Midnight Investigations

The truth must be quite plain, if one could just clear away the litter

-Agatha Christie-

"Hey...do you think Ciel takes advantage of us?"

"No?" The demon looked up from where he was kneeling, wrist deep in broken glass and old rubbish. The only bit of light that illuminated his search was the narrow sliver of moon hanging in the sky. "I have no idea where you would get such an idea."

Charlotte rolled her eyes – she was feeling far more like a 'she' that night – and nudged at Sebastian's knee with a boot-clad foot. "Oh the demon's got jokes now? Got sarcasm?"

"More like genuine befuddlement," he retorted, catching her by the ankle and tipping Charlotte backwards until she yelped and flailed her arms. "I'm simply wondering when this task became an act of teamwork. I don't see you assisting in this endeavour."

A squawk of melodramatic rage. Charlotte waved her arms around, gesturing at the vast acres of nothing aside from the ocean of detritus around them. "I'm moral support! Look at me being companionable! What do you want, a personalized song and dance? Would a rhyming chant bolster your flagging spirits?"

"I mean, if you're offering-"

"Shut up, I hope you get stabbed with broken glass." Sebastian snickered to himself, only half listening to low crunch of debris beneath her feet and Charlotte's annoyed mumbles. "...catch tetanus. Can demons contract tetanus? Can you get blood-borne diseases if your blood technically isn't human? Sebastian, hey! Will you give me a blood sample?"

"If you keep making noise, you'll end up drawing attention to us," Sebastian called over his shoulder. His fingers carefully peeled a strip of pale pink card-stock from the dirt. A quick scan confirmed that it matched the others he'd found, though this one was a little damp and smelled unpleasantly of rancid milk. For a few seconds Sebastian let himself reminisce about the centuries spent terrorizing humans, feasting on their greed and sin-soaked souls until he was replete.

Good times.

It was then that he noticed that Charlotte was being surprisingly quiet. Though he was getting better at listening for the near-silent click-clack of her joints, Sebastian still turned around just to be sure.

Charlotte stood just a few feet away, her eyes glued to something in her hand. She wasn't moving, not simply standing still, but as if whatever she was looking at had fixed her in place.

Being taller than most people had its advantages, though it wasn't like Charlotte was particularly tall, as it made it easy for Sebastian to lean over her head and peer at the thing she was holding. It was a piece of paper, torn at the sides as though it had been ripped from a notebook. "What are you reading?"

The demon narrowed his eyes when she jumped and dropped the paper, allowing him to snatch it out of the air before the night wind could send it fluttering out of sight. "Nothing of interest!" She flustered, her fingers fluttering out of sync. "I think I've had enough of this, I'm going to bed."

He watched her trip and stumble out of the unsteady landscape, an eyebrow arched in bemusement. It wasn't as though there was anything particularly off about paper. It was just a list of student names, probably written by a teacher judging by the surprisingly high-quality ink and well-formed lettering. Just in case however, he folded it up and slipped it into his breast-pocket.

Right then, he turned and re-surveyed the rest of the dump with a resigned expression, back to work.

oOo

In another life, Charlotte thought she might have liked Maurice. After all she got along great with Phantomhive, and they' both had their emotional manipulation skills turned as high as they could. The difference between the two of them was that Maurice was shallow and spiteful, and not even in a fun way. Lying in order to preserve the economic and military balance between two European superpowers was badass. Tricking other children into writing essays so older boys will like you was comparatively pathetic.

However, "Isn't this kind of petty?" Charlotte wondered aloud as she watched Sebastian upend the basket in his arms, sending hundreds of photographs scattering down onto the mass of students on the grounds. She reached out with the arm that wasn't wrapped around Sebastian's elbow and caught one of the polaroids. "I mean, no one looks great when they're applying make-up. See this? Everyone makes this face when applying mascara."

He eyed the image and wrinkled his nose distastefully. "I don't make that face."

"Well you're barely a person. I'd classify you as a suspiciously attractive parasite."

"What's that?" Sebastian pretended to peer into the basket as though surprised by its empty interior, "my work here is done and I wasn't instructed to carry any extra baggage with me when I jump down from the roof? Well then I suppose I should be off–"

Charlotte let out a panicked screech and jumped onto Sebastian's back, wrapping her legs around the butler's waist. "I'm sorry! Don't leave me up here! There's pigeon droppings everywhere!"

With a huff, Sebastian relocated her under his arm like a particularly unwieldy bag of laundry and began the descent downwards until he reached the window of the art room Ciel had invited Maurice to. It was more out of the way than the other classrooms, a leftover from when the school had just been a rich family's country estate, and usually only the more hermit-like students occupied it. The sort who would rather starve and choke on lead paint fumes so long as their sunset used the right shade of orange.

Dangling from the ledge of a higher floor's window's, Sebastian watched the proceedings. His face was joined by Charlotte's, squashing their cheeks together in an attempt to get a better view. "You know, when he smiles like that, you'd almost forget that he's murdered multiple people," she commented sotto voce. In response the demon let out a disgruntled hum and, once the room emptied out, quietly pulled open the window and crawled inside. "You can let me go now."

"So you can go off to make a nuisance of yourself? Absolutely not," he replied smugly. "Besides, you still need to serve detention."

"Detention? For what?!"

Sebastian held out a gloved hand, counting down one by one, "being outside after curfew, disrespecting teachers, trespassing..."

Charlotte spluttered loudly, twisting every which way. "The absolute hypocrisy! You're not even in charge of my dorm! Put me down!"

oOo

It's said that you only find things when you don't need them. The moment one decides that they require an item, it fades from sight. The day you wish for company is the day the person is busy. Truthfully it is one of the greatest ironies of life and Ciel was absolutely pissed off about it.

"Charles? No I haven't seen them." The boy cocked his head, the fourth bleary-eyed violet-clad student Ciel had asked since that morning. At least this one was marginally kinder as he didn't immediately begin hissing insults about house pride and insularity as soon as Ciel's back was turned.

It was odd. Ever since the whole Maurice debacle Charlotte had begun to disappear frequently. He no longer barged into Ciel's meetings with Sebastian and even the demon had admitted that even the teachers who once had cause to chase and scold him no longer did. Normally Ciel would have been perfectly fine with this new development as it meant that his discussions with Sebastian no longer deviated into wild debates about whether witches really fucked with the devil or if that was just Christian conjecture. However Ciel needed Charlotte's unique position as Violet dorm student.

His investigation into Arden had hit a wall of the weirdly cult-like variety. He had heard a hundred conflicting things about Arden, from him being a lauded novelist to being slated for a knighthood when he graduated.

So why had he been transferred?

If he had to hear one more inane, snot-nosed brat say "it was the Principal's decision" he was going to get Sebastian to burn this school to the ground out of pure spite.

Completely this time, he amended to himself as he watched the left wing of the Violet dorm go up in flames. Wow buildings were flammable, the boy thought to himself, but it was a small price to pay to finally see the elusive Derrick Arden. Then he could let the Queen know what was going on and go home. He was tired of play-acting as a student. How did other children deal with such a restrictive, elitist environment?

Screams arose as students poured from the burning building, panicked and running to the safety of the outside. The air grew dry and stifling from the flames, thick with the scent of blackened cloth and wood. "Has he come out yet?" Ciel asked.

"Not yet," Sebastian reported.

A snort, "what's with the hold up? Don't tell me he's trapped?"

"No," Sebastian turned his gaze on the building, his eyes shifting to their more arcane appearance. "I can sense living souls young master. There is no one inside Violet dormitory."

In essence, Derrick Arden had never been in Violet Dorm?!

The P4 were definitely hiding something, Ciel scowled contemplatively at the older students gathered away from the others. What had happened to Arden and why were they being so cagey? Furthermore how had other students not noticed the absence of this supposed wunderkind? The school was private, very few people visited and students weren't allowed to leave without a 3 day notice and only to the nearby village.

"Young master," Sebastian's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Charlotte wasn't in the dorm either."

"What?" Ciel hissed.

"He isn't among those outside, and while it's possible he's still inside the dormitory, I trust his sense of survival enough to reason that he would have found a way out if he'd been in there at all."

Oh for fuck's sake, Ciel gritted his teeth, "we'll deal with that later. For now put out the fire! We'll figure out where the hell that puppet went later!"

Charlotte was still figuring out how to traverse the school. On the one hand the vents were much larger than the ones at the manor, but on the other hand they were gross and looked as though they hadn't been cleaned in months so was it really worth it?

The writing on the note he'd found still burned in his mind. He didn't want to be right even though he already knew she was. He knew it, but his brain demanded proof otherwise his imagination would construct some false excuse and this time he'd end up breaking his own heart.

The Principal's office was on the bottom floor, ostensibly for ease of access to parents, but parents rarely came and the large double doors were always locked. Everything was reported to the Vice Principal, a stoic man who probably didn't give two hoots about student needs and had developed a penchant for falling over. Charlotte had been sent to his office once or twice whenever a teacher managed to catch him and had been utterly bemused by how apathetic the man was. Who let this mannequin be in charge of a bunch of pubescent boys?

Johann Agares office was as devoid of personality as he was, but on one of Charlotte's night trips he'd found a false bottom beneath his chest of drawers. Pulling it away revealed a dusty stack of glass bottles filled with whiskey and wine. The good kind that one couldn't buy in the nearby village. Such wine had to be imported and delivered to a reputable shop. Where did a public school teacher get the funds to splurge on vintage Bordeux?

A bribe then? By who? A parent?

If the Vice Principal was receiving bribes, it only made sense that the Principal be receiving some compensation as well. Charlotte stopped at a vent that looked into the office and peered through the metal grating. Pursing his lips in concentration, Charlotte twisted his wrist out of the grate and twisted off the screws holding it in place. Then he carefully lifted it aside and slipped into the dark office.

It was late and the office was empty and devoid of light. The heavy curtains were drawn tightly shut, preventing even the weak moonlight from illuminating anything. Charlotte had pocketed a few candles and a set of matches from the kitchen but lighting one was risky. However it would be even riskier if he stayed too long or knocked over something in his blinded state.

The candle sputtered to life in his hands, filling the office with golden light and making the shadows stand out sharper in contrast. Charlotte cupped a hand around the flame and looked around again.

If Johann's office was empty and stark, the Principal's office was a mess by comparison. The shelves were stuffed with books, the table littered with papers, and there was even the leftover remains of an afternoon meal. Charlotte picked up one of the papers and held the candle closer to it. His heart dropped as he read the familiar spidery script.

You asked for my help and I have given it. If you find my endeavours lacking then little boys should pay more attention to where they play lest they make mistakes they are unable to deal with. I find it unspeakably funny, how utterly blind children are to the realities of life and death. Nothing is permanent to you is it? Human minds are so elastic, so capable of justifying, twisting, blurring the truth until it's something small and easy to swallow.

The devil on your shoulder is still the devil even if you dress it up in white Redmond. Isn't that an amusing thought?

The smell of burning paper startled Charlotte and she quickly blew out the lick of flame that had started to eat at the letter and then the candle itself. She needed to get this to Ciel, because if she'd been right about that and if this letter meant what she thought it did, then it only meant one thing.

Derrick Arden was dead.