Reincarnation

Chapter 9:

Summer 2012

Ciel looked around nervously for a second to ascertain that he was definitely alone. The last thing he needed right now was for someone to walk in and discover what he was doing.

I'm alone, Ciel told himself. He turned the tiny key anticlockwise and the floor tile next to it began to slide away and revealed a set of puzzle pieces with a note lying on top.

Ciel picked up the note and his eyes widened as he read it.

"To the one that solved my riddle and found the key, the end is in sight, but only just. Assemble the puzzle pieces before the time runs out and the route to my secrets is lost forever."

Ciel glanced back down at the floor and noticed that the puzzle pieces were slowly sinking down into the floor.

"Shit!" he cursed and picked them all up to find the corner and edge pieces. Ciel swore again when he realised how small the pieces were and that they were all varying shades of white.

After two minutes of rapid assembling, Ciel dropped the last piece in to complete the picture which was a white rose. He sighed in relief then he frowned when the floor tile next to it slid across to reveal a chessboard with twenty four pieces left on it; twelve white and twelve black and another note lying on top of it. He picked it up and read it in annoyance. How many puzzles would he have to complete?

"You are nearly there.

Simply play as black and checkmate the white king in one move. There is no time limit."

After reading Ciel groaned. He hadn't played chess since he had started secondary school-the chess club there was full of chess obsessed boys that took the game too seriously, so he chess skills were quite rusty.

Analytically, he stared down at the chessboard and considered all of his possible moves. Using pawns was out of the question, the rooks were in the wrong positions and the queen was trapped. That left the knight which four rows away from the white king.

So he picked up the black knight and placed him on a square that was three spaces forward and one to the right. As he moved the knight he noted that it looked a little beaten up with slash marks where the paint had been chipped off. There was a clicking sound as he placed the knight on the designated square and the floor slid out from under him.

For a moment he felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole to wonderland. Then he landed on something soft with a thump. He looked up and to see how far he had fallen and spotted that it was only a few metres as he could still see the light from the library. He felt under him and realised that he had landed on a cushion.

He stood up and examined his surroundings. It was a very small room, three metres by three metres. He guessed it was only intended as a hiding place and not an actual secret room. Ciel spotted a stack of something in the corner and walked over to it to get a closer look.

It was a stack of leather bound journals with a ring lying on top. He held the ring up to the light and it glinted blue.

Present day

Sebastian examined the chess piece that he had been given carefully in the kitchen. He scrutinised the scratches and a pang of despair hit him. Had his former master really hated him that much?

His master had always been one to refer to him as being a knight on a chessboard so he knew that it represented him, but he didn't know why he had left behind a riddle to lead to the chess piece. It didn't make sense.

A possible explanation would be that he had not been given the real riddle, but there was no way that he could verify that until he found Vincent Phantomhive's copy. He resolved to pay a visit late at night when everyone was in bed.

Rachel Phantomhive walked into the kitchen as he was planning how to break into the study. He hurriedly pocketed the chess piece as she approached him.

"I thought I heard someone ring the doorbell. Is Ciel back?" she asked.

"Yes, he has returned, with Alois Trancy. Apparently he is staying for the week," Sebastian replied as he wondered what her reaction would be. "Is that all right?"

Rachel waved away his concern. "He stays over all the time when his foster parents are away. He gets lonely and Ciel is his only friend."

"Alois Trancy is adopted?"

If he recalled correctly the Alois Trancy from the 19th Century had really been called Jim Macken.

"Yes, his real name is Alois Macken. He took on Trancy as a surname when he was adopted," Rachel explained. "By the way, he is gay."

How like the other Alois Trancy, Sebastian thought amusedly to himself.

"I noticed. Does he like Ciel?" He didn't really know why that question bothered him so much.

"He doesn't- I think he prefers older men and I don't think that Ciel sees him that way either before you ask," Rachel said with a smile. "Is there anything else that you would like to know?"

Sebastian briefly considered enquiring about the riddle, but realised it would be suspicious if he seemed too interested in a riddle that was supposed to be solved and lead to nothing. Instead he asked something else that had been bothering him.

"Does your husband have a fixation with Earl Ciel Phantomhive ? I noticed that he talked about him in great detail and a lot of the old books in the library belonged to him and are in good condition."

Rachel sat down on the kitchen table and sighed. "He does have a slight fixation, but he can't be blamed. Funtom was at its peak when Earl Ciel Phantomhive was the head and the business has been failing in recent years. Vincent has been hoping that Ciel will become the head and make it successful again. He is the spitting image of the Earl after all, but that is not a coincidence-" she broke off suddenly and covered her mouth.

Sebastian instantly picked up on this. Why wasn't it a coincidence that the current Ciel looked like the old one? Rachel Phantomhive could be the key to solving the whole mystery.

"You can tell me, Lady Phantomhive," he said softly, hoping to coax her into telling him. "I will not betray your secret to anyone else."

"No I can't!" Rachel panicked and hurried out of the room.

Sebastian stared after her in surprise, then he shrugged. If he couldn't find anything incriminating in Vincent Phantomhive's study then he would dig deeper into what secret was troubling Rachel Phantomhive.

At one o'clock in the morning Sebastian silently crept out of his bedroom on the ground floor and walked along the hallway to the study. Naturally, the door was locked, but Sebastian had tracked down the key which had been in the pocket of Vincent Phantomhive's dressing gown. He had already noiselessly entered his bedroom to obtain the key. Luckily the older Phantomhives' bedroom was nowhere near Ciel's so there wasn't a risk of him being seen.

He slipped the key into the lock and entered the darkened room. Demon's eyes could see better in the dark, but not in great detail so he switched on the torch that he had brought with him.

Sebastian memorised the layout of the papers on the desk and began to sort through them. Most of them were invoices or new designs for toys. He struck gold when he reached the bottom of one of the piles and found the riddle that Ciel had recited to him.

He examined the writing closely. Vincent had said that he had let Ciel have the original and had written a copy of himself. The copy he was looking at was not in Vincent Phantomhive's writing. He grabbed a random invoice to confirm his suspicions. The writing was close, but varied on some letters.

The only possible reason for this was that Ciel had forged this copy in his father's handwriting in order to allay Sebastian's suspicions. This meant that the riddle he had been told was a lie.

Sebastian replaced all the papers exactly as they had been before his search and switched his attention to the drawers of the desk.

Again it was nothing but documents relating to Funtom. He eyed the financial details with interest. The company was faring well at the moment considering the financial crisis, but it was nothing like it had been in the 19th Century.

His nimble fingers found a false bottom in one of the drawers. He pulled out the papers that were in there and began to read. They all seemed to be relating to In Vitro Fertilisation and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis.

Sebastian vaguely knew what the terms meant, but he was out of touch with recent human scientific developments so he switched on the computer to find out. The computer had been the next thing to search in any case.

The next fifteen minutes were spent catching up with science and Sebastian knew that he had found a significant clue.

His research coupled with the letters that he had found meant one thing.

This Ciel Phantomhive was not a reincarnation.

It was his parents.

It was through science that had looked exactly the same as original Ciel Phantomhive.

Thank you to everyone that has reviewed this fanfiction so far, your reviews keep me going. (I'm having a tough time at college at the moment) Also sorry about the uploading it twice. Fanfiction wasn't updating new chapters yesterday.

The first riddle from the last chapter came from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire so everyone who guessed that was right.

In Vitro Fertilisation is process in which the a egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body.

Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis refers to the procedures that are performed on embryos prior to implantation.

I briefly studied both at school a few years ago and looked at the moral and ethical implications as some people can select an embryo to implant just because it has desirable feature like blonde hair and blue eyes.

If anyone wants to know about it in more detail I would recommend researching it.