voice. "All things have a proper time, my dear."

Lydia stared at him indignantly. "But- that doesn't even-"

"Here we aaaaaare!" Undertaker cut across her protests, indicating to the land in front of them. Lydia stopped her stuttering to turn and stare. She saw a wrought-iron fence standing before them, and….almost nothing else. The heavy fog blocked out all but the topmost spires of buildings in the distance. The only shape she could make out clearly was that of a clock tower, rising high above the rest.

"Where….are we, exactly?" she inquired uncertainly.

"Why, Weston College, of course. Only the most aristocratic and prestigious public school in all of Great Britain!" Undertaker announced with the air of an over-zealous travel guide.

Lydia stared at the dim shadows of roofs, unnerved. "This is where you're making a delivery? What on earth would a public school want with coffins?"

"Oh, but my dear…." the pale mortician leaned over her, his lanky body suddenly seeming sharper and darker and far more menacing. "Coffins are needed everywhere in this world."

Lydia's fixation on this disturbing statement was suddenly broken by the sound of hoofbeats behind them in the mist. She jumped and whirled around in her seat, staring vividly. The riders were too far away yet to see or be seen, but there was only one road beside the river, and she could tell they were coming her way. "Son of a gun!" she hissed, standing up abruptly and beginning to clamber down from the seat-box of the wagon.

Undertaker leaned over to watch her progress. "Oh? Leaving so soooooon? I was going to take your measurements for your own coffin!"

"That'll have to wait," Lydia determined, thudding her booted heels against the ground. "I'm going to hide myself in the mist. I don't know who's coming, but if it's anyone other than my family or Sebastian, you'd better not tell them where I am, or….or else!" With that, the young girl raced away from the road toward the wrought-iron fence, the sound of Undertaker's rollicking laughter piercing the fog behind her.

She ran along the fence line until she could no longer see even the silhouette of the wagon. She stopped when she came upon a large pine tree, throwing herself behind its trunk out of pure instinct. Biting her lip, she pressed on her chest to slow her breathing and listened with all her might in the direction she had come. She heard the hoofbeats cease, and then voices took their place. She was too far away to hear anything but the loudest words being spoken, but she could easily distinguish the chilling cadence of her assailant's voice, along with others. Blast it, how had he found her? Perhaps he had asked the pedestrians they had passed on their way out of London to direct him to the road they'd taken. Even so, they had not passed by anyone else during their ride through the countryside. The red-haired man ought to have no evidence that she had remained in the wagon for the full journey. For all he knew, she might have jumped out ages ago and was long gone. Lydia pressed her hands against the pine bark and prayed that Undertaker would lie, or at least act so bizarre that the assassins would give up on trying to get information out of him. He shouldn't have too much trouble with that. She heard his laugh rolling in the fog, and then more words. After a pause in which the voices of several people murmured unintelligibly, the hoofbeats began again, scattering and gradually fading into nothing. She fell against a tree branch in relief, closing her eyes and focusing on nothing but her heartbeat, its steady sound calming her fearful mind.

After several minutes of deep breathing, Lydia turned her eyes toward the interior of the fence and focused on planning her next move. She could go back to Undertaker's wagon and remain with him, but she wasn't sure that was such a good idea. He had given her some valuable information, and he seemed to have refrained from disclosing her location to the assassins, but nevertheless, everything about him made her nervous. She would probably be safer on her own from this point forward. Lydia hefted up her skirts and swung her leg deftly over the lowest branch of the pine tree. She didn't know much about Weston College, only that which was public information- it was a six-year, male-only public college for the sons of England's wealthy and influential families. It was made up of four different houses, each defined by its own color. She had no idea what the colors meant or how students were sorted, but the idea was a familiar one. A college was one step below a university in terms of the age range of its students. The youngest would be about Ciel's age, and the oldest around hers. She herself had attended Ramsay's Public College in West Chesterton until her graduation just over a year ago, after which she had gone on to the university. Compared to her old school, however, a place like Weston was palatial in size and no doubt outfitted with the finest and most expensive facilities.

Lydia continued carefully scaling the tree until she reached a branch that stretched out over the spiked top of the wrought-iron fence. Crouched over like a monkey, she crawled carefully onto it, feeling it slowly bear down under her weight. She was very glad Undertaker was not watching this process, as his hysterical laughter would have surely distracted her. After several tense moments in which she cleared the dangerous spikes, Lydia swung herself upside down on the branch and let go. She tumbled a few feet and landed on her back upon a lush, rich-smelling lawn. Brushing herself off, the brunette stood and began to hike toward the misty spires of buildings straight ahead. She didn't know much more than the basics about England's most prestigious college, but she did know someone who attended school here, someone who would hopefully be willing to direct her to a phone and provide her with a safe place to wait for Sebastian to come and get her. Edward Midford was in his fifth form here, and she had been told by her Aunt Angelina, who was friendly with everyone, that his house color was green. She only remembered it because it was the same color as his eyes, which she had not seen at all during the years she had been gone. She wondered, with a nervous twist of her stomach, how he would receive her.

Lydia wandered into the first building she came across, pausing despite herself to admire its impressive Gothic architecture. The inside did not seem to be constructed as a dormitory, but a place where classes were taught. The entire hall was silent, however, which she found odd since it was still the middle of the day. Feeling more self-conscious than she had outside, Lydia paced quietly past empty classrooms full of finely carved desks shining like burnished metal. The walls all had expensive-looking paintings hanging on them, and she could see her reflection in the tiles of the floor. After passing through several hallways, Lydia paused to admire a very long glass case full of rows of trophies. Each trophy had a single-colored array of precious stones embedded into its circular golden frame, and a swath cut in front upon which were engraved lists of names. Most of the trophies were decorated with green emeralds. Quite a few had red rubies, and a few more were studded with purple amethysts. Lydia walked alongside the wall-length trophy case, admiring the shimmer of the stones, until she came to one which stopped her. It was the only blue sapphire-studded trophy in the whole collection. Did that mean that whatever sport these trophies were awarded for, the blue house had only won once in all these years? Curiously, Lydia bent closer to the glass to read the names engraved upon the golden swath. Suddenly, her eyes collided with one that made her choke on the air inside her mouth.

Vincent Cantor.

Lydia gasped and pressed her hand over her lips, staring fixatedly at the unmarried name of the man who had gone on to marry her mother in order to claim her own privileged family name for himself. She read it again, then hurriedly retreated from the glass as if the form of the man himself had arisen in it. She stared at the trophy and it seemed to stare back at her, encrusted sapphires blazing like the bright cobalt of the Phantomhive eyes.

"You! Stop!"

Lydia catapulted away from the trophy case and began to race down the hall in the opposite direction of the voice, imagining her assailants had somehow tracked her down. She reached the door that led back toward the outside and yanked it open, taking a quick glance over her shoulder to gauge how close her pursuers were. Instead of rushing bodies and jagged knives, her eyes fell upon the muted tones of a school uniform. The person wearing it was standing by himself in the middle of the hallway, shrouded in a heavy black cloak. This foreboding appearance did not do much to allay her fears, so she turned to continue her dash through the doorway.

"I said stop! Stop at once! I am a prefect!" The voice was firm but awkward-sounding in its loudness, as though its owner was not used to speaking at such volumes.

Lydia halted and peered out from behind the door. A prefect might be able to show her the way to Green House, but he also might kick her out of the school grounds entirely. The brown-haired girl dithered in indecision as the hooded figure took the opportunity to approach. He was very pale, with full-blooded lips and dark circles under his eyes. His hair was shaggy and shoulder-length, obsidian black apart from a single streak of white on the right side. He wore a purple waistcoat and a dark purple flower over the lapel of his shirt. If vampires were real, this is what they would look like, Lydia thought subconsciously.

The strange-looking boy halted in front of her. His eyes were brighter than his hair and clothes, and they swept over her in an appraising kind of way. "You. Show me your hands."

Lydia blinked. "What?"

"Your hands. Let me see," the boy insisted, as if this were a perfectly reasonable request in the current situation. Very tentatively, Lydia held out her hands, wondering if he was going to smack them with a ruler or whatever it was prefects did to rule-breakers. The boy took hold of them and began a thorough examination, turning them to and fro, examining the palm lines on her left hand, and tapping the bones in her wrists with his forefinger, as if he were a jeweler inspecting precious stones for flaws. Beginning to suspect that she was not exactly dealing with a normal sort of person, Lydia tilted her head as he finished his strange appraisal. "So…."

"These will do. Come with me," the dark-haired boy commanded, turning about and beginning to walk back the way he'd come.

Lydia blinked again. "I'm sorry, but what-"

"Come!" he enunciated with a sweep of his cloaked arm. "Before classes let out. Unless you want to be directly dispatched from school grounds."

Grumbling under her breath, Lydia followed him warily up a flight of stairs and through an increasingly rising array of doors. She promised herself she would cut and run if he tried to lead her into any dark or isolated areas- for all she knew, he might be just as dangerous as the people she was trying to flee- but to her surprise, their final destination turned out to be the far side of an extremely large, ornate library. He had a bag of art supplies set up on one side of an oaken table, and what looked to be a still life scene arranged on the other side next to the window. The boy took a seat before the art supplies and pointed to his arrangement. "Stand right there, and hold out your hands."

"Now look here," Lydia uttered in bewilderment, "I don't see what any of this has to do with-"

The boy tapped his charcoal stick firmly against the table. He and Lydia eyed each other for a few moments before she moved to stand where he had indicated, deciding to buy herself a bit more time to think. She held out her hands and he regarded them thoughtfully. "Your hands are uneven. Unwind the gauze on your right one."

Lydia retracted her hands quickly. "No, I can't."

"Why not?" he asked, leaning forward to look at it again. "Its shape is fine."

"No, I'm sorry, but I can't take it off." Lydia said firmly, beginning to back away. They eyed each other again before the boy sighed in exasperation.

"Oh, all right. I suppose the bandages can add….character. Come back here and sit."

Feeling just a tiny bit interested in what he was going to do, Lydia sat down across from him and examined the still life before her. A stack of three books, each tilted at a precise angle, sat in the middle of a scattering of fresh-smelling purple flowers. The sunlight from the window beside them mixed with the grain of the oaken surface, creating an intricate pattern of light and shadows. The boy indicated to her hands. "See the largest flower, in the middle of the table? Pick it up with your left hand. Now rest your arm upon the wood right there. Tilt it a little. No, the other way. Good. Let the flower's stem rest between your index and middle fingers, facing me. Now bring your right hand over your left and interlace the fingers loosely. A little looser. Tilt that arm a bit this way. It should look very casual. Good. Splay the tips of your fingers a little….yes, excellent. Now, Don't. Move."

The boy brought his knees up to his chest, using them as a back to rest his sketchbook upon, and began drawing in earnest. His oddly light eyes flickered constantly between the page and the scene upon the table. Lydia watched him for a little while, deep in thought, before she had an idea. "Hey," she called, trying to get his attention. When the hooded boy did not respond, she acted like she was going to lean back in her chair.

"I said don't move!" he snapped, glaring at her as if she had offended him personally.

Lydia huffed and raised her eyebrow. "This may surprise you, but I did not materialize in that hallway for the sole purpose of serving as your sketch model. There is someplace in this school I am attempting to reach. I will let you continue drawing me if you agree to take me there after you're done."

The boy closed his heavy-lidded eyes and sighed a deep, mournful sigh. "Oh, all right," he grumbled. "Where is it you want to go?"

"Green House dormitory."

The boy sighed again, looking most put upon. "Bother. They're so loud."

"No one said you had to stay around afterward." Lydia retorted sensibly. "Just get me there straight, and you can be on your way with your picture."

The boy stared at the latticework of light and flowers before him. "Very well," he mumbled before dipping his head and continuing with his drawing. Lydia couldn't see what he was doing, but she could tell that he was concentrating intensely, so she remained silent over the better part of an hour as footsteps passed upstairs and the muted voices of students called and laughed in the hallways. She tried not to think too hard about not moving, aware that it would make it that much harder not to move. She wondered where Sebastian and Ciel were at the moment, and hoped they were still safely out running errands, unaware of her absence and possible peril. If she could arrange a call back to the town house before dinner, she could avoid throwing the whole household into an uproar and unleashing a worried demon upon the streets of London. All of that depended on whether she could convince Edward to help her, and that depended on her being able to find him, and that, oddly enough, seemed to depend on her willingness to model her hands for this strange, morose-looking prefect. She was certainly having an interesting day, Lydia figured in dark amusement as the hooded boy set his pencil down at last. "I was finally able to finish it," he murmured, regarding the paper with an almost loving look before standing up slowly. "Well then, I suppose Green Lion is waiting."

"Can I see it?" Lydia asked curiously, setting the flower back on the table and rolling her wrists to work the stiffness out. The boy eyed her cautiously before holding up the sketchbook for a fraction of a second, enough time for Lydia's sharp eyes to see a richly drawn scene which seemed to actually improve upon the real-life version. "Wow," she gushed, following him as he began to wander out of the library. "It's fantastic!"

"Mmmmmm," the boy nodded, closing the sketchbook and holding it close to his chest. "I haven't been able to finish it for the longest time. I couldn't find the perfect hands."

"What's so perfect about my hands?" Lydia asked as they exited the library.

"They're small," he said, staring ahead of them ponderously. "Delicate enough to compliment the flowers without overwhelming them. And your skin is darker than most European skin, so it stands out against the light. And the wrist bones are perfect. There aren't any women in this school apart from the housemothers, and men don't have the right kind of wrist bones. They're shaped too much like cudgels. They're not graceful."

"I see," Lydia nodded, deciding to ignore the oddness of this person and make conversation anyway. Maybe he was eccentric because he was an artist. She had always heard that the artistically-minded tended to have rather distinctive personalities.

"I should warn you," he said suddenly as they rounded a corner, "Whatever you're doing at Green House will likely result in you being removed from school grounds. Non-employed women are strictly forbidden at Weston College, except for a few days during the summer. If Greenhill or someone else finds you, it will cause a considerable uproar."

"I'm trying to remove myself from this school. I didn't plan on coming here in the first place," Lydia explained, eyeing the distant gates and biting her lip. "But I need someone's help to make it back home safely. I need to see Edward Midford, from Green Lion House."

The dark-haired boy paused for a moment. "Midford?" he asked, blinking in surprise. "Unless I'm mistaken, I believe he is fag to prefect Greenhill."

Lydia had no idea what this "fag" business was about; she frowned in worry as they made it outside into the dimming sunlight. The halls and paths seemed oddly deserted, and she wondered if everyone had gone back to their dormitories. "Be that as it may, I'm hoping he will remember that he also has connections to my family."

The boy turned his hooded head and gave her another appraising gaze. The light color of his eyes made them seem misted and impenetrable. "Who are you?" he inquired calmly, as if it was just occurring to him to ask this after over an hour in her company. Lydia wrestled back the sudden urge to snicker.

"My name is Rachel Eddy. I'm an old friend of Edward's," she lied, smiling congenially. She did not think this boy was a threat to her safety, but being brought up as an inspector's daughter had instilled many rules of covert conduct into Lydia, one of which was to always use a fake name when discovered snooping around in places where she technically wasn't supposed to be.

"Is that so…." The boy murmured, brushing a piece of dark hair out of his face. "Well, I'm not sure how you got in here, but I will have Edward escort you to the gates. The students at this school need to be focused on their education. We can't allow women to be coming in and seeking them out to confess their….feelings. It's a distraction."

Lydia could not keep herself from scoffing at the bold assumption he had made. "Trust me, the only feelings I have at the moment are those of impending doom," she declared, eyeing the gates again.

"Impending doom, huh…."the boy mused in monotone, tucking his hood more tightly around his face. A moment later, he stopped and gestured toward a gigantic building rising up from the earth before them. "Well then, we're here."