Cheerio to everyone reading, and my story marches on! We left off with a pretty big cliffhanger last time, so I'm going to reply to a few people and then we're going to get this show on the road. :)

Fabulous Ahjumma: You're so nice! I'm glad you are grateful for my existence, hehe. I'm pretty grateful to exist myself. Since you just got done fasting for Ramadan, I'm going to guess you live somewhere around the Arabian Peninsula, or maybe Indonesia? That's pretty cool. Wherever you are, I am glad my story was able to alleviate your boredom and give you something to enjoy. I work hard to do that through my writing. :)

ChaoticChesire: I love your username! Also, I'm glad you love my story. I will keep it up to the best of my ability, and thanks for reviewing!

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"Hello, my friends."

For a long moment, Ciel and Lydia could do nothing but stare, blue eyes open wide to take in the sight of the boy they had turned the school upside down trying to find. Now he was standing before them as if nothing was wrong, as if they had an arrangement to meet here and he was simply welcoming them like a gracious host. Derrick Arden. He was smiling like he did in his school pictures, but what on earth had happened to his head? The shape seemed off, the brow tilted, and had those really been stitches she had seen when his hat had slipped? The smiling figure took several steps their way, and Lydia felt her body tensing up in blatant mistrust.

"Derrick Arden?" Ciel asked, narrowing his eyes at the other boy. "What are you doing here? Where the bloody hell have you been? We've been searching for you all over this school, and your family-!"

"But I'm right here," the young aristocrat shrugged and smiled blithely, seeming completely unconcerned about all the trouble he had caused. "I know you've been looking for me, but there's really nothing to worry about. I'm right here."

"That doesn't change the fact that you disappeared for a year!" Ciel barked harshly. "What on earth have you been doing? I demand an explanation." The young heir took several steps toward the black-clad figure, glancing up in surprise when he was abruptly pulled back by Lydia's bandaged hand. The brunette narrowed her eyes at the vacant gaze of the student in front of them. This did not feel right. This felt too much like her dreams, the same aura of false calm emitting from the air around them. Underneath the calm was a deep current of menace, stirring gooseflesh upon her arms and neck.

"Derrick Arden," she stated, gripping her lantern forcefully. "Are you feeling quite yourself?"

"Of course." He tilted his head to the side, his neck slanting like a marionette whose string had gone slack. "I've never been better. I'm right here."

"You already said that!" Ciel exclaimed forcefully, glancing back and forth between the two taller young adults. "We can see that you're-"

"Are you?" Lydia interrupted, still staring at the shadows that cast a disturbing pallor over his face. "Are you really here?"

"Yeeeeeeesssss." The blankness in his eyes turned darker as the boy took a staggering step toward them, his voice dropping to a low gurgle. "I aaaaaaaam…right heeeeeeere."

"Ciel, get back," Lydia's hand shot out as she pulled her brother behind her, raising the lantern high above her head. The light spanned into the corners of the room, and she suddenly saw four more pairs of dulled, worn shoes shuffling toward them.

Derrick lurched, his face twisting into a gruesome mask. "Hellooooooo, my friiiiiiiiends. I aaaaaam…..riiiiiiiight…heeeeeeeeere!" The last glimmer of humanity vanished from his face, and he was the ghoul from her nightmares. He lunged toward her throat, his gaping mouth cracking at the seams.

Lydia brought the lantern crashing down into his head as his teeth grazed the collar of her suit. He hit the ground, spread-eagled and clumsy as the lantern's flame guttered and died. "The door!" she shrieked to her brother, and both siblings turned and raced through the darkness for the open exit. A meaty, foul-smelling body leapt out of nowhere, and Lydia screamed as she found herself engulfed in its arms. She punched it in the face and felt its jaw crack, but it did not recoil in pain or even appear to notice the damage. She felt teeth on the shoulder pads of her suit, digging to find flesh, and as she struggled to push its head off her, her fingers grazed over a vicious line of stiches sewn into waxen skin. A moment later, a mighty thud dented the head as Lydia's eyes fell upon a short silhouette heaving a cricket bat over its shoulder. "Come on! Come on!" he shouted, and Lydia seized the moment and flung the attacking body off her. As she staggered to her feet, the thin light from beyond the doorway suddenly vanished. She turned to head her see a gaping monster looming over her little brother.

"CIEL!"

A tremendous, fleshy cracking noise caused her to scream in horror as the monster fell to a sudden wall of blackness. An arm reached out of the shadows and scooped her brother away from the advancing ghouls. "Fear not, master," came a soft, silky voice above her head. "I have come." Two bloody pinpricks opened in the darkness and scanned the surrounding room. "My, my, what strange state of affairs is this?" Lydia heard a familiar cracking sound and the thunder of another body collapsing. "You two always seem to find the most precarious situations." Another felling blow was struck. "And you wonder why I worry about leaving you alone?" A body hit the ground beside her, convulsed unnaturally, and raised its head in her direction. It seemed to sense her presence, although it could not see or hear her. The half-crushed face of one of Derrick Arden's friends snapped at her before a black-topped shoe emerged from the dimness and planted itself upon its head. The white-gloved hand of Sebastian leaned down and pulled her to her feet. "Ciel?" she called, trembling unconsciously. "Ciel?!"

"Right here," came his voice from underneath the glowing red eyes.

Sebastian guided her in front of him and urged her toward the door. "Master, let us escape this room and barricade the entrance." Lydia hurried into the hallway, gagging on the stench of formaldehyde that seemed to permeate her lungs. Ciel was set down beside her, and the demon abruptly slammed the doors as a risen body leapt for them. Fingernails grated against the wood, just like the night she had been forced to flee the tower. Fumbling in her suit pocket, Lydia located the key and jammed it into the lock, re-sealing the doors as more hands joined the first pair in seeking escape. Apart from the pounding and low, guttural noises, the boys did not make any sound as they clustered on the other side of the doors. Lydia's left hand shook as it recalled the spiny feel of stiches.

Ciel and Lydia leaned against the wall, panting in disbelief, as Sebastian hurried back and forth with statues and heavy furniture, placing them tightly in front of the locked double doors. When it became apparent that not even an elephant could have successfully plowed its way out of the room, the demon strode toward the siblings and bowed deeply. "At your service, as always, my masters."

"Good man, Sebastian." Lydia touched her shaking hand to his temple and the demon accepted it gracefully. "I think we had better- Ciel?!"

The young heir's breathing had devolved into ragged, suffocating gasps. Lydia knelt by his side and braced her hands against his back, the pressure helping to control his breathing. She cursed the fact that his herbal tonic was all the way back at Blue House, where she could not move freely, then turned to Sebastian. "Take him back to Sapphire Owl and administer the asthma tonic. I'll stand guard here and make sure those….things don't breach the door. Come back for me when you're through, and we can discuss how to proceed."

"But master, what if they do-?" Sebastian asked, hovering in dark concern.

"Then I'll leap away, of course. As long as I only have myself to worry about, I can avoid danger just fine." Lydia squeezed her brother's hand, who seemed only half-aware of what was going on, and stood back as Sebastian lifted him and vanished down the corridor at full tilt, his red eyes blazing as he glanced back at her. Lydia waited in silence broken only by the muffled groans and thuds coming from the other side of the door. What the bloody hell had just happened….?! The events of the night swam ludicrously before her mind. They had finally found Derrick Arden, but he was not at all who they had been searching for. He and his friends did not even seem human. Of all the things she didn't know, Lydia was sure she had never see anything like this before. The way they had moved, the waxen stitches in their skin, their vacant, filmy eyes….what did it all mean? What on earth had been done to them, and by whom? Lydia looked around for the specter, but for once, she did not see it. She was alone. Carefully, she leaned her ear up against a corner of the door, listening to the scratching and shuffling within. They had lost their minds. Or perhaps they had been driven mad. She called, "Derrick Arden?" and was met only with a senseless, inhuman groan. He had seemed somewhat conscious for a moment, he had spoken to them….but now there were no words. No hints of comprehension. No breathing….

No breathing?

As Lydia leaned her head toward the door to listen harder, she was suddenly interrupted by a furious shout from an adjoining hallway. She only had a second to register the rushing forms of four tall figures before something flew from the leader's hands and lunged like a cannon toward her face. She threw her arm up to block- the white bandages blazed in sudden lamplight- and then something exploded along the crook of her arm, sending white-hot spears of pain shrieking across her face and collarbone. A moment later, she realized it was herself shrieking as she turned and fled through a fog of pain, rounding the corner and tearing the bright-white bandages from her arm. She had no time to think of where she wanted to go, and she fell out of the light in the last place she had looked before falling in- the structural support beams of the roof, more than thirty feet above the floor.

Lydia scrambled to lay flat upon a huge, worn beam, and closed her eyes, trying not to think about how many spider webs she had probably disturbed with her sudden appearance. She felt blood running down her head and into her clothes, but she did not seem to be falling unconscious, which probably meant the wounds were shallow. What had he hit her with? Her question was answered a moment later when she peered over the edge of the beam to see Greenhill standing among the pieces of his shattered cricket bat, staring intently at the door they had barricaded. Bluewer and Redmond raced back from around the corner. "She's gone! Completely gone. That way is a dead end, but there's no one there!"

"I told you," panted a frightened voice belonging to the hooded member of the group, "she can appear and disappear at will. You won't find her. She's some sort of spirit, or-"

"A spirit who just deflected my bat with only one arm?!" Greenhill demanded, his voice spiking in rage. "Whatever the hell she is, she's been in there! She took the key and used it to find Arden! She knows!"

There was a moment of dead silence as all four prefects glanced toward the muffled thudding coming from behind the barricaded door. Lydia was too high up to see the expressions on their faces, but their voices belied their fear. "What are we going to do?" Bluewer asked, glancing around the darkened hallway frantically. "How can we fight against someone we can't even pin down in one place?!"

"She's not the only one with that power," Redmond reminded, lowering his already-hushed voice. "We could ask him to intervene."

"No," Violet whispered, causing the others to turn and stare sharply at him. "No, we can't. He won't help us a second time. He made that very clear when he arrived. We're not valuable to him- we're just a temporary means to an end." The hooded prefect shivered miserably. "What that end is, I don't know if we can even imagine. But he doesn't care at all about our fates, and if we bother him before the Fourth of June, he might decide to just dispose of us now."

The prefects stared blankly at each other once again and Lydia bit her lip and strove to remain absolutely silent. She wished they would stop speaking in pronouns and name the person they were referring to, but she doubted that would happen. Either they did not know an official name, or they were too afraid to speak it.

Redmond interrupted the hush of silence. "What can we do at this point? The Fourth of June is almost here, and the school is not at all secure. There might even be multiple enemies to deal with. Greenhill said he saw two silhouettes moving past the window, and the experiences we've had thus far suggest there is more than one active saboteur on the grounds….and we haven't even caught the first one. We're out of time."

"You're all giving up without a fight," Greenhill snarled, flexing the arm that usually held his cricket bat as he stared down his comrades. "Whatever powers that girl has, she's not invincible. She can be injured. I hurt her just now, even if she blocked the worst of the blow. And if she can be injured, she can be killed. And if she can be killed, so can her accomplices. We can silence them forever, and then we'll give their bodies to him to use for his experiments. They'll never be found after he leaves this place, and all the evidence will be-"

"Stop!" Violet shrieked, lurching forward and seizing Greenhill's arm. "Please, please stop! This is insane! Can't you see how demented this is?! How many more people do you think you can just kill like that?! If three people find out, will you kill them? If ten people find out, will you kill all of them? What about twenty? Forty? It's mad! You can't do this, Herman, please-!"

"DO NOT tell me what I cannot do! We're far past that point!" Greenhill roared, lashing out his arm and sending Violet reeling into the wall. He struck the panel hard and fell onto his side, gasping, as the other prefect leered above him. "If you want to lay there and snivel like the little wretch you are, go ahead! I will do whatever it takes to secure my future." Greenhill snatched the lantern from Redmond's hands and began to stride off down the shadowed hallway as Bluewer knelt next to Violet, feeling his back for injuries. The Green Lion prefect turned sharply at the end of the hallway. "If you're not willing to do the same, you might as well wander into that room and let Arden devour you. You'll be no better off if we're found out." With a sharp flash of the lantern, he was gone.

Redmond pulled Violet to his feet, but he immediately collapsed to his knees again, his sobs audible above the malevolent rasping from the other side of the door. Bluewer and Redmond glanced at each other above his head, looking like they had no idea what to do. Redmond knelt down carefully and slung one of Violet's limp arms over his shoulder. "Come with us, Violet," he murmured darkly to the hooded prefect. "We have to keep on. We'll….we'll think of something…." His voice broke at the end as he folded into himself. Bluewer joined him on Violet's other side, and the three forlorn prefects slowly trudged into the darkness, their footfalls fading to tiny echoes, like raindrops on hard earth.

Lydia waited until she heard the heavy front doors slam shut, then began to reach across her body for her bandaged arm. A stirring over her left shoulder nearly caused her to lash out, until she heard the smooth word, "Master."

"Sebastian," she whispered, rolling over just enough to see him situated silently in the beams above her. "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough," the demon murmured, winding his way down to her with graceful ease. "It was most fortuitous of you to choose this hiding place. We have witnessed a very interesting scene. Now, if you will allow me to carry you back to Blue House, I believe we must attend to your wounds posthaste."

"But what about them?" Lydia craned her neck toward the barricaded door which blocked the ghoulish terrors from the school outside.

Sebastian knelt on the beam beside her and pulled her closely to his chest. "That door has now been blocked for nearly half an hour while they have tried to get through it. I believe they are physically and mentally incapable of finding an exit on their own."

"We nearly gave them one," Lydia muttered, thinking of the horror that could have been unleashed if Sebastian had not come in time. "Very well, let's return to Blue House and see what's to be done about this awful mess."

"Yes, master."

/

"They've gone absolutely, completely, utterly mad. That's the only possible explanation."

Once again, Sebastian, Ciel, and Lydia were gathered in a close arc in Sebastian's room, striving to keep their voices low and inconspicuous. Ciel was reclining against the headboard of the bed, fatigued by his ordeal but much improved thanks to the timely dose of the asthma tonic. Lydia was seated in the chair as Sebastian hovered over her, carefully wiping up the blood and cleaning multiple shallow wounds upon her face and neck. The young girl thought darkly that this seemed to be a reoccurring theme, Sebastian patching her up after she had been injured in an extremely improbable and dangerous manner. She turned her head a bit to the side, trying not to move too much for his sake. "What sort of thing could so fully strip the sanity from all five of those students, though?"

"I've no idea." The young heir shook his head and frowned. "You did say the prefects mentioned something about some sort of experimentation being conducted?"

"Yes, Greenhill shouted as much while I was listening. None of them stated a name, but I surmised from their conversation that there is someone behind the scenes who has been pulling the strings from the beginning, someone responsible for making Derrick and his friends the way they are now. If we can capture that person, we can find out his methods, but-" Lydia paused and shuddered in a combination of pain and fear. "I don't know if it will be possible for us to reverse the damage on those already afflicted. They didn't just attack us, they tried to eat us. That was one of the most gruesome, disturbing things I have ever seen in my life. How can madness like that possibly be fixed?"

Ciel sighed, burying his face in his small hand. "Her Majesty will not be pleased with this outcome if her nephew proves beyond saving."

Lydia bit her lip as Sebastian pried a sliver of wood out of her cheek. "Aaaah! Blast it all, I cannot believe I've managed to get splinters in my face. At least I blocked Greenhill's bat before it hit me." She thought back to the tremendous force with which the cricket bat had impacted her arm, enough to send shards of wood flying like shrapnel into her skin. "He threw it with intent to kill. And….when Violet was trying to stop him, he specifically said, "How many more people do you think you can just kill like that?" So I think it would not be amiss to deduce that Greenhill has killed before, and the other prefects are covering up his crimes for unknown reasons."

Sebastian growled lowly as he knelt beside the medical bag. "You are very lucky one of these shards did not pierce your throat or your eyes, master."

There was silence in the wake up this numbing statement as Sebastian unearthed a roll of gauze. At last, Lydia opened her eyes and fixed them upon the others. "There is….there is something else I thought of while I was guarding the doors. What if Derrick Arden and his friends are not mad, but rather….possessed? What if the specter I've been seeing is a demon after all, and it's taken possession of them and is manipulating the prefects? We could see about arranging an exorcism-"

"I doubt that will be necessary, master," Sebastian interrupted quickly, tugging painfully on one of her wounds. "My observations of those students while I was driving them back did not lead me to sense that a demonic possession was occurring. Rather, I believe something much stranger may be taking place."

"What makes you say that?" she asked, hissing in belated pain as her raw cheek stung.

Sebastian's hands moved gracefully as he applied the gauze. "In the case of possession, the demon inhabits a vessel that is already occupied. It forces the human's awareness down into a dark, subconscious state so the demon can take over executive functions of the body and act through the human vessel. In these instances, the human's soul remains inside the body- it is simply subdued, and if the demon is cast out, it will surge forward again to reclaim its domain. If Derrick Arden and his friends were possessed, I ought to have sensed a soul signature within each one of them. As it was, I deduced nothing of the sort from any of their number."

"Wait, what?" Ciel demanded, leaning forward abruptly. "You're saying they didn't have their souls? And yet they were actively moving around? How is such a thing even possible?"

"I know not, young master. I have never before seen anything like it." Sebastian murmured, raising his head to meet their eyes. "I also observed additional symptoms in those individuals which indicate that someone has tampered with a very fundamental aspect of their nature. Respiration and pulse were nonexistent, which would not be the case in the instance of a demon possession. The smell of preserved flesh was strong. The blows I struck upon them did not knock them unconscious or even seem to hurt them. And they appeared to be able to pinpoint the location of human beings inside the room without being able to hear or see them."

"That's insane," Ciel muttered lowly. "So that would mean…."

"I noticed their lack of breathing as well," Lydia stated quietly, gazing toward the window from which she could just see the old administrative building through the darkness. "I also observed that the students all seemed to have grotesque stitches running across their brows." She traced a cold finger over her own forehead and bit her lip. "It seems utterly mad, I know. However, I don't think we can make reliable judgments about what happened to those boys without direct evidence, which brings us to the next question; now that we know where the missing students are, how shall we proceed in the investigation?"

Ciel sighed and hunched his shoulders. "Well, we cannot produce them to the Queen and their families as they are presently. It would be an absolute travesty. We need to find the one who did this to them. It's the only way we're going to get answers. And I would bet that the person we need is the Headmaster. The Fourth of June is just three days away. I was going to ask the Headmaster at the midnight tea party for information regarding the students, but now that we know where they are, I believe I will progress to simply capturing him at that event and confronting him with the students' condition. Once we have him in our clutches, we'll be able to find out all he knows. That goes for the prefects as well."

"How are your preparations for the tournament going?" Lydia asked, nodding in agreement.

"They are shaping up as planned," the young heir replied, and in the light from Sebastian's lamp, Lydia noticed for the first time the uncharacteristic roughness of his hands, the scuff marks on his clothing. He had been working hard. "I will definitely procure a seat at the midnight tea party. We only need to uphold this farce for the next few days. Once we've secured the Headmaster and gotten to the truth, it won't matter who knows of our real identities."

Lydia opened her mouth to speak again, but was interrupted by a sudden commotion from below them. Sebastian tilted his head and stared at the floor, listening with his supernatural hearing. "It seems Bluewer has returned from his nighttime excursion and is rousing the room monitors. I must hasten down there and address this disturbance as housemaster. Young master, please accompany me. I will pretend that you have been with me for an extended tutoring session, so suspicion will not fall upon you for being out of bed after hours. Master, stay here and lock the door behind us. We cannot risk an errant student wandering in and finding you."

Lydia nodded, and rose on shaky legs to follow the two males to the door. Ciel glanced back at her, his blue eye reflected briefly in her own before she eased the door shut and quietly turned the lock. She stood alone in the center of the room for a moment, feeling the ragged cuts upon her face flare and ebb in pain. Her fleshy left hand still felt the stiches scraping against her fingers as she struggled to evade the teeth of the monster. Shuddering, Lydia strode over to Sebastian's wash basin and scrubbed her hand vigorously with soap, pouring fresh water over it and imagining the disturbing sensation trickling away from her skin. Feeling slightly better, she turned to climb onto the bed and nearly dropped the pitcher. There was something sitting in the middle of Sebastian's bed which she knew had not been there when he and Ciel had left the room. Bracing herself, she crept gingerly across the floor and picked up the rush lamp, holding it high enough that she could see the object clearly.

It was the Latin dictionary she had lost in the library.

Lydia stared at it in wild alarm before a flicker of movement to her left caused her to overreact, spinning and brandishing the heavy lamp defensively at the window. It took her a moment to realize the movement was coming from outside the window. Sliding her feet forward, Lydia stared down onto the lawn, illuminated by the waxing moon, and was met with the sight of the flowing black specter just outside Blue House's perimeter. It was neither beckoning nor pointing. It stood perfectly still, staring up at her window with its faceless gaze.

A tinder of some violent, fearsome emotion was touched off in Lydia's chest. The young girl set the rush lamp upon the desk with an almighty bang. She threw out her arms and seized the curtains, dragging them closed and shrouding the room in darkness. Tossing the book upon the dresser, Lydia heaved herself into bed and bundled under the covers, closing her eyes so she might see nothing. Time passed, but she did not fall asleep, currents of electricity racing through her mind.

Sebastian did not comment on the mysterious appearance of the book when he returned to the room, but he climbed into bed beside her, wrapped both arms around her bundled form, and held on so tightly that she felt she was suffocating.