"It appears Adalina's life was a bit darker than anticipated," Sebastian said to Ciel as he served him his tea.

"Why do you say that? Did she tell you?"

"No. I was able to see it for myself."

Sebastian explained what he had seen when he had connected with Adalina in order to share her memories. He conveniently left out the unusual feeling he'd had when she parted from him. He still couldn't explain that himself.

"Sebastian, I want you to see if you can find where those men live. If any of the girls are still there, free them. And if there are any more occupants who attempt to stop you, deal with them accordingly."

"Yes, my lord."

As Sebastian took off to fulfill his orders, Ciel prepared a letter for the Queen. After all, he dealt with criminals and the business they partook in the underworld, and those men who had abused all of the young girls were about as active in the underworld as one could get.

He was glad he finally knew the reason Adalina refused to speak. It certainly made sense after all the trauma she had been through. He could relate to her on some level. Both of them had seen their parents die and were forced into captivity of different sorts.

He had to wonder if Adalina would ever choose to speak again. What kind of situation would she be in where she chose to say something? Would he live to see such a day?

Only time would tell.

Adalina soon graduated from foils, so Sebastian began to train her with real swords. She picked up a lot of cuts and scrapes, but she didn't care. If a lot of minor injuries prevented her from getting killed in the future, it was worth it.

Sebastian soon also began to teach her hand-to-hand combat. While it was literally impossible for Adalina to defeat him, he was an excellent opponent to train with. He took things slow enough for her to learn, he was patient, and with his speed, he could easily give her the impression she was fighting multiple people. While he knew when to hold back, that didn't mean he went easy on her. She picked up many bruises and sore muscles as she trained. But she refused to let any of that mess with her work. She still remained a loyal and hardworking head maid for the Earl Phantomhive.

The whole idea of training with Sebastian was comical really. No maids serving nobility learned how to swordfight or engage in combat. If anyone found out about the long hours she spent learning such skills (including the times where Sebastian had awoken her in the middle of the night for additional training), she might be rebuked for such improper behavior.

However, she was a Phantomhive maid, and the rules for her were a bit different than for the rest of society.

Sebastian, Ciel, and Adalina were in town late at night doing some shopping and seeing if there was any activity that Scotland Yard did not know about yet. It was always best for Ciel to know things before they did. Scotland Yard always did interfere with his work in the most annoying ways.

It was a very quiet night and hardly anyone was still out and about.

They had just exited one of the shops when a short but shrill scream pierced the air. Immediately, the three of them took off to see the source of the noise and help whoever may be in trouble.

Adalina was not prepared for the sight that greeted her.

A woman lay sprawled on the ground just off the sidewalk where she could easily be missed if one wasn't really looking. Blood flowed from her body and began to soak the pavement.

It reminded her of that fateful day so long ago.

Her father's blood running across the floor. Her mother's blood splashing onto her face and clothing.

Adalina suddenly felt very ill. The memories all came back far too quickly, and the sheer awfulness of it was too much for her to handle.

She quickly turned away and bent over as she began vomiting against the wall.

"Adalina!" Ciel exclaimed.

Adalina ignored him as she continued to heave.

Finally, she wiped her mouth and stood back up, her eyes very glassy and her face almost as white as Sebastian's.

Having previously seen her memories, Sebastian knew exactly why she reacted the way she did. It didn't help that he had forced her to relive those moments not too long ago, and they were much fresher in her mind than they had been previously.

Adalina looked away from the two males, extremely embarrassed they had had to witness such a reaction from her. She had been working to improve their opinion of her after the events she had been part of in the last several weeks, and this particular incident was not helping. Of course, she was unaware that Ciel had rather similar reactions when presented with the same kind of situation.

Sebastian saw what looked like a film reel exit the dead woman's wounds, though the two humans were oblivious to it. That meant that someone was not far behind.

"Is that my Bassy?!"

The butler sighed as his thoughts were proven correct.

The redhead Grim Reaper hopped down from the rooftops and landed next to the woman. "My, fancy seeing you here!" He looked over at the Cinematic Record and opened a small book. "Let's see here. Emma Longley, wife of Samuel Longley, just married two years ago. Rather unfortunate, don't you think?"

Adalina blinked back tears and looked at the feminine man. He seemed familiar, like she had met him before.

"Adalina, this is Grell Sutcliff," Sebastian said, sensing her confusion. "You may remember him when he came to work at the manor when he served as Madam Red's butler. However, his true identity is that he is a Grim Reaper."

Adalina's head began to spin. In the course of just a few weeks, she had seen that both demons and now Grim Reapers were in fact real beings? Why did both of them hide their true identity by being butlers?

At least Sebastian was a good butler. Grell had been the worst butler she had ever seen, and on multiple occasions, she had been the one to have to clean up his messes.

"Ah, yes, I remember you," Grell said to her. "The mute one. Any improvement on that?"

Adalina looked away from him.

"Guess not."

"How did this woman die?" Ciel asked.

"Multiple lacerations to the chest and neck. This is the third one in two weeks."

"Why are they dying?"

"How am I supposed to know? I just know the cause of death and what's on their Cinematic Record. And all I can see is some weird blur on this thing and then it ends."

"Did you see anyone with her just now?"

"I wasn't paying attention."

It seemed to Adalina that he was no better a Grim Reaper than he was a butler.

Grell took out his Death Scythe, which was a huge chainsaw, and hacked at the end of the Cinematic Record coming from her body. Then he opened his book and placed a stamp on one of the pages.

"That's one more down. Hopefully, this will get Will off my back for a while."

"You said this was the third woman in two weeks," Ciel continued. "What do you mean?"

"Three women have appeared on my list. This woman here, Emma, and two others. All of them died of the same causes, were about the same age, and had similar appearances."

"It appears we have a serial killer on our hands," the Earl mused. "But why is he only targeting this specific group of women?"

Grell came over to Sebastian and began leaning on his shoulder. "So, have you been working very hard lately? It certainly shows. You look better each time I see you, Bassy."

Adalina might've smiled at the very uncomfortable look on Sebastian's face if she didn't have the body of a dead woman in front of her.

"I think we should see a certain someone about the other two murders," Ciel stated. "I'd like to get some more information about this. No doubt if I don't, the Queen will order me to anyway."

"Very good, sir," Sebastian said. He looked disdainfully at Grell. "Don't you have more souls to reap?"

Grell rolled his eyes. "Ugh, my work calls me away for now. Ta-ta, Bassy! We shall meet again soon!"

The Grim Reaper took to the sky and began bounding across the rooftops. Sebastian sighed again. How he loathed his run-ins with that figure or any of the like. He wasn't sure there had ever been a Grim Reaper he had ever liked even a little bit. They were all perfectly loathsome to be around.

When the butler looked over at Adalina, her eyes were transfixed on the woman's dead body. Tears began rolling down her cheeks. He gently touched her shoulder with the intention of moving her back to their carriage, but instead she just turned to look at him. A small sob escaped from her mouth. To his surprise, she leaned against his chest, and he felt her body shaking with silent cries.

After a few tense seconds, he loosely put his arms around her. He wasn't used to comforting people in this way. Ciel would never accept any sort of comfort from him if his life depended on it, and he wasn't sure he had ever had a master or a mistress who had sought comfort from him. Who wanted physical comfort from a demon? He wasn't sure he even knew how to truly comfort someone. All his ways of giving out "comfort" were usually just to gain information for whoever he served at the time. He could make anyone feel better with just the right words spoken in just the right tone. He already knew quite well that those ways wouldn't work on Adalina.

So…why was that strange feeling from before returning to him?

That night, Adalina sat in her quarters furious with herself. She hated that she had appeared so weak and vulnerable in front of her master. She had been hired to protect him, and she was sure that he was losing confidence in her abilities by the day. After all, she had been caught in several situations the past few weeks where she hadn't been able to protect him or herself and he had seen her weaker side.

More so, she was extremely embarrassed that she had leaned onto Sebastian the way she did. She had been able to feel his discomfort, yet she didn't move. He clearly didn't want her to be exhibiting such emotions since he knew it would cause Ciel to doubt him and his decision to hire her. She should never have done such a thing. She shouldn't have cried in the first place.

Becoming more frustrated by the second, Adalina slammed her fist onto the wall. Pain shot through her arm, but she ignored it.

She vowed that she would never again show such weakness in front of her master or Sebastian. Sebastian had filled her in on the full story of how he came to be Ciel's butler and the details of the contract they had made. If Ciel, who had also lost his parents in front of him and spent time in captivity and was significantly younger than her, could handle anything he faced, then so could she. The next time she came up against something that reminded her of her unfortunate time held captive, she would be strong and she would fight against any weakness. She would not allow her memories to control her.

Her head turned when someone knocked on her door.

"Adalina?" Sebastian said. "I thought I heard something. I wanted to be sure you were all right." His eyes widened a little when he saw that her hand was beginning to bleed. "You've been hurt."

Adalina looked at her hand. She hadn't even realized that she had broken the skin when she hit the wall.

"We must take care of that immediately. If you'll wait here a moment."

She barely even had time to blink before he was back with the supplies he needed.

Sebastian began to clean her wound, and she refused to flinch when the liquid stung the open skin. Then he put a cold towel onto the bruises tainting her pale skin.

"I can only assume that you brought this injury upon yourself out of frustration. I cannot see any other way you could manage to retrieve this."

Adalina looked away from him, unwilling to meet his eyes. Sebastian didn't have to be a demon to feel the frustration radiating off her.

"Are you angry with yourself? Over what? Over your reaction to seeing the body tonight? I assure you, no one blames you for that. Perhaps you wouldn't have fallen sick had I not forced you to recount such painful memories not long ago. I take some of the blame for what happened. But there's no need for you to hurt yourself."

He took the cold towel off her hand and began to bandage it up, ignoring yet another strange feeling when he touched her hand.

"This is part of the reason why I have been teaching you how to defend yourself. The more confident you are in your abilities, the stronger you will become to such sights and situations. Regardless, it's perfectly all right for you to exhibit those emotions. You are a human after all, and you were exposed to such awful things in the past. It's only natural for you to be upset at reliving such an experience. The young master would probably not want me telling you this, but he reacted the same way several months ago when he was faced with memories of his own past. So if anyone understands why you reacted that way, it would be him."

He tied off the bandage on her hand. She gave him one of her barely noticeable smiles. She appreciated that he was trying to make her feel better, but she was still angry at herself for appearing weak.

She knew that he had been uncomfortable when she cried onto him. He may not have mentioned it, but she knew. The fact that he didn't mention it was proof enough.

For that reason, she was going to make sure that such a situation never happened to either of them again.