I've decided to be generous this holiday season, and I'll be posting up TWO chapters per week!

I figured it was the least I could do, seeing as I actually finished the story the other day ;)

Thank you for all the follows/faves! You guys are awesome! Happy Holidays!

The rest of their day was spent in the study, Ciel recounting many of the adventures he had shared with Sebastian as head of the Phantomhive family and as the Queen's watchdog. Menefer found she enjoyed hearing these tales very much, though some were wont to give her nightmares she feared; particularly the one about Lizzie nearly being turned into a doll and the horrifically creepy Drocell. She had never been fond of dolls as it were; and in truth, many of Ciel and Sebastian's adventures had been deplorably dangerous and frightening.

She decided that she would very much like to have met the three servants from his estate, though she was sure even as delightful as they may have been, she would have confiscated Bard's flamethrower and smacked Mei-Rin for her perpetual clumsiness. She cried when Ciel told her about Pluto's demise and very nearly couldn't keep her bottom in her chair when he recounted the fight between the angel Ash and Sebastian.

For all his faults as a generally unsociable person, Ciel Phantomhive could weave a tale as well as any storyteller she'd ever known. It struck her at once how isolated he must have been, even as a child, with only Sebastian there who knew the truth. He'd complained about Lizzie's clinging personality, but in truth, Menefer suspected she was the one lifeline he'd possessed that grounded him to humanity. It was really no wonder he loved her-or that he'd taken so long to realize it.

He had been a child with the weight of his country perched stoutly on his small shoulders. A pitiful creature with a noble title and all the money in the world and no inclination or time to use it. It was miraculous he'd made it as far as he had in life-and now in immortality with no need of money and all the time in the world she suddenly realized why he enjoyed lazing about with his nose buried in a book. He was making up for lost time.

"Did you ever find anything useful in the material Marcus brought for you?" she asked, when his tales had seemed to come to an end and they were both staring at the door leading outside, as if Sebastian would come home any moment.

"Mostly theories. Things that require magic or knowledge I do not possess. The Voodoo will work," he stated matter-of-factly. His eye locked with her own and he nodded, as if reaffirming himself. "It will. I can feel it."

"I hope so, dearest. I truly hope it does. The cardinal rule of magic is you must believe it."

"It's strange, really. I've never believed in anything in my life except logic and facts. When I called out for a demon to contract with, I never in a million years expected one to appear. When he did, I felt a sort of obligation then. He had transcended my wildest imagination, so the least I could do was go on with the deal. You know, Cybille, his late wife... she practiced a bit of Voodoo. He was very proud of the way she read Tarot and she had the gift of sight. Voodoo was something I knew nothing about, but hearing Sebastian's tale about Cybille DeMoreau was... educational, at the very least. Then the other night when Lizzie had the dining table covered in candles, I couldn't help but think: It looks as if someone is holding a Voodoo ritual in our house.

"When I wandered into that shop looking for the two of you, the old woman had an altar in the back. It was a small cherry table covered in a hundred candles. All white. All different sizes and shapes and I thought again, Someone is trying to tell me something. Something led me to this point. There's been too much foreshadowing.

"Even the old granny said that the spirits had led me into her shop. She knew things that she had no business knowing. About all of us. All these... connections ...to Voodoo. When she offered me an answer to my problem... I couldn't just leave. At some point, when your logic and facts all point to something insane, you have to give up and take that for fact, as well. I mean, at what point does being a demon with a demon butler who has a mummy for a lover become normal? Where's the harm in believing in something you know next to nothing about when everything around you is pointing to it as your solution?"

"No harm, Dearest," Menefer assured him, then found herself stifling a yawn. The sun had set hours ago; the study was lit by the solitary lamp on his desk behind them. Ciel nodded knowingly and rose, stretching and reaching out to help her to her feet.

He pulled her up easily enough and they walked together down the hall to their respective rooms.

"You dream tonight, Ciel. Promise me," she smiled, and he nodded sternly, the faintest of grins playing at the corners of his mouth.

"You have my word, My Lady," he drawled, bowing slightly for effect. He was startled a bit when he felt her press a kiss to the top of his crown, but by the time he righted himself she was closing her door behind her.

Brushing at his hair with the flat of his palm, he smiled to himself, then turned and entered his own room. It was deplorably silent in the house without Lizzie there, he lamented, stripping off his shirt and draping it haphazardly over the foot-board of the bed.

The nightgown he normally slept in was still on his coverlet, a pile of white cotton Puritanism and he found himself staring at it in disgust. What sort of man wears a bloody gown to bed? he wondered, picking up the offending garment and tossing it at the wicker hamper in the corner of the room. He pictured Sebastian in one and nearly laughed aloud. No, men did no such thing. He couldn't remember his father having ever worn one and at that moment, couldn't believe he himself had for so many years.

He caught his reflection in the antique dressing mirror and turned, frowning at the leanness of his physique. Even if he were to grow into a man overnight, he'd be a pitifully skinny one, he decided. His trousers hung low on his narrow hips and he had little definition in his arms or stomach-he was suddenly very worried that Lizzie would eventually be disappointed in him. He hoped against hope he'd fill out with his magical growth-spurt as he eyed his reflection distastefully. He raised his fist in the air, arm bent at the elbow and flexed experimentally. Oh, if Sebastian could see him now, there'd be no calming the laughter, he knew. Still, he thought, too skinny. How the hell is Sebastian built like a gladiator? I suppose, he is a bit more... physically active than I...

Giving up, he stripped his trousers off and draped them atop his shirt and clad only in his long underwear-and feeling somewhat more manly-he crawled into bed and willed himself to dream.

He was lost for a moment-the furniture and trappings in his room were suddenly changed. It was dreadfully dark. The walls were gold-ancient plaster-and crumbling in the corners, the floors uneven and cold oak planks, but polished and the reflection of the solitary candle burning next to the bed danced before his eyes as he stared. He knew he was dreaming, but there was a nagging sensation at the back of his mind that told him he was not.

With some effort, he tore his gaze from the reflection of the flame and glanced around his room-he thought it was his room-but even the bed he sat upon was not the same as the one in which he slept-a cannonball four-poster with heavy mosquito netting and intricate filigree etched into the wood at the foot-board. It was smaller than his bed. Narrower. The sheets were a cream color and not as soft. He looked down at his legs and wondered why he was so close to the foot of the bed. Sweeping the covers away he was startled to find that the bed was not shorter-his legs were impossibly long. And hairy. And he began to laugh.

A soft knock at the door brought him from his reverie and he turned, catching his own reflection in that antique dressing mirror and his father looking back at him startled him to say the least. The door latch popped and the hinges creaked and a pair gray eyes peered in the room. He could not tear his gaze from the mirror. A girl of fourteen or fifteen slid in through the crack in the door and he heard it click shut behind her. It took enormous effort to break his attention away from the mirror but turning his eyes on the girl, he knew immediately that she was Cybille DeMoreau.

She shuffled across the room, her full skirts rustling as she went, never taking her eyes off him. He was suddenly self-conscious and reflexively, he pulled the sheets back over his legs to his waist to hide the ill-fitting underwear he was wearing. "Are you who I think you are?" he breathed, not recognizing his own voice. It was gruff and baritone, and it felt funny in his chest.

"I am Cybille. You are in my bed, Ciel Phantomhive."

Ciel was positive his mouth was hanging open in awe, but he didn't possess the necessary motor skills at that point to close it.

"And why, you wonder, are you in my bed and not your own?" she continued when she saw he was incapable of speech. "I am having a vision. Or you are having a dream. Or perhaps, even, you are having the vision and I am the one dreaming. But it is difficult for the dead to dream. How is my Rene?"

Finally managing to close his gaping maw, Ciel cleared his throat and shrugged. "He is... as well as a demon can be, I suppose."

"You are taking care of him? And the Menefer woman? She is good to him, non? That poor creature..." she sighed, shaking her head. "She is a good one. I wish for his sake he would love her."

"Are you a ghost?" Ciel blurted out, confusion taking over.

"You could say that, I suppose. But you have most of the answers already. You needed only to dream that you were an adult and so I thought I'd help you."

"Why are you so... young?"

"I think I am trapped in this era... because it was then that I realized my true feelings for Rene Corbeau. Old enough to know what I felt, but too young still to act on it. It was a period where I seemed to always feel heartbreak; I was being pushed away by the only Maman I had known and my "brother" was growing stranger by the day. The only constant in my life was Rene and I loved him deeper and deeper each day I awoke. But he still saw in me a child-albeit a prodigy-and all that time I waited and tasted heartbreak because I knew what he was and yet I loved him anyway. It was easier when I was a child and could love him as my Papa. It was easier when he realized his love for me and I could love him as a wife. But here... here was when it hurt the most.

Ciel was nodding in silence, listening ever so intently, that when she giggled, he started a bit. "I will not bite you, I promise." And she climbed on the bed with him, letting her feet dangle over the edge. "You are at a cross-roads, Ciel," she started, turning her gaze over her shoulder and meeting his eye for a moment. Her honey curls caught the light of the candle and they seemed to glow as well. "Even when you awake and your wish is granted and your ritual is complete, your troubles will not be over. Elizabeth Middleford will continue to grow old and you will remain the same for the rest of eternity. You are repeating my history. It will never be less painful for you, just as Rene has failed to lock away my memory completely. Elizabeth will forever doubt her value to you because of this, I assure you. And if she gets lucky and dies young, as I did, you will still be without half your soul till the end."

"What can I do about that?" he asked, turning and folding his legs beneath him. "How can I fix this problem? It seems no matter what I contrive, another problem rears its head and I am forever faced with dilemma."

"Do not worry. The problem may solve itself. You cannot contrive to know the future."

"But you can, Cybille. You said you came to help me-"

"I came to lend you my strength so that you may grow up. That is all the strength I have left. I am weary now and I wish you luck. But I cannot even conjure a deck of Tarot to read for you."

She looked tired, he noted, in the dark circles forming rapidly beneath her eyes and the color draining from her cafe au lait skin. Her gray eyes were a shimmering silver now, and red-rimmed as she suddenly fought back tears.

"Tell Rene I wait for him. That one day we will be together again. My love for him has kept me from Heaven but my love for God has kept me from Hell. Tell him that his blood did not condemn our son and that he is happy in the arms of Angels. And tell him that when we meet again, he will know me by the sound of my voice, for I shall not look the same."

Ciel nodded mutely and watched the girl drop from the tall bedside to the floor, her bare feet making little sound as she padded across the room and slipped through the door. There was a tightness in his chest and throat; he felt as if she had somehow forced her own emotions on him for a moment. But he turned his gaze back to the mirror and stared again at his father's image-for he was nearly identical to the Vincent Phantomhive he remembered from childhood. He smiled past the pain of sadness Cybille had left him with and lay back down in the bed. His eyes drifted shut and he saw Lizzie there, in his mind's eye, waiting with smiling anticipation for him to take her in his arms.

Ciel shot out of bed as if a gun had gone off at his ear. He was screaming; he didn't know why, but it seemed he could not stop himself; and tears were rolling down his cheeks in salty rivulets. He felt so completely full of every emotion, he couldn't bear it, and he laughed and cried and whooped with joy. He had done it! His ritual was half way over and he needed only complete the final steps and he would be an adult.

Of course, his cries had wakened Menefer across the hallway, and she flew into his room in nothing but one of Sebastian's shirts with a panicked look on her face and her hair sticking out in every direction. He only then realized the sun was barely peeping through his window and with his face tear-streaked and eyes red and the biggest, dumbest grin he'd ever managed plastered on his face, he threw up his hands and apologized to the Egyptian.

"Mennie! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to wake you but-it's a terribly long story-and I dreamed! I finally dreamed! I looked like my father, and I met Cybille. She gave me the dream to help. She said she liked you and that Sebastian should love you for his sake... And I'm not making any sense right now. I apologize."

Frustrated, he scrubbed at his face with his palms and mumbled "I'm sorry" several times under his breath.

When wakefulness finally caught up to her, Menefer could barely register what the boy had blurted out. "Cybille? Helped you dream? ...She likes me?"

Still covering his face with his hands, Ciel nodded. He felt his bed shift as Menefer sat herself on the edge and contemplated his words. He suddenly realized what he'd fallen asleep in and reflexively snatched the coverlet up to his chest. Menefer was paying him no mind.

"Do you want to go back to sleep or begin the next stage of the ritual?" she asked, cognizant once more and deciding to press him for details later in the day.

"I don't think I could sleep if I tried," he admitted, relaxing finally as the emotional overload began to dissipate. She turned knowing eyes over her shoulder at him and bit back a chuckle as she realized what he'd slept in.

"I wondered if you'd ever grow out of that gown," she teased standing and walking back into the hallway.

They were both dressed within a matter of moments and met in the dining room; Menefer threw open all the doors into the courtyard so that the choking scent of burning sage would not permeate the entire house, and she took the bundle the old woman had provided and lit it with the solitary candle she'd set on the table.

Ciel was oblivious to it, but she could feel the magic in the air around them as she did the smudging, finding herself lost in the tangible electricity of it all. Occasionally, old words of blessing would fall from her lips and she hoped that any ability she still possessed would help strengthen this foreign magic they worked. When the smudging was complete, she lit the stick of incense and after the first of the ashes fell, she dipped her thumb in the bowl where it rested and reached out, drawing an ankh on Ciel's forehead as she chanted.

He held his likeness resolutely against his chest, opening himself up to the belief that anything was possible and this ritual, combined with Menefer's own potent knowledge would work. He refused to believe it would not-not after his dream of Cybille DeMoreau and the reeling emotions still roiling in the pit of his stomach.

When the stick of incense burned out, thankfully replacing the sage with the heady scent of sandalwood and Echinacea, Menefer took the doll from his hands and used the candle on the table to light the feet of the doll.

Ciel immediately cried out in pain. Menefer turned a panicked look on the boy demon, snatching the doll from the flames. Ciel's feet smoldered on the hardwood floor, but as they both stared in mute horror, the smoke cleared away to reveal his feet; unburnt, pink and healthy. And huge.

Their gazes locked and finally Ciel found his voice again. "Finish it. I don't care how badly it hurts or if I disturb the entire Quarter with my screams! Do it!"

Squinting against the realization that she would be torturing her friend, Menefer none-the-less complied, holding the doll back over the candle flame and continued her chanting, hoping against hope that she could at least dull some of his pain.

The doll caught full blaze quickly and the smell of burning sage was only drowned out by the animalistic wails coming from the demon as she burned his effigy. He couldn't remain standing for much longer, she reasoned as she cracked an eye and peered at her companion. Ciel was immersed in a cloud of the thickest gray smoke-she could no longer make out any of his features-and he was groaning and screaming as that cloud writhed, eventually dropping to the floor and curling into itself.

She held the doll over the flames, even while her own hands burned with the effort, until even the head had been engulfed. The Ciel-shaped cloud of smoke on the floor had gone terrifyingly silent and as soon as the last of the sage was consumed by flames, she reared back and flung the offending object out of the French door into the overgrown courtyard. It smacked against the uneven paving stones near the fountain and burst into a nebula of embers. As it exploded, so too did the haze surrounding her companion, erupting outward from his body as if some great wind was suddenly expelled from his skin and pushed it away all at once.

Menefer stared for many moments at the man lying there on the floor, his clothes singed to blackened paper against his skin, only remembering to breathe when her lungs began to burn for air. She inhaled too quickly, too sharply, and choked on the remaining stench of sage as it hung around them. Dropping to her knees next to Ciel, she reached out a tentative hand, pressing her burnt fingers against the flesh of his face, tracing her thumb over the ankh she had drawn on his forehead. It was him. By the gods, the ritual had worked. Even she could not quite comprehend this amazing feat of magic.

His ribs rose steadily as he breathed, his brow furrowed in its permanent scowl, but he was unconscious from the pain. His skin was pink, like he'd spent too much time in the sun; his hair longer than it had been, hanging haphazardly around his face and neck. The leather eye patch was surprisingly still intact, only the strings had been burned away, leaving it sticking awkwardly to the hollow there on his face. She feared for a moment that the leather had been fused to his skin, but with a few gentle sweeps of her fingers, she freed it, and it fell listlessly to the floor.

Tears were running down her face now, and Menefer curled there in the floor next to him, crying and chanting her ancient words of blessing.