Shapeshifter

by Honeythief

Summary:

Sebastian can tell lies, and he tells them very well. He takes no orders and answers to no master, but he is no less obsessed with Ciel's soul.

Chapter 1

Notes:

First things first: this is not a wholesome fic. I really can't think of a single wholesome thing that happens along the way, so do keep that in mind. The story is a modern AU, but I aim to make it as close to canon as possible when it comes to the dynamics between Sebastian and Ciel. Also, it's going to be a pretty long ride, so I hope you stick around!

I tap the ‘record’ button and turn expectantly to what is a blot of bright red amid the toned browns of my study. Her clothes, hair, and lipstick all come in the most furious shade of crimson I can imagine, including the leather case of her phone and the car that stands parked in my driveway.

And yet all that red, however vibrant, looks dim on her today. Lifeless. Her make-up is sloppy and rushed, no more perfect eyeliner or powdered cheeks. I spot rogue strands of hair and creases on her smart suit from Cartier. All her expressiveness and gripping candour have soured, waned, and in lieu of her brazen laughter she gives only tight-lipped smiles. The grim tendrils of depression have been tightening their grip on her week after week, and I haven’t been able to do much about it.

“I know our last session ended with discussing your stress at work, but I would like for you to take a moment and reflect upon that course. Do you feel like we can get anywhere in that direction?”

She’s silent. We both know the only direction is backwards, inwards, straight to where live the demons of her past.

“Not really.”

“No, because it’s a dead end.” And not the first one we’ve hit, either; Miss Dalles’s demons refuse to reveal themselves in spite of my numerous, glib attempts at drawing them out. She’s terrified of them, I can see.

“We need to start chipping away at the cause of your stress, and you know as well as I that work has nothing to do with it. I’m not here to pressure you, Angelina, but after three months of sessions you’ve only got worse. All I ask is one little thread from which we can work our way down to the core, however slowly you need.”

She sits there, rigid and uncertain. I look at her and can think of nothing but red, red, red. My own wardrobe is almost exclusively shades of black, but it pales in comparison to Miss Dalles’s red mania. She owes it all to Vincent, that one deified demon from her past she cannot seem to contain, the only one I had the pleasure of meeting.

Vincent is where it starts, but not where it ends. Instinct tells me he’s nothing but the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and I need to probe much deeper.

“Here’s the thing, Sebastian: it’s precisely cause we’re closer to the core that I’m getting worse,” says Angelina, fumbling to retrieve a pack of cigarettes from her purse. Sure enough, she still smokes Marlboro Reds; I always have to air the study after her sessions. “I mean, I know I can’t avoid it forever. It’s just around the corner, and I have to face it.” Her tense features slacken at the first taste of nicotine, then tense back up again. “I have to, right?” A hint of hope in her voice, as if counting on me to assure her that no, she doesn’t have to, it’s perfectly all right to live the rest of her life on the brink of a breakdown.

“In Jung’s words – what you resist not only persists, but grows in size. In my own words – the longer it stews inside of you, the more it all rots. You cannot live in the present and look out into the future without confronting your past.”

Angelina barks out a nervous laugh. “Well, shit. Do you know why I rescheduled our session to today?” She pauses for another drag: bold, deep, nonchalant. I’ve always thought she smoked like a man, exhaling ponderous grey clouds like she didn’t have a damn to give. “Today’s the anniversary.”

“Of the accident?”

“Of the accident. Three years now, and fuck if I can go through another anniversary alone. So here I am.”

“To talk about it?”

“I mean, to try. It’s now or never.”

I slide the ashtray further down her side of the coffee table. “Don’t let the feelings overwhelm you all at once. Start slow and get used to the idea, but don’t block anything out. Let it run its course.”

She nods thoughtfully and seems to drift off someplace far. Our session is ticking away as she smokes in silence, but I don’t rush and I don’t pressure. She’s my last today, and I don’t intend to let her go until she spits out every single one of her demons.

“Fuck it,” she says. “Could I have a drink? I can’t do it without a drink.”

She stubs out her cigarette in a single, aggressive jab. Such remarkable confidence, for an alcoholic, to ask her therapist to drink during a session. Had I a modicum of integrity, I would refuse—but since I have not a shred and never will, I stand up to pour her generously from the crystal decanter on my desk. If liquor is what she needs to talk, so be it. I never care for means, only the end. 

Something breaks in her as soon as she takes the glass. “God, whisky,” she croaks out, swirling the amber liquid inside. “That was the first thing I grabbed when I found out. So much whisky....” 

From the way she spins and turns the drink in her hands, one might think she’d want to take her time with it – savour every sip of that long-coveted poison – but then it’s all down her throat in one greedy gulp. Rash and unceremonious, like all of her. She sets down the lipstick-stained glass and dwells on the aftertaste long enough to make me impatient.

“Walk me through it,” I remind of my presence. “Every thought, every feeling. It started the day of the accident, yes? Tell me what happened when you heard the news.”

She’s out of excuses to stall. No cigarette, no drink. 

“It didn’t reach me at first. With a thing like that, so sudden… it’s like a slap to the face that doesn’t sting until later. It doesn’t feel real for a long, bizarre while.”

She stops, seeing if she can go on. But it’s easier than she must have imagined.

“One minute I’m smoking on the balcony, the next I’m being spammed with condolences and funeral arrangements and inheritance proceedings.... Did you know? If you’re next of kin of the illustrious Phantomhives, tragic death is all formalities and no time for tears. I took call after call, lawyers and insurance agents and a whole bunch of contractors asking about their business. I’d stood on my balcony for that long, bizarre while before it occurred to me that I should probably pick up my nephew from the hospital.”

I raise my brows. She’s never mentioned a nephew, and the mention alone makes her light another cigarette. Not to smoke, I don’t think; just to hold it between her fingers. 

“So I took a taxi. You know the afternoon traffic in London – I had all the time in the world to connect the facts. I watched a flock of pedestrians make way across Davies Street, just looking to get from one side to the other, just like they were trying to do… and that’s when the slap began to sting. That’s when it felt real.”

Her voice wavers, roughened from tobacco and liquor.

“Masses of people trickled in and out of my view, and I couldn’t help but picture them mangled into bloody, broken pieces. I imagined a grotesque heap of crooked limbs, and thought: this is really all he is now. It’s no nightmare, it’s no joke. My Vincent is nothing more than a disassembled corpse in the freezer.”

She wraps both arms around her frame, talking to the empty whisky glass and not myself.

“I puked all over the back seat. Oh, how the driver cussed at me! His meaty, furious face was right up in mine, but all I could think of were my sister’s guts smeared across the street. And once I saw my nephew sitting on the hospital bed, I thought of crushed spines and skulls smashed open like melons. The man I loved and the sister I both loved and hated were dead, mutilated beyond recognition, and here was their ten-year-old son, with barely a scratch.”

Her fists clench and her cigarette, untouched, sheds ashes on my cabriole sofa. I grimace in distaste, but she’s too far gone to notice.

“I should’ve been relieved. I should’ve lunged forward and held him tight, thanking God over and over for sparing at least him. But I didn’t, no. I began to hate that brat with my entire being. Because why did he have to survive? Just to remind me of them every single day? Why couldn’t he have died with them, or better yet, instead of them?” 

My tall French clock announces the end of our session, but I make no move to interrupt her. 

“After the funeral, I suspended my practice and Ciel got indefinite leave from school. Now finally came the time for tears, but I was too busy draining bottles of whisky to shed even one. I don’t know if Ciel cried, either; I left him alone for days, no money and no food, wallowing drunkenly around dingy alleys and posh Chelsea bars. I just needed to be anywhere but home, someplace I wouldn’t have to look at his face.”

She shudders at the mere prospect, as though her nephew was some deformed monstrosity too repulsive for words. The forgotten cigarette burns a hole in her red skirt, and she’s lucky it’s her skirt and not my sofa. 

“I don’t even remember the first time I got there. Suppose I staggered aimlessly around Chinatown until they finally let me in. I wouldn’t know how to find a gambling den while sober, but I was anything but sober. I stayed, then came again, then kept returning… and before I knew it, I was already one of the hardened regulars. They nicknamed me Madame Red, but I can’t imagine why.”

She strains out a humourless laugh, picking at the hem of her jacket.

“Forget my share of Phantomhive inheritance, forget all manner of personal savings – I gambled through my wealth like lightning. Pool, mahjong, poker. I drank, smoked, and bought piles of red clothes. Funny, isn’t it? How a lifetime of hard work can go down the drain in mere months. How one event can instantly change the rest of your days. Here I was, Doctor Angelina Dalles, guzzling baijiu and laughing at lewd jokes with rich, opium-brained degenerates! I felt at home in that stuffy shithole, free from Ciel and free from that mess I had for a life... until the day I squandered my last penny, of course.”

She scowls, flicking the burnt cigarette to the floor. I calm myself with a deeper breath.

“Lau, the owner, seemed delighted. I remember that smug smirk on his face all too well. ‘You’re out of luck and out of money, my dear Madame Red—what else do you have?’” She imitates the man’s voice, finishing with a scoff. “I put down my losing hand of cards and pondered really hard about everything I had left. A townhouse in Earl’s Court, a closed private clinic, a wardrobe full of red clothes... and a little nephew who I really, really wished was dead. See, I didn’t care what I lost as long as I could keep playing, so all Lau needed to do was name a price – any price. ‘Sure,’ he told me, ‘we can come to an arrangement. But only if that nephew of yours is cute.’”

For some reason, this makes her erupt in laughter – the eerie, not-so-sane kind.

“Really, what a question! I thought of my sister, always outshining me with her radiant smile and startling blue eyes. I thought of him—” she stammers, groping for words to adequately convey the perfection of Vincent Phantomhive. “How could his child be anything short of the loveliest creature on Earth? All those sighs of wonder he drew from the moment he was born, all those envious glances he garnered from other parents.... I even had a picture, folded and forgotten somewhere inside my wallet. Vincent, Rachel, Ciel and myself in front of the Louvre. He was one hell of a grumpy nine-year-old, I tell you, and the fact we’d managed to make him smile for the shot practically bordered on a miracle. I stared at myself on the creased photograph, at my own happy grin and the arm I’d put on Ciel’s shoulder... how unreal, how absurd, as though it had happened in another lifetime! Lau handed the photo to one of his Chinese patrons, then over to that fat German who always tried to cheat, then all around the room to anyone who wanted a look. I could only sit back as they argued and tossed about gargantuan sums of money like it were nothing. They bid higher, and higher, until the German banged his fist on the table, bellowing the last offer, and that was it – going once, going twice, I auctioned away my nephew’s virginity.”

She lifts her head to look at me with wild, watery eyes. This is tearing her apart, isn’t it? I can tell, but I can never relate.

“I brought the German home. I took him upstairs to Ciel’s room. Lau gave me something to drug him so he wouldn’t remember, but I wanted him to remember. All that time I stood just outside his door, listening and thinking. How the tables have turned! Just three months before, the boy had everything he could possibly wish for: looks and smarts and rich, loving parents. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as they, always the best and the brightest. But there’s something fragile about perfect things, you know? Something that makes you want to hurt and break and corrupt them. Like a cute kitten you want to cuddle and strangle at the same time, just to see what a pitiful sound it would make. Have you ever felt that way?”

I suppress the urge to laugh. Have I ever felt that way, really!

“So I’d hoped he’d cry or scream or call to me for help, but he made no sound. Imagine my disappointment! The only thing that made me feel better was seeing him all broken right after. My perfect nephew’s luck had finally run out, and I? I earned more than enough cash to pay off my debts and get back in the game, all without lifting a single finger! The deal was too sweet to pass up. I struck a bargain with Lau: I would split my profits forty-sixty, he would supply me with customers and guarantee discretion.”

Her leg starts skipping up and down and her hands wring together like she were washing them under a sink.

“’No permanent damage. No photos or taping. Use a rubber. You break the rules, you deal with Lau.’ Long as they paid the fee and stuck to my commandments, I couldn’t care less what those perverts did to him behind closed doors. While they were having their way with him upstairs, I was downstairs drinking through the previous night’s share. And once they’d finished, I would go wash him off of spunk and piss and sometimes blood, like those bored nurses at old people’s homes. But guess what: he never uttered a single word! ‘Aunt An, why are you doing this to me? Aunt An, why do you let those people hurt me?’ No, no. It was as if he knew why.”

She starts scratching at her wrist, rocking back and forth like the patients of insane asylums, her babbling all frantic and breathy.

“He never said anything. He just stared at me, through me, with those big hollow eyes of his, one blue like his mother’s and the other one violet—have you ever seen eyes like that? I’d grown my nails long so I reached out to dig and scratch at that freaky violet eye until blood ran down his cheek but it was still there, so I took the knife I used to cut bandages and made just one slice before my phone rang and I couldn’t finish the job.”

She looks to me again, as if for help, gaze jittery like that of a frightened animal, or that of a human being faced suddenly with the cruelty of their own actions. I say nothing, leaning against the palm of my hand, sporting a little frown to make myself appear somewhat disturbed. 

“It went on for a month. Can you imagine? I was whoring my nephew off to strangers while my neighbours offered me tea and wished us both a good fucking day! Vincent’s sister flew back to France after the funeral and she had no idea, no one had any idea, everyone was feeling so very sorry for our loss. And I would’ve kept it up for God knows how long—probably as long as I could afford to get away with it, until someone finally found out—but everything fell apart the night those three freaks knocked on our door.”

She cringes at the memory of whomever she meant by ‘three freaks’, scraping still faster at the reddening skin of her arm. Were her nails as long as when she tried to gouge out her nephew’s eye, by now she would have surely drawn blood. 

“I knew at once they meant trouble. They wore masks, one just plain black but the other two lavishly ornate, beautiful in an unsettling sort of way, like a high-end Halloween costume or something out of an opera. I’d bought a gun from one of Lau’s patrons and fetched it as they disappeared upstairs, hoping they would finish whatever sick shit they were into and just be on their way like everyone else. One of them spoke louder than the others, and I heard him say something about bad sacrifice and damaged goods—about how thin Ciel was looking, how spaced out, how his eye got infected and they would need to find somebody else—but since they’d already gone so far out of their way, they might as well make the trip worth their time. And what do you know: I finally heard Ciel scream. He screamed so loud they had to gag him and I panicked because what if they killed him? How the hell was I going to explain that, and where the hell was I going to get money for booze? I heard sizzling and knew they’d taken a fire poker from the room next door, but I was too terrified to move and just stood there as they beat him and fucked him until he was too tired to scream, until he fell so silent that I thought he was dead and they were just using his corpse. But then the ringing came, as if two identical phones got a call at the exact same moment, and they were both playing that creepy squeaky tune I’ll never get out of my head.”

She attempts to hum it in a broken voice, no longer scratching but digging all five nails into her wrist.

“Some sort of alarm. Or call. Cue to stop, anyway, and they had to get going. ‘Put him out of his misery,’ the loud one said, and I didn’t even lift the gun in my hand. They tossed me a bundle of quids on their way out, for a ‘nice little coffin’, and I stood staring at our good Queen’s printed image until the door slammed shut and they were gone, and then I”—she draws a shuddering breath—“and then I finally moved to peer inside. Ciel was up on his bed, curled in a ball, covered in horrid burns and bruises. So tiny, so fragile, wheezing and clutching at his slit throat.”

A single tear rolls from her eye, soaking into the skin of her cheek.

“What was I going to tell the police? Lau wouldn’t help me, the bastard, he’d wash his hands clean because that’s how things worked, I was alone with a dead brat on my hands—no, dying, his heart rate slowed and that was good, it stalled the bleeding, there was still time enough to save him. I had no tools at home, no way to do it myself, but there was this smirking fucking creep I remembered meeting at Lau’s, some underground doctor who ran a funeral home for cover and gave me his card, so I did what first aid I could and wrapped Ciel up in a blanket and carried him down the stairs, onto the street and into the car, but when I tried to get the engine going my hands just wouldn’t stop shaking, and if it hadn’t been for that half gram of cocaine I had in my purse he wouldn’t have made it, and if it hadn’t been two in the morning he would’ve bled out in traffic, but I got there under ten minutes and the creep asked no questions, he stitched up the cut all nice and clean and then he treated the burns and Ciel lived, scarred and half-blind but he lived.”

She takes deep, tremulous inhales, making up for the breath she lost trying to spit everything out at once. 

“He lived. And the second he woke up, I threatened him to keep his mouth shut or else. I thought up a dozen sham stories he could tell about his eye. But the day he got well enough to return to school, how could I have been anything but horrified? The darkest scenarios kept flashing before my eyes, so I drowned them in more whisky. Months passed, somehow, but no one came knocking on my door: no prosecutor, no goons sent by Lau, no three Satanists to finish the job. I’d spent almost every penny to pay the creep, so I had no choice but to reopen my clinic. Just go back to a semblance of normal life.”

The sun seeping into my study had dimmed since she arrived, ripening into a late orange glow. I uncross and recross my legs, looking down at the quivery hunch of a woman upon my sofa. Daring Miss Dalles, now eaten alive by her own demons. Oh, they had absolutely no mercy on her.

“We coexist. We memorise our daily schedules and stick to specific parts of the house. I leave him dinner in the fridge and allowance on the kitchen table. He writes me notes whenever there is something I need to know about: parent meetings at school, changes in his timetable, things he needs more money for. What pretty handwriting he has, just like his father.”

She peers blankly ahead – not at me, not the glass, not the ceiling. At empty space.

“I haven’t seen him in those three years, not once. I wonder how much he’s grown. I wonder if—”

Her voice hitches, falters, then scales all at once to a gut-wrenching sob, as though she’d dived underwater and emerged just seconds away from drowning. Here it comes – the climax. The crack-up. Her ashen face twists in torture as she seizes the sides of her head, howling madly like a banshee:

“Oh God oh my God oh God God God what have I done?? What have I done to their sweet little boy??”

She writhes and wails and her tears surge in a flood, smearing what little make-up she bothered to wear on the anniversary of her downfall. The mascara was not even remotely waterproof, and the lipstick soon gets reduced to glossy red smudges.

Her onslaught stirs in me about as much emotion as would a rerun of last week’s game of cricket: I sit back and enjoy the show. My heart – the internal organ that people metaphorically attribute the source of emotion – was not moved by the boy’s fate. My professional curiosity, however? Yes, that certainly stirred.

It’s not so much the fate itself as the fact it had happened to a child. Children are sensitive, to put it simply, and this simple fact was known for centuries before neuroscience proved just how much. ‘In the case of a young and tender thing, the most important part is the beginning,’ wrote Plato. ‘Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable.’ Though unlike old Plato, I possess the knowledge from years of psychiatric studies and access to technologies he could hardly have even dreamt. I know, a posteriori, just how tender and malleable is the brain of a child, how the tiniest of tremors can resound far and wide into the future. Plato, using the Greek word ‘trauma’, had no way of knowing that it would someday come to signify not just the wounds of the flesh, but also the wounds of the mind and soul that cannot heal quite as easily.

I wonder, what do the poor little Phantomhive’s wounds look like inside and out? They must be festering, infected like his blind violet eye; wounds that have crippled, gnarled his mind, and ached every second of every day for three lonely years.
 
It’s those three years, precisely, that intrigue me the most. How was it that he managed to get up for school, avoid his aunt, and behave normally enough to escape the attention of teachers, peers, the school counsellor? Three years, and no one has looked at this boy and thought there was something wrong with him? No one has thought to inquire after his mutilated eye or the unambiguously shaped scar on his neck? Not one classmate has seen the marks on his flesh while changing for PE?

My attention shifts back to Miss Dalles, still shaking in violent convulsions upon my sofa. The moment her demons laid themselves bare, I lost interest. What more can she offer to my benefit? With her every weakness and dirty secret exposed, she can entertain nor surprise me no longer. I’ve got my sights on much tastier quarry, and now she’s nothing but an obstacle in my way.

I turn off the recorder, snatch one tissue from the box on the coffee table (meant for patients to have something to blow their noses into as they whine about ruined marriages and despotic mothers), and take a seat next to the weeping woman. She stills when the upholstery dips under my weight, prying away her hands from the red, swollen wreck of her face. Such an ugly crier. Gently I take her by the chin and swipe the tissue across her wet cheeks, attempting to erase the ungainly mess of make-up that has graced her with the appearance of a wet clown. 

She seems soothed by my proximity and tender touch. Captivated, even, as she watches me keenly through never-ending tears. I tend to have that effect on people, even those in the midst of a meltdown.

“You don’t think I’m a monster?” she whispers, letting me wipe her clean.

We lock eyes. A therapist should, first and foremost, act without prejudice. A therapist needs to be someone who would never think ‘what a monster’ or ‘what a loser’. In theory, a therapist exists to understand all of the whys and guide through all of the hows; in practice, a therapist cannot block their judgment because they, too, are human. As for myself, though I am arguably far from human, I judge Angelina Dalles the same way I judge every other soul who sits on my sofa. I have absolutely no mercy on her, either.

“Monsters do not feel remorse,” I say. “Monsters do not seek help. And you need it now more than ever, Angelina. But so does your nephew.”

She flinches, forced back into reality. All her problems ceased to exist for that short, intimate moment she spent gazing into my eyes. 

“I fear your case requires urgent tending. Watching you for the past weeks and watching you now – with all the guilt you’ve unearthed and may not be prepared to handle – I cannot help but think it best to refer you to an institution.”

“What?” Her tears finally stop flowing. “The loony bin? No, no. I’m not crazy.”

“It’s not a matter of crazy,” I cautiously correct her, summoning a look of concern upon my features. “It’s about insurance and supervision. So that you cannot harm yourself.”

“Harm, like—?” She scoffs, pausing to look for the answer in my eyes. “I’m not going to kill myself, Sebastian!”

“Look at your left wrist.”

She lowers her head, only just noticing the vehement scratches and chafed, red skin. 

“Your response to emotional distress was to hurt yourself, Angelina. Tell me that you have never thought of death as a solution.”

She tears up again, shaking her head in feeble denial. The solution must have crossed her as nothing more than a passing, hopeless thought. Now it will always sit persistently in the back of her mind. 
 
“As your therapist, I have two choices. In cases involving the safety of minors, I am allowed to break confidentiality and hand the matter to authorities.”

I halt briefly, delighting in the look of panic upon her face. Yes, I can tell on you – why so surprised? I have it all recorded, too. Didn’t pay attention when I explained the policies on our first session, did we?

“Or, if possible, I can choose to handle the matter within my own means. I believe we can settle everything without unnecessary exposure. You’ve trusted me thus far; will you trust me to choose what’s best for you and your nephew?”

She nods, of course. I didn’t give her much of an alternative. Trust me, or it’s off to the slammer.

“Very good. First, I’m going to need you to phone your lawyer.”

Notes:

Please let me know if you had any thoughts!!

Chapter 2

Fools rarely realise they’re fools. Schizophrenics often believe they’re sane. Alcoholics tend to deny addiction until their last breath. I, too, should think of myself as perfectly normal, and yet never once did I doubt that I was anything other than different.

My caregivers at the children’s home labelled me as shy—the most desirable trait in an orphan. They seemed more than happy to leave me cooped up inside of what they viewed as a shell. I did not start fights, throw toys, or wail endlessly at the smallest trifles. I watched the rowdy theatre that my peers performed for attention and felt like I were observing an alien species. Why did everyone seem to cling to the idea that their parents would someday come back for them? What was there to miss about a pair of nameless, faceless figures? I knew I was supposed to be feeling lonely, forsaken, sad—but those were little more than empty words I could not associate with actual impressions. They rang hollow, like an abstract scientific thesis I lacked the capacity to make sense of.

The caregivers brought me books to pass time. They didn’t know, of course, that I preferred to pass my time enjoying what little torments I could inflict on those younger and weaker while they weren’t around to see. The moment an adult entered the room, however, I diligently stuck my nose in a storybook and wondered why did every tale have to finish with a happy ending. If I hadn’t been reading quietly in a corner – perpetuating my image as a timid, reflective child – I would likely never have got adopted. Everyone looked for smart and well-mannered, and the Greenhills – an elderly couple who had lost their biological daughter to leukemia – would not have settled for anything less. Cultured, affluent, they had worked too hard their entire lives to take in some worthless urchin. Neither of them had time to invest in my upbringing, no energy left to care, and no genuine affection for anything save each other. All they wanted was a ready-made product to fill a singular role: an heir they were no longer able to beget through natural means.

Mrs Greenhill’s second degree was in psychology. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so absorbed in her pharmaceutical sales, she might have noticed the signs and made my life take a wholly different (and wholly unsatisfying) turn. She might have made the connection between my delinquency and detachment and the sudden disappearance of their golden retriever. But who would suspect a teenage orphan with straight As? A troubled orphan, perhaps, but charming to a fault. I had an effect on people that came with benefits of leniency towards my transgressions, and I had just begun using it fluently to my advantage.

To my new parents’ delight, I read even more than before. It turned out that books contained not only fairytales, but answers, and the more time I spent rifling in Mrs Greenhill’s library, the more I discovered the language to describe what went on in other people’s heads—as opposed to what went on in my own.

Others felt the need for something called ‘love and belonging’; I felt the need to rip that away from them. Others saw ‘misery’ and felt ‘compassion’; I fed on misery and poured salt on the wounds. I didn’t have what others referred to as ‘dreams’ or ‘passions’, only that insistent itch of an urge I could find no name for, swelling and tearing me from within like a hunger. And it must be true that appetite comes with eating, because mine certainly couldn’t stop growing. One day I’d knock out a couple of teeth, the next I’d want to break a bone; one day I’d see blood on TV, the next I’d want to see it for real.

I’ll never forget the first time I felt it, nor the second, nor any of the numerous that followed. I was fifteen, walking back the empty school corridors after another detention. She blocked my path on top of the staircase – Mathilda Simmons, one year my senior, returning from whatever tutoring she required to get through another term. She wasn’t one of those girls who giggled covertly as I passed them by; she was the kind of girl to accost me openly during breaks with lewd propositions. It bordered on harassment, and I hated that I couldn’t beat her up like I would a boy.

She leaned against the wall and pushed up her breasts, rumpling the half-buttoned shirt of her uniform. She prattled and chattered in that slurred teen slang that drove me mad, never once stopping to chew her pink gum with loud, lusty smacks of her mouth.

I looked her way without seeing or hearing, overcome by that hectic urge.

“Can’t take your eyes off the tits, eh?” I heard through my haze, and in that haze I reached out and gave her a push. 

The steps were steep and made of concrete. She broke her jaw on the ninth, her neck somewhere along the fourteenth, and by the time she reached the bottom, I had already become a killer. The halls were silent as I descended—shivering, feeling—to take a closer look. There she lay, a sprawl of limbs, glassy eyes staring vacantly at a locked classroom. I admired her crooked neck, dislodged jaw, the bloody gash on her forehead... and I smiled. I smiled, because death made me feel alive.

Basking in my orgasmic wonder, I heard the footsteps too late to dash in the opposite direction. A sharp staccato of high heels came to an abrupt halt somewhere behind my back, followed by what I recognised as the voice of my history teacher. “Oh God,” it said.

I didn’t always understand emotions, but I did understand the concept of consequences. Pushing someone down the stairs and grinning over their dead body was bound to produce some of the worst consequences I could envision. And to avoid them, I had to lie. I had to pretend. After my teacher’s shocked gasp, I had only the briefest of instants to plan my reaction.

Death usually made people cry or panic, I’d noticed. But what was panic if not just another husk of a word? The Cambridge Dictionary defined it as a ‘sudden strong feeling of fear that prevented reasonable thought and action’. I knew panic when I saw it and recognised its symptoms: shortness of breath, erratic movements, incoherent speech. I could recite the theory in my sleep, but the practice? I’d never had reason to feign anything so extreme as panic.

“Michaelis?” the teacher stuttered, and I knew I had to turn.

“Mrs Cole!” I lamented the best I could. “She fell! She swayed and she just fell and I swear I tried to catch her but it happened so fast and I’m so so sorry—”

I broke off with a shaky intake of air, which seemed like a nice touch at the time. People liked to apologise whenever bad things happened outside their control for no apparent reason; the Greenhills blamed themselves for their daughter’s death all the time.

Mrs Cole wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me away from Mathilda Simmon’s broken body. “Don’t look, my boy,” she said, but I already knew.

All I’d ever wanted was to look.

Only two days later, I set out on a prowl – chasing the thrill, riding the high. Mathilda was my epiphany and I couldn’t sit still when I’d just been rebirthed. I stabbed a random tramp in some unnamed alley in Camden, the easy kind of prey that would not be missed or spared a second thought. I stabbed him until my arm went numb and my knife went dull; I kept stabbing even though the first three stabs had been enough to kill him.

Sloppy, impassioned. Cathartic. Each strike and each spray of blood felt like coming home.

I’d always known I was different, but only then did I come to understand just how abnormal were the ways in which I thought and acted, the very way in which I existed. I looked at Maslow’s pyramid of needs and saw it crumble. Where was my need, my death drive, my Todestrieb? After fifteen years in the dark, I finally discovered what lay at my foundation. I could treat it as one would treat a fleshly sickness—call it by its name, define it as a genetic psychopathology of the limbic system—but instead of equalling myself to a sum of neurotransmitters and reducing my Todestrieb to a blunt formula, I became too absorbed in putting it into practice. The once unnamed urge crystallised itself into something corporeal and demanded an all-too-corporeal outlet. It evolved into my chief purpose and pleasure, the elusive meaning of life that everyone sought in universal vain. I found mine to be taking the lives of others, and the only way to pursue it was to blend in. Avoid consequences. 

I could never belong, but I could construct a fully-dimensional façade of belonging. I trained myself in a wide range of emotions and mastered the subtle signs of non-verbal language. With each smile, I made sure to crinkle the corner of my eyes and arch my lips the most amiable way. I was an actor rehearsing for a role, talented enough to play it flawlessly from beginning to end; I’d been doing it unconsciously since my earliest years, masking and altering my true nature long before I knew what it was.

Soon-to-be eighteen, I began plotting to murder the Greenhills for inheritance, but never did. That privilege was taken from me when Mrs Greenhill died of a stroke and Mr Greenhill plunged headlong after his love the day after, swallowing their entire supply of sedatives and heart medication. All the fruit of their hard labour fell to their adopted son, and they passed away thinking they were leaving it in good hands. They saw only what I intended for them to see – a star student and obedient ward. So what if I got into fights or disappeared for entire days? Boys will be boys. They brushed it off as storming hormones and adolescent trifles. By choosing to be blind, they allowed me to become who I was meant to become, and for that they would forever have my thanks.

At their funeral, when others mourned and bid their goodbyes, I put on my best imitation of ‘sorrow’ and found it wanting. Of all the emotions I’d learnt to mimic, sorrow proved the hardest to conquer. I tried and tried to wring out at least one, symbolic tear—but unless a speck of dust or chemical residue got in my eye, there was no such thing in this world that could bring me to tears.

With a fortune at my disposal, I had a kick-start and made the most of it. I enrolled into Oxford and managed to get my MD in Psychiatry without growing bored of it halfway through. I had found another meaning, another calling, and my career soared only one year after graduation. Apart from occasional consulting, I had no interest in working at a hospital; I put all of my knowledge to use in a private therapeutic practice. The science behind human actions and motivations, previously so mysterious, finally began to fall into place—but never quite fit, no. There would always be distance.

Humans are either painfully predictable or uniquely fascinating, and I have devoted myself to studying the latter. I follow and document their struggles with scholarly zeal, soaking up all that I can never experience for myself. Many would call me human in only one sense of the word, but I am not entirely incapable of emotion – only capable of a much narrower spectrum of emotions on a much shallower level. I daresay I assimilated myself into human society more than I’d been originally equipped to. My anger has been known to spike in short, feeble bursts; my lust and fascination, though volatile, can reach startling heights; my pride and vanity all too often risk blinding reason. I do enjoy levelled discussions with like-minded individuals and might, on occasion, find some of their jokes the littlest bit funny. I am highly particular about art and music, and although it does not pull on any invisible (or, should I say, nonexistent) strings within my soul, it pleases my senses and evokes a faint impression of content.

And I do, so very much, enjoy moments like this one: all alone with my victims, staring them in the face while they stare death in the face, and if this isn’t the purest form of joy, then I don’t know what is. 

They all have the same expression upon jolting awake: sheer, classic panic. Gagged, tied to a chair and wrapped in a straitjacket, Angelina Dalles comes to consciousness with a short, startled squeal. She notices the string of rope hanging readily above her head—a sinister presage of what’s to come—and her squeal spirals into a full-blown shriek. The chair legs screech on the linoleum floor of her clinic, wobbling to and fro as she squirms against the bindings. It takes her longer than most to realise it’s no use. She whips her head left, then right, then finally to where I sit half-visible on her examination table. The street lamps and the headlights of passing cars illuminate the room just enough for me to see the incredulous recognition upon her face.

“Should’ve picked the loony bin,” I sigh, ignoring her muffled shouts. “Should’ve picked up your phone. Should’ve cooperated. I was about to get an order for involuntary hospitalisation, but I’ve changed my mind and this is what I want to happen to you now. This is what you get when I grow impatient. Everything had been going well until you decided to...” I gesture towards the empty bottle of whisky on her desk. “Well, fall rather spectacularly off the wagon.”

She shoots me a glare.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I really didn’t mean for this to happen. Patient suicide is terrible for reputation, and I would prefer to keep mine spotless.” I chuckle darkly. “That’s all you’ll be, in the end. Just a stain on my statistics.”

I wait for her to finish screaming unproductively against the gag. Nobody will hear you, love, just like nobody heard your nephew. Not one passer-by will peek through the window because the panes are tinted and the blare of traffic will drown out your calls for help.

“Not sure if you remember, but you paid me in advance for the next consultation.” I throw my arms wide. “Isn’t it nice of me to make a house call? I shall give you one last chance to leave this mortal coil with a sense of absolution.”

I stand up and edge closer.

“Now, why don’t we pick up where we left off? It all comes down to the last three years, doesn’t it? I find it remarkable, by the way, how you managed to live with yourself all this time. You’re almost as good at pretending as I, which you should absolutely take as a compliment. I’m just curious, Doctor Dalles—considering what you did to your own family, how did it feel to help strangers? Did it make you feel like a better person, or did it painfully remind you of who you really were? A monster, as you put it?”

I wrench the gag from her mouth, ready to plug it back in. The first thing she does is aim to spit in my face, but I’m not one to fall for this cheap sort of trick. I take a step aside.

“Monster?” she bellows. “You’re one to talk, you… psychopath!”

I wince. “There it is. Us clinicians are all so eager to rush for the diagnosis, aren’t we? We can’t treat what we can’t classify, after all.” I cross my arms. “It’s an unwieldy label, given that my PCL-R score is only at twenty two. I like to think I’m a special flavour, you see. I miss some of the marks.”

“You certainly hit the ‘narcissistic’ mark spot-on,” she snarls. “Really like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?”

“Don’t you? Isn’t this why you drove all the way to Hampstead every week, just to listen to it?”

Her cheeks flush in shame. I link my hands behind my back and take a stroll around her office.

“Listen to this, then: I have always thought of people as dogs on a leash. Muzzled by morality, collared by conscience, restrained by the hand of law.... But once the leash is unhooked, they become capable of just about anything. Example? Me.”

She shakes her head, failing to see my point. 

“But here’s the thing that’s always amazed me: those with their conscience intact possess an equal capacity for evil. When crazed with grief or backed into a corner, every single person can become like me. When in the clutches of authority or in the name of ideals, under the right circumstances at the exactly right time, everyone in this world is capable of violence. Every dog can go rabid and get off its leash. Example? You.” I stab her in the chest with my index finger. She flinches, scandalised with the comparison.

“Let’s break it all down, shall we? Instead of tending to a ten-year-old orphan—your very own nephew—who had just seen his parents get pummelled into bloody bits by a speeding lorry, you decided to sell him off to gross old pedos while drinking and gambling for the money you made him earn. You were the last person he had left to rely on, his last pillar of support, but you chose to kick him while he was down and put him through more layers of hell. You betrayed him, and you betrayed Vincent. You made him a scapegoat for your grief because your world had ended and you wanted to end his too.”

“Stop,” she implores, “please just stop, I don’t want to hear this—”

“How are you any better than me?” I hiss, looming close, grasping the armrests of her chair. “When they slit his throat, your only concern was going to jail. You saved him only to save your own ass, Madame Red, and that’s all you ever cared about. Three years ago you became a monster, and no amount of tears or remorse will change that.”

If her hands weren’t restrained in the jacket, she’d plug hear ears. But she has no choice but to endure the tortuous stream of accusations.

“Is that remorse even honest? Are you sorry, or do you just wish you slept better at night? All you ever wanted from me was a pat on the back and the green light to move on. You wanted me to justify your cruelty, to explain in smart words why you did what you did because you couldn’t handle the truth.”

She slumps in the chair, defenseless against my charges. 

“I suppose I lied again. I won’t give you absolution, I’m no priest. But I can give you the fate I think we both know you deserve.” I grin, pointing at the noose above. It sends her into another fit of fruitless struggles and frenzied screeching.

How undignified. Then again, no one ever faces death with dignity; not when I am the one to deliver it, at least.

“Oh, please. Do use your last moments for something more constructive. How about you tell me more about your nephew? I’ll be taking care of him, remember? I made you designate me his legal guardian in your will?”

All blood drains from her face, and my grin only widens. “How ironic! You’re scared I’ll mistreat him? If it’s any solace before you die, I don’t think anyone can hurt him more than you already have. Make no mistake: he’ll be better off with a psychopath than his sweet aunt An.”

Ah, now she just won’t do anything but cry.

“Come now, work with me here. What kind of food does he like, or something. You must know that, at least.”

She sobs unintelligibly under her breath. All I make out is ‘honey’.

“Pardon?”

“He likes warm milk with honey,” she raises her voice, plaintive and topped with a hiccup. Snot runs down her chin and oh dear, she really is an ugly crier. “Always had a sweet tooth. His favourite cake is chocolate, I think. R-Rachel used to bake a lot of chocolate cakes when he was little.”

“He’s still little,” I say, “and he was little when you abused him. A parentless, defenseless, innocent little child.”

She wails louder. “H-His favorite game is chess! He drinks a lot of tea! He’s allergic to cats! He doesn’t like to smile but once he does, it feels like the most precious thing in the entire world! He’s smart and reads a lot and—”

She has more to say, but it ends up drowning in a torrent of incoherent blubbering. Have I mentioned undignified? 

“Very good.” I smile my nicest smile. “Time is up.”

I cram the gag into her mouth, climb onto a stool, and heave her up from the chair. There’s fight left in her still – even with tied ankles she nearly knocks us both over.

“I’ll admit, an overdose would have been more believable,” I say, heedless of her wild thrashing. “You are a doctor, after all. Raiding your medicine cabinet... who would have stopped to think twice? The plan had one major flaw, however: no pain and no spectacle. Where would have been the fun in it for me?”

I smack my lips, looping the noose around her neck. She tests herself against the prickling snatch of rope, but there is no give. She stiffens.

“Yes, be careful there, love – one wrong move and you’ll hang.”

She whimpers like a beat dog and balances unsteadily on top of the chair, her eyes begging me wordlessly for mercy.

Doesn’t she realise there’s nothing left to hold onto? That her love, fortune, and family were irretrievably gone? That three years ago she lost everything, even her very self? That soon she would have ruined her career and wound up as a common drunkard? But most of all, doesn’t she realise how futile it is to expect mercy from me?

I step down and stand savouring the suspense for a few more moments. We both know her neck won’t snap at this height, and the anticipation – the inescapable awareness that it’s over – often hits worse than the dying itself.

I kick the chair back and let the rope sink into her throat, silencing the last of her pleas. She writhes inside the straitjacket like a worm on a hook, or a moth swaddled in a spider’s cocoon. Her face swells, purples, and her eyes bulge grotesquely as she wheezes for air. It takes her a minute to fully run out of it, and I don’t miss even a second.

Now she paints a gloomy picture, one I could frame and hang on my wall: a wilted grey shape illuminated now and again by the lights of passing vehicles, swinging lifelessly from the ceiling fan in the deserted clinic. I circle the room to admire my handiwork, smiling and relishing the last of my afterglow until I revert to the familiar state of un-feeling. 

I take off the straitjacket, pull out the gag, and carry back the stool. Then I halt, hand to chin, for a brief while to ponder. No questionable signs of struggle, no indication of a last-moment change of heart. She wanted to die, tied a string of rope, and smoothed the passage with liquor. Patient accounts, empty bottles, and post-mortem traces of alcohol consumption will neatly tell the story I need. No loose ends, just the inglorious stigma of patient suicide and a few upcoming interviews with the police.

Her secretary will find her first thing in the morning. From that point onwards, a long chain of legal procedures will have to ensue and conclude before little Phantomhive can fall into my hands. I am impatient, but I have taught myself—among many things—to wait.

Notes:

PCL-R - a check-list used to assess psychopathic tendencies, 40 points is max score and 30 means there's a problem (25 in the UK, I believe).

Chapter 3

The crowd is surprising, especially given the sub-zero and biting wind. Doctor Dalles must have been popular, but as I swerve my way between mourners I see no tears and hear only gossip. Really, some people can’t even wait until the wake to wag their tongues. How typical.

“...she was never okay after the Phantomhives...”

“...went to see a shrink, drank a lot...”

“...poor boy...”

I put up the collar of my wool trench coat and push forwards, mumbling pardons, until I reach the dense front circle surrounding the casket.

Under the lush garlands of symbolically red flowers, I catch a glimpse of burnished mahogany and gilded handles. The Midfords certainly spared no expense. Next to the yet-empty grave stands a priest, reciting last rites in a voice so monotonous and solemn that it makes me want to kick him into the three-meter ditch and drop the casket on top, so that Miss Dalles has some company.

I find all religions preposterous, but Christianity takes the cake. A stale, obsolete doctrine that had no right to persist into the age of empiricism and science, propagating philanthropy and ascetic ideals that go against everything that lies in my nature. It’s the religion of lambs who have nothing to uphold their existence save for naïve reveries of paradise and godly grace; the religion of simpletons who need an instruction manual on how to act and think and tell right from wrong; the religion of holier-than-thou hypocrites who flaunt their piety but sin left and right, masquerading themselves as embodiments of virtue. I, for one, would never stoop so low as to conceal my vice with choir-singing or tossing a few pennies into the offering plate every Sunday mass. 

My gaze tears away from the priest, searching. I spot my charge right where I expect to spot him, bunched alongside the Midfords on the opposite end of the circle. He’s short for his age and just as thin as I thought, but far from the brink of malnourishment. All I can see from this angle is the top of his lowered head, and it doesn’t lift even once during the entire service; either to hide his absence of sorrow, or to hide from the crowd altogether.

When the fine mahogany casket makes its final descent into the ground, he doesn’t move even a muscle. Only the Midford girl sniffles and sobs a few times into a tissue, the first and the last to give utterance to her grief. I, too, make the effort of seeming sad; I’m presumed to have known the deceased well, after all. I’m the only one who would know the true reason she took her own life. My lips are pursed and slanted as the funeral draws to an end, but inwardly I’m glad for the priest to have finally shut up.

As the mourners begin to scatter, I make my way towards the Midfords. Greeting them with a curt nod, I fully intend for it to come across as reluctant. Yes, we’ve had the dubious pleasure of mutual acquaintance this week. Our heated difference of opinions at the lawyer’s means they don’t get any of my fake smiles, no.

“Dr Michaelis,” Mrs Midford drawls through clenched teeth at my unwelcome sight. “We didn’t see you at the church. Not a religious man, I presume?”

“Far from it,” I say, tactically laconic, for faith is a minefield I’d rather not cross at the moment.

After all, I didn’t come here to argue religion or custody. I came here to finally take a look at my prize.

‘You can’t judge a book by its cover,’ humans will say in vain attempts to transcend their own pettiness, ‘that’s not all there is.’ But covers speak, draw in, and Ciel Phantomhive is a book bound in a cover that inevitably catches the eye. He is that one rare gem on the shelf, standing out brilliantly among rows of mediocre.

He has a nobility and daintiness about his features; a charm in equal part boyish and feminine; a fair complexion blessed with the flawlessness of early youth. Flushing fetchingly in the autumn cold, he looks angelic. Picture-perfect and lovely, in every regard.

I can see why he fetched such a handsome price at the auction.

He doesn’t look like he might appreciate being patted on the head or pinched on the cheeks, so I extend my palm to greet him as an equal. I’m certain he’s going to flinch away at the contact, but he doesn’t seem to mind touching me through two layers of gloves. The squeeze of his small hand is as firm as he can make it. He keeps his back straight, not hunched; head high, no longer lowered.

Truly? No fear of strangers, when so many have hurt him? He has no trouble holding my gaze, alert yet undaunted, returning in kind every bit of my scrutiny. And how arresting would be that gaze, if only his violet eye could compliment the lone blue! I find no traces of sadness in that eye, not a smidgen of fright, and not even shyness; but I do see curiosity, more than a glimmer of intellect, and something that might be hauteur.

It’s not what I expected. I had more to go by than just the cover, more than the depthless testimony of the external. With all my knowledge, I expected to find the cover falling apart at the seams: tattered, dilapidated, in urgent need of a mend. No one has looked at this boy and thought there was something wrong with him because the boy does not look like there is anything wrong with him in the least. In fact, he looks the exact opposite: sound in both mind and body, sharp and collected, well-dressed and well-fed. True that half his face is covered with an eye-patch, but accidents happen all the time. He looks every bit the rich, spoiled child he once must have been – not the tortured, neglected orphan he should have become.

It’s been a long time since my predictions proved wrong. I can deduce a great deal from appearances, but they do tend to deceive and people do tend to be not all what they seem. I don’t quite seem like I fancy murdering people for sport either, now do I? He must be a fellow master of masking. Well met, well met.

“We haven’t been introduced. I’m Sebastian Michaelis, your aunt’s therapist. She appointed me as your legal guardian—”

“Not while we still have a say in it,” a cold voice interrupts whatever exchange may have followed. I narrow and lift my gaze, colliding it with Mrs Midford’s.

Ah, her. I’m used to women eating out of my hand, but this specimen seems entirely immune to my charms and manipulations.

“I was actually about to contact you in this matter, Doctor. We have decided to contest the will.”

Oh, dear Mrs Midford, on what basis? Need you honestly make such a fuss? I’ll poke some and prod some at your darling little nephew and then you can have him back—not necessarily in a better condition, but have him back you shall. Sooner rather than later I will thrust him right into your welcoming arms, for my interest only lasts so long. 

I frown sternly. “Perhaps we could discuss this at a more appropriate time and place?”

Her voice only grows in volume. “We wouldn’t be needing to discuss this at all, Doctor, if only you had a shred of decency and relinquished custody to the child’s own family!”

A couple of heads turn our way and oh, I see what she’s doing, raising a ruckus at a funeral, I see what this is all about. Sure, I’ll bite. 

“I don’t think you’re the right person to speak of decency, Mrs Midford, considering you can’t behave at a funeral.”

“And tell me, what could a single man in his thirties possibly want with a stranger’s child? How’s that for decency?”

Ah, now that is one foul move. Well played. She deliberately laces the question with perverse undertones, knowing that everyone within earshot will stop to ask themselves the same: what could I want with him, indeed? The woman makes a formidable opponent, I’ll give her this much.

Her words annoy me for two reasons: one, I have turned thirty only last month. Second, the idea that I should be married is completely absurd. I have put a great deal of thought into creating a viable social identity, and marrying just to avoid suspicion would be not only impractical, but borderline stupid. Rich, handsome, intelligent... and on top of everything, happily married? People aren’t perfect, and I decided that Sebastian Michaelis was in need of distinct commitment issues and a history of failed relationships to match.

Whenever asked about my love life, I make sure to always have an armful of deft excuses at the ready. ‘It just never seemed to work out, maybe I’m too picky’. ‘They’re all scared I’ll psychoanalyse them, or something’. ‘I’m a workaholic, and no one likes to have second priority’. All I need to do is recite one of the above with a suitably doleful expression et voilà, I have my interlocutors nodding their heads in grave understanding. ‘Yes, everyone has problems of their own, of course.’ I’ll have you know, Mrs Midford, most of the things I do are planned with great insight, which sadly means you were bound to lose from the start. 

Still, a good attempt at slander is not bad. In today’s society, even the slightest hint of deviant inclinations can smear one’s good name for life. Were it anyone else faced publicly with akin accusation, I believe they would lose their mind. They would sweat, they would bristle, they would stutter and flail their hands indignantly around. And the harder we deny something, the worse it looks. I don’t have that problem; no matter what happens, I’m always as still as a stone. Even if I were to stand accused of all my murders right here and right now, I would hardly bat an eye. If a chasm opened beneath my feet to swallow everything up, I wouldn’t breathe so much as a word.

“I’m going to pretend I have no idea what you meant to insinuate, Mrs Midford,” I grind out, cold as ice. “Angelina wasn’t a stranger. I cared for her as a patient and, within professional boundaries, equally as a friend. I can assure you that her decision was not without good reason or made on a whim.” 

Mrs Midford opens her mouth to talk back, but I raise my hand to make clear I’m not done. Her husband keeps looking back and forth between the two of us, well aware that he should try taming his wife yet evidently terrified to get in her way. It’s obvious who calls the shots in their marriage.

“Take no offense, but you have also been absent for the greater part of Ciel’s life, and family is more than just blood. We both might as well be strangers to him, but as a psychiatrist I have an understanding of his condition that you do not—”

“Then kindly explain—”

“—and he requires special care that you simply cannot provide, not while running two companies and already raising two children.”

She blanches. I’ve done my research: after Vincent and Rachel Phantomhive’s sudden decease, the ownership of their Funtom company went straight to the Midfords. They tried managing it from France for a time, but long-term struggles with distance recently forced them to move back to London. Truly, they have their hands full for the moment. 

“What a nerve! You think you know everything about us? You have no right to meddle in our affairs!”

“And you have no right to imply obscenities or contest a perfectly valid act of last will. Be my guest, however, if you wish to waste more time in court.”

Mr Midford wrings his hands in sheer helplessness. Mrs Midford looks like she’s about to deck me, but it’s not her husband who ultimately stops her from giving me another piece of her mind (or fist). It falls down to Ciel, standing forgotten between two adults arguing his well-being, to rebuke his aunt for causing a scene in front of a funeral crowd. It is said that children should be seen and not heard, and yet it’s no other voice than his – calm, smooth, magisterial – that somehow becomes the final say in the matter. Like the elder head of a family, silent throughout the entire exchange, he breaks off the dispute and announces his verdict:

“Please, aunt Frances, enough. It’ll be fine, really. I’ll come visit.”

Welcome, little Phantomhive: out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Chapter 4

“So what’s this I hear about you having a kid, now?”

“Long story short: yes, I have a kid now.”

“What, raising a patient’s brat! Are you off your rocker?”

“Like I said, long story.”

“Were you two shagging? You were shagging, weren’t you? And she bloody killed herself and now you feel guilty—is that your long story?”

The benefits of social life? Good cover. Appearances of normal. The downsides of social life? Ronald Knox. Gossip. Rowdy evenings in Irish pubs that I’d rather spend working, or killing.

“Right, me and my long stories. You want to hear the ones I could tell about you? To either of your three girlfriends?”

“Fine, I’m hanging up on you. Bye.”

I scoff and slide the phone back into my pocket. Ciel’s gone inside on his own; if I smoked, I would light one of my Lucky Strikes or Marlboros and lean nonchalantly against the hood of my car. Much like Angelina Dalles, I would pull long draughts of smoke into my lungs and exhale slowly, contemplatively, as I stood waiting in front of her fashionable white townhouse in Earl’s Court. But I don’t smoke, and Ciel’s out the door within six minutes; I would have scarcely had time to enjoy my cigarette anyway.

I scan the compact black suitcase he’s carrying down the stairs. He didn’t bring a lot from the Midfords, either.

“Is that everything?”

He shrugs. “There used to be a lot of good silver and pricey artwork in the house, but my aunt blew everything in Chinatown. Sorry.”

I can’t tell if he’s joking. Other people hint at sarcasm with smirks and raised brows, but Ciel Phantomhive does not make it so easy. His face remains a big, blank canvas all the way through. Would he joke about his dead aunt’s gambling habit that ruined both their lives? I can’t seem to figure him out. Then again, isn’t this precisely the point?

“Suppose we won’t be needing a moving truck, then,” I quip, loading the suitcase inside the boot of my Aston Martin—a flashy make and model, but not the same sort of flashy as all the Ferraris and Lamborghinis that rich kids like to flaunt around Kensington. It’s the classy sort of flashy that comes in polished black varnish and elegant curves.

Starting the engine, I spare a last glance at the row of terraced buildings by the street. Furnished and complete with a glum past, the house shall sell for a sizeable sum even without its paintings and silvers. Once the little Phantomhive comes of age, he’s going to inherit a colossal fortune after all his dead relatives.

Shame, though, that money can never buy him back happiness.

We barely hit the first turn when I honk at a silver Toyota and Ciel decides to start a conversation. I thought he’d sit brooding silently all the way to Hampstead, but I keep getting the wrong idea.

“Why are you named after a French inquisitor?” 

Ah, he must have googled me. I do hope he enjoyed scrolling through my professional achievements, flattering photos, and laudatory patient reviews.

“Maybe I’m not. Michaelis is more commonly a German surname, and Sebastian could be a mere coincidence.”

“You don’t know whether your own roots are German or French?”

“I was raised in a children’s home. I don’t know anything about my biological parents, nor did I care enough to find out.”

“Mhm,” he hums out his disinterest, gazing at the bustling streets outside. So then my sad childhood did not make much of an impression? No sympathy for a fellow orphan? Oh, so cold. 

I stop to let a trio of teenagers through the crossing – playing hooky, by my guess, and not much older than Ciel, dressed in baggy jeans and Nike shoes and preposterous rapper caps. I glance to my left and picture the boy in a similar attire – bomber jacket instead of his well-cut coat, oversized T-shirt instead of a turtle-neck jumper, low-crotch joggers instead of pleated, tight-fitting trousers – and it’s ridiculous enough to make me want to snicker under my breath. 

“I thought you’d be more opposed to the idea of coming with me,” I say, changing the radio station once the news turn into an auto-tuned pop hit. I don’t know it, and I don’t want to know it.

“Hmm? Oh, anything but the Midfords.” Ciel waves his hand distractedly. “They mean well, but fuss too much. I barely got a moment’s peace the entire month, especially with Elizabeth around. I figured it would be easier to deal with one shrink trying to poke inside my head than a whole crew of persistent relatives trying to do the same.”

My, what a commendable drive for independence. The way he sees it, adults have failed him and the three years he spent alone proved them redundant.

He must loathe the fact I know his deepest, darkest secrets while all he knows is a bundle of flat trivia from Google.

“Is that what you think this is about? Poking?”

“Why else wouldn’t you have called the social services on my aunt? Why wouldn’t you have let them handle my special care?”

“After the lengths you’ve gone to in order to keep it secret? I figured you didn’t want their kind of help.”

He blows air through his nose. “And then figured I’d want yours, instead?”

“Want? No. Prefer, perhaps. And need it. People tend to pay a lot for my kind of help, and I don’t fuss nearly as much. Promise.” 

My eyes stay trained on the road, but I think this scores a reaction. Not quite a smile; more of a tiny upward twirl in the corner of his mouth, but it’s something.

“All that aside, shouldn’t a therapist be a neutral party? Isn’t it unethical to treat acquaintances and family?” 

“Yes, but for the moment we are neither—closer to flatmates than anything, really—and in your case, no therapist can ever remain neutral. There’s bound to be emotional involvement and conflict of interest one way or the other.”

“Fussing, you mean.” He sighs. “Oh well. You were right – I don’t dislike this arrangement. At least there’s going to be more room to avoid you than at my aunt’s.”

We roll into Hampstead, and Ciel wasn’t wrong: there’s plenty of room to hide. I live in a two-story house with a front and back garden that has the less successful among Londoners muttering ‘filthy rich bastard’ below their breaths. The interior is no less imposing than the exterior—traditional Victorian furnished in a rich, dark palette with upscale woodwork, patterned tiles, and grand split stairs with intricate banisters; decorated with prized paintings, handmade rugs, and coffered ceilings; filled with antique chairs, ottomans, and canapés stacked with cushions; lit by sconces, lampshades, and elaborate chandeliers that shed the warmest light in the evenings.

In short, I am a filthy rich bastard.

Pulling up under the carport, I remember the day I moved into the Greenhills’ Bishop’s Avenue mansion. I remember their tired, tentative smiles and awkward gestures, all touch-and-go for the first couple of weeks. Lumped together into a caricature of a family, we were quick to fall into a mutually beneficial rhythm of pretending that all was always well. Our idea of playing house was leaving each other alone.

Ciel, however, doesn’t have my kind of luck. I shall leave him alone for one week only – let him settle, get comfortable, test the waters. But afterwards, he should prepare himself not for mere poking but a full vivisection.

“Welcome back, Mr Sebastian!” Mey-Rin chirps in greeting as we enter the hall. She comes to clean the house twice a week and treats the job like the greatest ambition of her life. She has red hair, thick-lensed glasses, and a hopelessly obvious crush on myself.

She bends down to address Ciel, her voice dripping with puerile sweetness:

“And hello there, young man! My, you are beyond adorable!” Her face falls once she takes all of him in. “But whatever’s happened to your right eye?”

“I tripped and fell on a spiked railing,” says Ciel in a bland, bored voice. It’s a question he must have answered a thousand times.

“Why, you poor thing!” she bewails, grasping at her cheeks. She has a penchant for melodrama. “Come, come, Mr Sebastian is busy. I’ll show you to your room!”

He looks to me; I look meaningfully to my right, where stand open the double-winged doors to my study.

“We start next week. One hour at a time. Is that something you can agree to?”

He doesn’t even manage to nod before Mey-Rin starts dragging him up the stairs, chattering happily how glad she is for him to be here and how kind Mr Sebastian is for taking him in. 

Very kind, indeed. 

Chapter 5

It takes two flights of stairs to reach the first door, a long corridor to reach another, then a sharp right turn to finally reach the entrance. A peeling sticker warns newcomers not to smoke, but the air inside stinks of cigarettes and the booth seats have round holes burnt into their worn charcoal leather.

It’s worse than I thought. Dim, multicoloured lights fluctuate above the silhouettes of an early-night crowd. The music’s on loud enough to dance but low enough for conversation, and there can be only one type of conversation to be had in a place like this—in the dark corners, on the stuffy dance floor, by the neon-lit bar.

Bard whistles. “Wow. Looking to get lucky? Didn’t have you figured for the kind of bloke to pick a joint like that.”

That’s because I’m not that kind of bloke in the least. But I can hardly tell a detective from the HSCC that I came here to spy on my next kill, now can I? I shouldn’t show myself publicly in the same place as my victims, but the past week has left me restless. All I need is one look.

“Please. That wanker would get lucky anywhere,” Ronald snorts, scanning the area. “Let’s see. Pint’s cheap, going once... oh, and would you look at that blonde by the bar! Long long legs.” He grins. “Going twice, I’m sold.”

They get their cheap beers, I get a glass of barely palatable cognac. The bartender checks out my Loomes watch with a dose of skepticism, as though he couldn’t figure out the reason a bloke like me would come to a joint like that, either. Judging by the crowd, it must be a joint for overworked middle class looking to forget about failed relationships and mortgage. Bard is the only one of us to fit that profile: forever drowning in his parents’ old debts, making ends meet only by incurring new debts and abusing himself with overtime hours. Ronald earns well into six figures, but he hoards it like a dragon hoards its loot. The only money he doesn’t hold back from spending is mine.

“So how’s that brat of yours coming along?” he asks once we slide into a free booth, appraising the blonde’s rear from every angle.

I delay my answer with a sip of cognac. Ciel’s coming along slowly rather than surely. He shows himself only for meals, dodges all attempts at dialogue, and never compliments my cooking. He insists on calling me ‘Doctor’ (sometimes with ‘Michaelis’ at the end), drawing a clear line to our relationship and refusing to cross it by even an inch. I wouldn’t call him fearful, only distant, the way an introvert chooses to be distant for the sake of their own comfort. His silence comes off not as bashful but condescending, as though he can’t be bothered to waste breath on my irrelevant self unless he absolutely has to—and he will have to, one hour a week. Soon.

In the meantime, I have interviewed all of Ciel’s teachers only to hear the same superlatives put into different words. What a learned child he is, how wonderfully clever, how trouble-free and well-mannered despite everything he’d been put through. I was curious to hear from the PE teacher, but Ciel has been discharged from physical activities until graduation. His aunt claimed he’d suffered a contusion during the accident, and no one thought to question her authority as a doctor.

Only his mathematician had something unusual to say, peering seriously through a pair of rimless glasses as he pulled me aside for a confidential word:

“Good of you to take him in, Doctor. I’ve always thought there was something off about Phantomhive, but not in a way I know how to handle. He’s too smart for his own good, however that may sound, and always nose-deep in one book or another. Call me mad, but how is that normal? He’s thirteen, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never seen him run around the corridors, laugh with the other kids, and just... be a kid, is what I’m trying to say.” 

I haven’t, either. I do see him spending each afternoon in my library, devouring sweets and rapidly drinking through my supplies of Earl Grey. Perhaps his childishness resides in the way he devours sweets, for it most certainly does not reside in the kind of lectures he picks to hone his mind.

Only yesterday I caught him consulting a heavy textbook of physics far too advanced for secondary school syllabus. The day before that, I peeked inside as he sat immersed in the works of Heidegger and Nietzsche with a look of plausible interest upon his face. A discussion about German philosophy and atheism wasn’t exactly the kind of discussion I had aimed to ensue between the two of us, but I do think it helped us break the overdue ice. When afternoon bled into evening and still our words weren’t exhausted, he seemed surprised by how much time had flown by without him taking notice—by how much breath he’d wasted on my irrelevant self.

“We are alike, in a way,” I told him, getting up to prepare late dinner. “We were both raised by books.”

I put down my cognac and let myself linger in that moment, in that first spark of a connection. The key to bonding is, after all, common tongue. Similarities.

“That brat is actually more mature than you,” I say to Ronald, “and less of a pain in the arse.”

He would bite back, I’m sure, but the long-legged blonde starts making her way across the dance floor, and he’s too busy trailing every movement of her rounded hips.

I don’t see what he sees. Looking at her hourglass figure, glamorous make-up and full, contoured lips, I see only transparent beauty. My lust, like my interest, is highly selective, and she does not merit even a spark.

For some reason, I recall the peculiar glint in Ciel’s eye when I told him we were alike, and the graceful way he lifted the porcelain teacup to his mouth. 

“And of course she’s into Dr Sebastian. Who else?” Ronald bemoans, noticing how the blonde keeps stealing obvious glances in my direction. “You make an awful wingman, mate.”

My own glance darts past the blonde, across the bar, to the lone figure leaned against the counter. I see his dark profile, scruffy chin, hunched shoulders. He hasn’t made a move, not yet. He too sips the cheap beer, aiming to appear casual—just a regular bloke looking for a regular Saturday hook-up—but he can’t very well hide that distinct, predatory air about his person, not from me. It takes one to know one.

I wonder if he’s already marked his prey. I wonder what drives him most to it. The hunger for dominance? Eccentric sexual desires? Deeply-rooted misogyny, perhaps the by-product of trauma? ‘Mummy didn’t love me so I take out my unresolved anger and abandonment issues on innocent women that may or may not look like mummy’?

My phone—the other phone—vibrates in double bursts against my thigh. 

I’ve got this from here, Sebby, I read the message. Just gimme a heads up~

Exactly on time.

“Pardon, sir, are we boring you?” Ronald’s amused voice summons me back to reality. I glance up from the screen and flash him a half-apologetic, half-snarky smile. Yes, you are boring me – with your tedious problems and unremarkable selves – a great deal, in fact. Maintaining public appearances can get tiresome, especially when my idea of fun deviates so significantly from the average set of social activities. Beer, inane talk, and ogling every female in the perimeter do not happen to fit the bill. 

But at least I know one of London’s top lawyers, and at least I have an inside man in the Met.

“Sorry, my patient’s texting me,” I lie smoothly as ever. “She’s going through some hard times.”

“Let me guess: another long story?” Ronald wiggles his brows. “You should get yourself a secretary, by the by, like any self-respecting shrink. ‘Dr Michaelis is currently too busy having a pint with his best mates to give a shit about your crippling depression, please bother him on a more convenient occasion.’ Would that be so hard?”

Yes, it would. Doing what I do, the last thing I need is someone knowing my entire schedule.

We raise a glass to nights off and swap pointless banter. I keep one eye on the bar the entire time, waiting for the idle predator to begin his hunt. He must be in a picky mood tonight. After a second round of drinks, Ronald slinks off to stake his claim on another blonde while Bard pops outside for a fag, respecting the ‘no smoking’ sticker when no one else would.

I am left alone, no cognac, well-conscious of the long-legged blonde’s increasingly bold efforts to catch my eye. She arches her body into provocative shapes, closer to my table with each step and each spin, whipping her hair to the rhythmic beats of house music. 

Such easy, pathetic prey. What value holds what is practically shoved in our faces? None, of course—but it doesn’t mean I cannot have a little fun.

My eyes meet the blonde’s come-hither look and my lips stretch into that beckoning, beguiling smile that few have been able to resist. She slumps into my seat, at once ensnared, filling my nostrils with floral perfume and Winterfresh breath.

“Name’s Emily,” she says, as if I’m supposed to care. I sneak a hand under her skirt and slide it all the way up her bare thigh. She didn’t bother with pantyhose, but at least she remembered to wear lingerie.

Her breasts flatten on my shoulder and her warm hand ghosts around my collar, undoing another button before slipping past the placket of my shirt. I lean close, as if to share a secret, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear.

“What a simple creature you are, Emily,” I rumble, playing with her heart-shaped earring. “Is this how you determine your self-worth? By the men you manage to bait with your shallow looks? Or maybe you’re one of those emancipated women who embrace their sexuality regardless of social stigma? No, you don’t look like you have much in the way of beliefs or values. Sex is simply all you can offer, is that not right? Single-purpose goods only.”

She has enough dignity to scramble from my lap and take a bold swing at my cheek. I catch her wrist before the slap connects with my face, and then squeeze. Hard.

I want to wring her arm, grab a fistful of that film-star hair and bang her dumb head against the table until I knock out all of her bleached, even teeth. I want to watch them roll and skip below the dancing crowd like little bloody stones. I want to smash my empty cognac glass and saw her throat open with the biggest, sharpest shard.

But there would be consequences, and I have to let her go. My fingers leave only a white-red imprint on her cosmetically tanned skin.

“Psycho!” she hisses, rubbing her wrist as she stomps through the dance floor towards the bar—from one predator to another. She flings herself at the first man who offers to buy her a drink, falling without foreplay into his primitive trap. Such easy, pathetic prey.

I know she will end up drugged, robbed, and brutally raped tonight. Only I see the pill he drops into her Margarita with a practiced swipe of his hand, but I don’t rush to her rescue. 

Some other night, after I’ve gathered enough evidence, I plan to follow him out from yet another seedy joint and deliver what the media has called ‘self-appointed justice’. I haven’t figured out how, yet; it depends on my mood. No one really knows what they’ll want for next week’s dinner, either. 

Heads up, I type as they make their way to the exit. ‘There’s always a bigger fish’, goes a certain saying. And it’s true: there is.

Notes:

HSCC - Homicide and Serious Crime Command
I have zero idea about the structure of London police, so I'm just going to leave things very vague in that department ^^'

Chapter 6

Notes:

I know it took me a while, but Seb and Ciel properly interact with each other in this chapter XD

‘Murder is evil,’ states LondonVigilante11 in their first sentence. ‘The heaviest sin committed by mankind. The ultimate crime with the ultimate trial. Banned by Ten Commandments, banned by law, banned by reason. It is a fact – incontestable, set in stone – like Earth being round is a fact, or cigarettes being bad for your health. No one needs scientific proof to know it is wrong to kill, nor does anyone need to be explained the reason why. But there are always people like me, the margin, the rare few who dare contest the incontestable. I think: maybe it is not a fact, unchangeable and absolute. Maybe it is merely a truth, a principle that can be moulded and regarded from different perspectives. Like a theory, like philosophy, up for debate. Maybe my truth can be different. Maybe it can be an opinion, a personal belief. Is everyone not entitled to their own? Some views are simply more controversial; some truths are harder to accept. In times when natural selection is scarce and our numbers only rise, when the weak are kept breathing by medicine and the wicked left alive due to flawed concepts of humane and moral… is it truly wrong to pluck rotten apples off a tree? Is it all black and white, or can it be shades of grey? Who can honestly, without any shadow of doubt, testify that what I’m doing is pure evil?’

It stops there, provoking dispute. 488 comments. I drum my fingers on the cherry wood surface of my desk and take a long sip of coffee.

The post reads like a load of pseudo-philosophical drivel, but it does stand out among the morass of biblical sermons and poor attempts at provocation. If I felt like my actions needed to be justified, wouldn’t I likewise elevate my judgment above the common grey mass and preach survival of the fittest? This might be the sort of perspective I sought to evaluate with my experiment, but skimming through it for the second time, I can imagine exactly who wrote it.

One of those misunderstood, self-proclaimed intellectuals perpetuating the delusion of personal superiority, sneering at everyone’s oh-so-narrowed mindset while convincing themselves to be one of the few conscious human beings in a world full of sheep. Some teenage outcast, I’ll bet, nursing a taste towards sadism and sick pornography. That one quiet misfit in every school secretly wanting everyone dead. Safely anonymous behind a computer screen, they can write whatever they want and pretend to be absolutely whoever—like London’s most wanted killer at large, for instance, who has been making all the recent headlines with his gruesome methods of punishing criminals.

But only I’d know that London’s most wanted killer is not the type to publish rants on the Internet, nor the type to convince anyone that he’s not evil. I know he doesn’t kill criminals for the sake of a ‘better world’ or in the name of ‘self-appointed justice’ – he kills them simply to see what will happen. It’s his tool for measuring human morality, that nebulous notion altering with circumstance and escaping predictions.

Psychologists do love their experiments, after all. It is with unbridled interest that I track every smallest development on my matter: news coverage, forum discussions, newspaper articles and radio auditions. Thus far, media outrage has been unequivocal and LondonVigilante11’s mental diarrhea might just be the most compelling point of view I’ve encountered. How unspeakably disappointing. 

I begin to scroll through the 488 comments, at first glance just as ridiculous, when I hear a tap on the door and lift my gaze from the screen. 

“You said one o’clock. It’s one o’clock.”

I smile, shut my laptop, down the rest of coffee and gesture to my sofa. Ciel sits himself comfortably, with confidence, perhaps even a degree of defiance. I’m not scared of your tricks, says his posture, bring it on. No uneasy shifting, no twiddling thumbs, no jiggling feet. He carries himself with certain nobility, like a member of the royal family forced to live among peasants (and yes, I’m definitely one of the peasants).

“Would you mind being recorded?” I ask.

“You record your patients?” Ciel asks back, frowning, and for once I can tell exactly what’s going through his mind. 

Did you record my aunt? Why did she kill herself after three years?

“Usually. But you’re not my usual patient.” 

“Do as you like. It’s all the same to me.”

I nod, arming myself with pen and paper. I’m not particularly excited; psychotherapy is a gradual, complex process that requires the dubious pleasure of routine interviewing, and there is little else I can do on our first session. One does not want to immediately plunge into depths; when it comes to the human mind, one must submerge steadily to avoid shock and scour the shallows to avoid losing foothold. I need to get the bigger picture, wade through mundane issues before focusing on what interests me the most.

On the demons he tries so bad to keep at bay. 

I take my usual seat, cross my legs in my usual manner, and ask my usual questions. Summarise your average day and mood; tell me about school and friends and teachers; describe your relationship with the Midfords and your plans for the future. If he’s to feel comfortable talking to me about what happened three years ago, he must first become comfortable talking about trivialities.

But it doesn’t work. He’s listless like a police officer answering pesky journalists at a press conference he was forced to attend: poker face, no further input, clever evasions. Therapy is meant to be a joint commitment, and patients are meant to come see me of their own volition. With Ciel, I clearly need to seize all initiative; a little bit like courtship, I suppose, where he’s playing hard to get.

“Before we finish up for today, I would like to ask you about last week. How do you feel, living here? Is there anything you find disagreeable?”

“No complaints. I like your library. Mr Tanaka is nice. Except...” He leans against his palm, regarding me with the air of a ruler passing judgment from his lofty throne. “Yes, except yourself. Disagreeable, that is. I don’t really like you, if that’s what you wanted to know.”

Now there’s a sentence I don’t hear often. Just when I thought we’d bonded over Nietzsche, too! Oh, so cold. Off with my head.

“Can you tell me why that is?”

“Simple: you’re too likeable. There’s something off about that.”

And I cannot even disagree.

Perfect people appear false and intimidating, which is why my artificially constructed public persona includes weaknesses and flaws. My colleagues gossip about my chronic self-prescriptions, hopeless relationship issues, and the alleged abandonment syndrome I developed in the children’s home. I make sure to act troubled, tired, on occasion even rude—human, plainly, and I have a profound theoretical understanding of what it means to be human.

Even fellow psychiatrists—esteemed professors, experts on the human mind—haven’t been able to uncover my true nature. What priceless irony! Even if they do suspect that what they see every day is a mask, they don’t know what the mask truly hides. They think it hides a lonely addict – a relatable figure in the grey, modern world – but not a psychopathic killer, a figure inspiring decidedly less compassion than the former.

To Ciel, however, I have been nothing but perfect.

“I’m too likeable?”

“Just so. Everything you do is engineered to make me like you. It’s all part of your ploy to see whether or not I’m still capable of affection, isn’t it? That is why you make all those obscenely delicious desserts, feign interest in my reading, and smile that creepy smile—”

He pauses, seeing me write something down. ‘Trust issues confirmed,’ says my note in fine print. 

“I feel like you may be interpreting my every word and gesture through the prism of your expectations, which are expectations of hostility and ulterior motives. It’s your way of protecting yourself from potential harm.”

“So all this is out of the sheer goodness of your heart?”

“Do you find it so hard to believe?”

His lips stretch in a sardonic grin. “In the goodness of people’s hearts? Yes, I do tend to be a little skeptical.” 

I nod with understanding, but not with compassion. He doesn’t want that.

“Healthy skepticism is advisable, but it does pay off to give people the benefit of the doubt. I know why it’s difficult for you to take things at face value, but caring for your well-being is my duty as your legal guardian.” I try a smile, even if he thinks it’s creepy. “And believe it or not, I happen to be quite fond of that duty. The least I can do for you is bake a cake.”

“Ha. You’re just keeping your guinea pig well-fed.”

“Ciel, I want to help you.”

“You want to dissect me.”

“Dissect in order to help.”

“No; dissect, pick at the pieces and take notes.”

I add the word ‘severe’ before ‘trust issues’. I could also add ‘justified’. ‘Completely reasonable given the circumstances’. Also, ‘surprising bluntness’ and ‘flawless cognitive function’.

Ciel ogles the movements of my pen with blatant animosity. ‘Fear of being known/analysed’, therefore. I can almost hear the grating of his teeth. 

“Does that mean you won’t cooperate in therapy?”

“No, don’t misunderstand; I just answered your question. For the sake of obscenely delicious desserts? Of course, have at it, dissect me all you want. Or, well, try to.” He makes a flippant gesture with his hand, again with that courtly manner. “Just please, don’t feed me this nonsense about fondness and caring and what have you, hmm? You don’t want to help me out of altruism; you want to see if you can fix me. I’m a challenge to your skills, a rare case to study and write about in research papers. Your little pet project, essentially. Why don’t we just leave all that in the open? Isn’t the idea to be honest?”

Ah. You want honesty, don’t you? Just how honest will you be, I wonder, when I make you talk about everything they did to you behind closed doors? About your dead parents and dead, dearly missed aunt? Now, I may not be honest, but neither are you. Always trying to play cool, pretending it doesn’t affect you…. Is this how you cope? You distance yourself from the horrors of your past and act like they don’t haunt your present? But I bet it gnaws at you plenty, it does. Your demons devour you from the inside out while you hide behind your books and teacups to silence their mad howling in your ears. But you can never forget; all your suffering has been branded into the sensitive tissue of your ten-year-old brain and your scars retell the story every time you look in the mirror. ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger,’ Nietzsche famously said, and you must agree with him, but I don’t. Your strength is but a stylish defense mechanism, reaction formation, a neatly fabricated façade, and if you think the walls around you are impenetrable, think again. The walls you put up are made from cardboard and the smallest breeze can blow them right down. The fort you so laboriously erected is bound to cave in on itself and bury you underneath its crushing weight. I know a thing or two about false fronts, and I know that hiding behind that icy grandeur is just a tiny, frightened child. That’s really all you are, little Phantomhive, and I will prove that. 

But I don’t say any of it, not yet. I have to bite my tongue. Consequences, bonding, bigger picture.... I’d spoil the entire venture if I blundered at such a delicate phase.

“It’s past two,” Ciel says. “Same time next week?”

I sigh. “Yes, thank you.”

He walks out, and I’m left staring at my sparse notes. I tap my pen against paper; thinking, considering.

Cheeky brat, I write on the bottom of the page. And then I underline it, twice.

Chapter 7

Ciel lifts his self-imposed isolation, and I’m not sure why.

He accompanies me to town, humours me with conversation at dinner, and goes so far as to ask my opinion on a variety of matters. I can finally feel his presence, though not in the sense a child’s presence is usually felt—not as a boisterous, attention-seeking nuisance—but as uniquely engaging company, pleasant on the eyes and ears. I continue to be amazed (to my limited extent, of course) by how shrewd and educated he proves at thirteen; his mind, lonely in its precocious ingenuity, seems to thrive during the evenings we spend talking in the library, exchanging views over late tea and dessert.

It’s not fellowship; it’s feeling me out. An analysis, not unlike my own. I can always see him studying me from the corner of my eye, even though he knows that I know he’s watching.

I play along. It’s mutual.

 

***

 

We round the corner of our street, returning from an errand in Knightsbridge. Even before I park on the driveway, I see an all-too-familiar and uninvited figure seated casually upon my front stairs.

So he’s cracked the gate code again. Such an eyesore in that tattered red coat and greasy red hair reaching all the way to his hips. Usually he primps himself like a teenage girl for prom, and the fact he’s so filthy can only mean he’s run out of money. If he’s run out of money, it means he’s on withdrawal. And if he’s on withdrawal, it means he’ll be unpredictable. Dangerous. Unhinged.

‘Unhinged’ is not the ideal state for him to learn about Ciel.

“Sebby my darling!” Grell sings out as I open the door of my car. His bright green eyes are puffed and bloodshot, pale skin even paler, hands trembling and nose running like a broken faucet. His mouth yawns open in a shark-like grin, displaying his row of rotting teeth in all their foul glory.

I am careful, as a clinician, with employing the word ‘deranged’. It specifies nothing and carries only crass, ambiguous connotations. ‘Deranged’ is what uneducated people use whenever something is wrong with someone and they cannot tell precisely what.

But there’s so much wrong with Grell Sutcliffe that even I, in full professional conscience, would call him deranged.

No single diagnosis could tie all of his issues together, but borderline personality disorder accounts for more than a half—a textbook example with a complete set of symptoms. Substance abuse, impulsivity, unpredictable mood swings, and chronic self-harm (in his case, over-dramatised suicide attempts meant to induce my compassion). He’s not only the definition, but the illustrated warning about the dangers of taking the wrong kind of meds.

His grin falters as another, unexpected figure climbs out of the car. He adjusts his lopsided spectacles and grimly demands:

“What the shit, Sebastian? Who’s the brat?” 

“He lives here. You don’t. Get off my property.”

It takes him a second to go from ecstatic to enraged. “He’s yours?? You knocked up some fucking cunt in college and now she’s got you playing daddy, is that it??”

“Calm down. I’m only his guardian.”

“What? So you adopted him? Why the fuck would you adopt a brat?? Hey, come here!” he shouts at Ciel, who calmly continues to climb the stairs. “I saw the way you looked me up, punk—judging me like you’re better!”

He leaps over to block his path, grabbing him roughly by the chin to get a look at his face.

“Huh? What’s with the pirate eye?”

Red alert. I should intervene.

I should but I don’t, overridden by a spur of curiosity. I cannot miss such a golden, unstaged opportunity to observe.

Ciel acts swiftly. He slaps Grell’s hand away with a loud, impetuous smack that makes him reel backwards on top of the stairs.

“I lost it in a car accident,” he snarls, face darkening.

So he does not like to be touched, after all. Or does it only apply to deranged junkies? I’ve never seen him angry, and his anger feels nothing like the petulant fussing of harmless little boys. It’s the ripe, hateful anger of someone who’s spent a lifetime on sharpening its edges, not three years.

Grell shuts up, letting Ciel disappear inside the house.

“Feisty, he says. “I don’t like him.”

And just like that, he’s back to his usual, over-expressive self. On, and off.

I cross my arms. “I thought I told you to give me a ring, not just stumble by whenever you feel like it. I have patients, you lamebrained degenerate. I can’t be seen with the likes of you.”

“Why, can’t you see it’s an emergency! I got robbed and I’m dying.” He sniffles and rubs his reddened nose. The sour stink of his sweat almost makes me gag.

I sigh and reach for my lambskin wallet. I am prepared for emergencies.

“You know where this goes,” I say, handing him the key to my safe deposit box. “I left you ten thousand inside. Have it last at least two months this time, will you?”

“Aww, you shouldn’t have!” Grell beams, snatching the key. “Such a gentleman, taking good care of his lady!”

Have I mentioned gender dysphoria? 

“I have something nice for you too!” he pipes, ransacking his bag in search of a compact, superzoom camera. He turns on the photo display and releases a fit of raspy coughs as he hands it over, granting me a solid whiff of his bad breath.

It’s all there: five girls raped in the same shabby room, tied to the bedframe and knocked unconscious. I stop at the shot of Emily, blonde hair bloody and tangled, smooth legs high in the air. I can even see her little heart-shaped earring. 

“Good job,” I say. Grell may not be the most becoming accomplice, but his street smarts largely make up for his obnoxiousness—combined, of course, with his unmatched deference and devotion. He stands by me in full disclosure, knowing exactly who I am and what I do, because I told him.

Yes, I have entrusted a borderline junkie with the secret of my Todestrieb.

He won’t snitch. I am, first and foremost, his only stable source of drug money (and he uses whatever he can get his hands on, with a special taste for heroin and speed). Secondly, I have helped him clean up a few murders of his own. Lastly—need I mention the hopeless, zealous crush he has on myself? His infatuation with me is one of the few constants in the mercurial chaos that is his life, and he would sooner finish one of his tragicomic suicide attempts than sell me out. And even if he tried to, who would believe a derelict drug addict with no solid proof? 

I look through more photos of Emily. She’s awake, all of a sudden, struggling in her rapist’s hold. In the next two shots she’s being choked.

“She woke. What does he give them? GHB?”

“Dunno. Whatever it is, the lass had a high tolerance. Seemed to work like a charm with the rest of them.”

“Do you know what he did with the body?”

“Nope, lost him. But he seems super dumb, so they might find her—like, a few days tops. He probably left a shit ton of evidence, too. Clock’s ticking! When are you gonna do it?”

“This week.”

“Seriously, though—what’s with the kid?”

“Take a guess.”

Grell feigns deep thought. “Lemme think.... He’s only here for your unhealthy personal amusement and only until you grow bored and toss him aside like an old toy?”

“See? You can be so smart if you want to.”

He flashes me his ugly, yellow smile. “Love you, Sebby, you sick son of a bitch.” 

I dodge his goodbye kiss, send him on his way, and walk back inside the house.

Ciel is already waiting for me on the study sofa. He sports red blotches where Grell had grabbed him, on his chin and all along the length of his jaw, as though he ran to the bathroom and scrubbed himself clean with a sponge.

“Curious company that you keep,” he comments coolly upon my entrance. “Or was that a patient of yours?”

“No. He’s beyond help.”

He smirks. “Oh? The esteemed Dr Michaelis can’t handle a common junkie?”

“As far as junkies are concerned, he’s anything but common. Also, no amount of esteem can be of much help if one does not wish to be helped.” I send him a meaningful glance, grabbing my notepad. “I apologise for his behaviour. I saw that it disturbed you.” 

“He stank.”

“And he touched you.”

“He did.”

I take a seat, unfastening the button of my jacket. “You don’t like that. Does it happen with other people?” 

“Sometimes.”

“Are you ever reluctant to talk with other people of fear that they might touch you?”

“Reluctant – yes. Afraid – no.”

“But you are unable to function normally because of that.”

“I’m not particularly passionate about talking with other people anyway, in the event you haven’t noticed.”

“Why?”

“It’s pointless.”

“You talk with me. Voluntarily.”

“Maybe because you don’t have to ask what happened to my bloody eye, at least.”

“Does my knowing not make you uneasy?”

“No, because you don’t fuss. Like you promised.” His eye twinkles with something that might be mischief. “Which doesn’t mean I find you any more agreeable than before. The opposite, in fact, and I have a new hypothesis as to why.”

“I see. Let’s go back to your—”

“Am I not supposed to speak my mind during these sessions? You’re on my mind. Isn’t that important?”

“At this stage? Not as much. This isn’t about me.”

“I can tell you a story, then. About me.”

“Please do.”

He sinks further into the sofa, fingers intertwined on his lap.

“When I was eight, my mother took me on a walk to the Epping Forest. Imagine early autumn, warm weather, birds still singing, couples holding hands…. Idyllic, truly,” he says it like it’s bad. “I hated walks. They seemed pointless. There were things far more absorbing in books than the outside world, I thought. But just as we were about to head home, something caught and held my eye: a lone penny bun, ripe and majestic, just by the trunk of an oak. I stood there watching it sparkle with dew in the autumn sun, unable to look away. Even I, always trying to act so mature, could stand in awe before some stupid mushroom.”

He scoffs, shaking his head. I can tell that his wonder at the mundane miracles of this world will never return.

“We cut it down with a pocket knife. I was so excited to take it home and show father—but on the inside, the penny bun turned out to be all black and rotten. My mother gave me a crooked smile and said, ‘Maybe only the bottom part is rotten’, and she kept cutting it, piece after little piece, but every part was rotten, and the more she cut, the more it swarmed with maggots....” he trails off, fixing me with a poignant look.
 
I sigh. “Am I the penny bun?”

“Pardon. Would you like a prettier metaphor than that of a blighted mushroom? Fine. How about Dorian Gray? Impeccable on the outside, but if someone were to paint a portrait of your inner self it would come out looking like the most hideous abomination?”

I curve my lips. “I suppose this is where you present your thesis?”

“Yes, well, a lot of dispute seems to surround the term. It’s abused in pop-culture, for one, and generally misunderstood. But I think it fits you well, Doctor.”

He uncrosses then recrosses his legs, stiffly yet with innate grace.

“Words like ‘manipulative’ and ‘deceitfully charming’ are often the first ones to enter the narrative. And look at you—with that silver tongue, smart dress, magnetic allure, perfect smiles—you have everyone wrapped around your little finger. Mey-Rin, my teachers, even the scary lady at the liquor shop, and that bald policeman who stopped you for going over fifty. You talked your way out of a speeding ticket when you could have easily afforded to pay because you like having the power to influence people, don’t you? It works on your patients too, I’ll bet. Isn’t that why you’re so good at your job? Why you succeeded at such an improbably young age? In London, at that, with all that fierce competition!”

“Charisma alone does not make a sociopath.”

“What about shallowness of affect? I reckon you don’t fuss because you simply don’t give a damn. Patient suicide should deal a blow, especially the first—and yet here you are, carrying on completely unperturbed, even though you were close enough with my aunt to be included in her will. You only act upset when you see someone who knows about her death, like that colleague of yours we bumped into in front of the hospital—remember? And when that junkie pawed at me on the stairway, you barely even blinked. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

I steeple my hands. “Let me tell you a story, too. Imagine a John Smith – your regular, tax-paying citizen – feeling slightly under the weather. He has nausea, headaches, dizziness, and insomnia. What is the first thing John Smith does? Googles his symptoms, of course. A few medical sites later, he’s convinced of having a brain tumour. Through what is referred to as the ‘confirmation bias’, he filters out the information to fit his theory and ignores all the rest. He panics, worries his wife, and argues with the oncologist when it turns out he’s simply overworked. He read that on Google and it sounded smart, so it had to be true.”

Ciel folds his arms across his chest. “Am I John Smith?”

“One shouldn’t go around making bold assumptions without proper knowledge, especially not professional diagnosis. One should leave that to the experts – those who have years of actual in-depth studies and experience behind the belt. Shall I ban you access to some of the shelves in my library?”

Ciel laughs, dry and conceited. “Touché. But you see, I’m something of an expert myself. I’ve met my fair share of bad people, and I know one when I see one. Trust me.”

He lifts from the sofa and steps lightly to where I sit. I don’t budge as he leans in – close, closer than I thought he’d dare get to anyone, close enough to see clearly into the bottomless blue of his iris and smell the lotus soap he used to wash Grell’s touch away.

“As Nietzsche said, there are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth. It’s all there in those stunning eyes of yours, Dr Michaelis: they’re a window to a very black, rotten soul.”

I sit in my study for the longest time after he’s gone. My hand travels up to my face, over my lips, hovering then pressing as if to stifle a yawn.

And I can’t stop grinning.

Notes:

I apologize for making Grell a junkie.

 

 

I appreciate the feedback so far and always welcome more~~

Chapter 8

The fifth subject of my experiment stirs calmer than the previous four. I bound him to the same bed he’d bound his victims, stuffed his mouth full of his dirty sock, and wrapped his jaw shut with duct tape not once, but thrice.

He measures his strength against the binds—just a few lurching tugs before he gives up on struggles, not even bothering to scream.

“Considerate of you to stay quiet. Thin walls.” I smile, pointing to my right. Music pours from the flat next door. “Your neighbour’s a splendid violinist. Have you met them?”

His breath whistles, drawn heavily through the nose.

“Not quite soloist material, though. Do they play in an orchestra? Definitely not just a hobby, not with that amount of determination. It’s almost eleven and yet there they go, testing the neighbours. A conservatoire student, perhaps? Rehearsing for a contest, or an audition?” I muse and stop to listen, swaying my gloved finger to the 4/4 beat of Fritz Kreisler’s Prelude and allegro. A crisp, riveting melody.

“Ah, they made a tiny slip on the grace note. Impatient. For a contest, they should go with Wieniawski’s Polonaise brillante instead. They practised it earlier, and I must say you’ve missed out on quite the performance. Excellent phrasing, seamless shifts, perfect intonation on the chords.... A challenging repertoire, both in terms of musical sense and technique, but they delivered it with such lightness and deceptive ease. Just like it’s meant to be played.”

My gaze transfers to the bound man.

“But you don’t really care for music, do you? No, you’re a very crude individual. No sense of romance, either.” I smack my lips, holding up two of Grell’s printed photos.

There—I’ve got him. His eyes widen and lose all resolve. Anyone who watches BBC must know what this means.

“Always brought them here, didn’t you? Thin walls, winos stumbling around the street, windows peering onto the car park…. Risky. Someone could have seen you drag those swooning darlings into your backseat, or chanced upon as you dumped them in one alley or another. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if someone saw you and calmly strolled past, given what insensitive times we’re ordained to live in.”

The violinist behind the wall picks up the tempo, transitioning smoothly into the second part of the piece. 

“Here’s where your luck ends, however. There’s always a bigger fish. You live on the second floor, love; these shots were all taken through the space in your balcony blinds. Feeling stupid now, hmm? Well, you are. Stupid and tedious. I helped myself to your social media accounts, so I know all about you.”

I pull out his phone and unlock it with a touch pen. It’s a handy thing to have while wearing gloves.

“Let’s see. That’s quite the collection of rejected sex offers littering your inbox, for one. Is this honestly why you were doing this? Because women wouldn’t fall for your abysmal pick-up lines? Did one of them break your poor little heart and hurt your fragile male ego? Did you seek to compensate through bedroom conquests and failed every time? Please. What an uninspiring backstory.” I sigh, throwing his phone on the bed. “I can’t even be bothered. I’d really rather skip the villain speech and tear you apart now, if you don’t mind.”

He tries his luck in screaming, but there is none to be had. I reach for the filleting knife I found in his kitchen, enticed by its freshly-sharpened potential, and weigh it in my hand as I steer through his cluttered flat towards the bed.

He screams louder. The sock and multiple layers of tape block almost all of it out. Even if someone could hear him through the block’s thin walls, would they really come running valiantly to his rescue? I don’t even have to wonder. The ‘bystander effect’ means that in big, bustling cities heroism is essentially extinct.

I turn my cold, harrowing glare at the rapist. His bladder gives out as I begin to cut into his abdomen, just below the sternum. Skin and fat part beneath the unyielding press of stainless steel.

Would Phantomhive find my eyes stunning now, I wonder? Only at times like these can my mask peel away; only now can I lose the phony cordiality of my smile and assume the wicked, demonic sneer that adequately reflects my rotten soul. Am I as perfect now, little one? Would you like me better this way?

I carve. The violinist starts over from allegro molto moderato, but I don’t listen. The filleting knife cuts a linear, almost surgical incision all the way to his pelvis, and I slip both hands inside to pry the wound wider. I open him up like curtains on a window.

It won’t take long. Thick, dark blood pumps out in ample gushes as I rummage in his entrails, careful not to dip above my wrist. I count the tears of pain that stream down his cheeks, and I lose count fast.

“Cheer up!” I beam, fondling and pulling out his intestines, inch by inch like a string of squelching rope. His eyes roll into the back of his head. “Guess who’s going to be the star of tomorrow’s morning news? Or, well—afternoon news, depending on how quickly they find you.” I pause, considering. “How about I put on some music? I’m not so sure about screams, but loud music is bound to bring at least a dozen of furious neighbours to your door. They’d find you in five minutes.”

He’s coughing now, gargling. Blood surges through his wide, flaring nostrils. It must be flooding into his plugged throat, soaking his grimy sock and choking him to a slow death.

My skin tingles. My mouth waters. Life leaves him, and I pull out to admire the gory palm of my right hand. I like all things black, but my gloves are white for a very simple reason: I enjoy seeing them stain red.

I clench my fist and watch the excess of blood trickle through the spaces between my fingers. Slowly, inexorably, I come down from the height of my elation. Time resumes its flow. I can hear the music again; I can see the entire room and not just the mauled carcass of my prey.

To mark him officially as number five, I scatter Grell’s photos around the body in chronological order. The knife, put to good use, rests buried in a gummy pile of guts, and the phone I threw on the bed lies sinking gradually into a pool of blood. I leave them both be; let the police do their job, let them analyse this meaningless evidence all they want. I pack the gloves into a plastic zip-bag, hide them inside my coat and then pause, as always, with one hand at my chin to ponder the deed.

Wasn’t it nice of me to apprehend him before tonight’s hunt? Whoever would have fallen prey to this measly predator doesn’t even realise her own luck. She’s welcome.

The crime scene is messy—bowels hanging limply from the victim’s torn abdomen, strewn about the bloodied and urine-soaked sheets—but the perpetrator himself made it out without a single stain. How fortunate it’s the forensic cleaners who will have to mop this up, not me! It is by far my favourite part of the experiment.

I exit the flat, leaving the door wide open. Someone might see me on the way out, of course, but I don’t even bother with a balaclava. I find it in awfully poor taste. 

When the police start going from door to door, asking if anyone witnessed anything unusual in the neighbourhood that night, someone could remember the tall, handsome man dressed in black exiting the building at the exact time of the murder. I am not a forgettable face; the composite sketch would come out as my accurate likeness. Known at the Metropolitan for my help with criminal profiling, I would be swiftly identified and called for interrogation. I would lie my way out and come up with the most credible excuses on the spot, but I would present no confirmable alibi and the police would lack irrefutable proof. Bard and Abberline and Chief Superintendent Randall would all vouch for my integrity, but the first seed of doubt would still have been planted. They would start examining me closer, watching my every move, and one more small mistake would be enough to bring me to justice. I do entertain the thought of being infallible, but my biggest fault lies in craving to be entertained.

Dulce periculum: danger is sweet. I used to be overly meticulous about my kills, tolerating no room for error and leaving nothing to chance. Now I’m bored with playing it safe. Now I tempt consequence, introducing the slightest risk factor to my ritual just because I can, because it amplifies the gratification of escaping unpunished. I do still chastise myself for the recklessness—urging that I am supposed to be too clever to get caught, that I am another level of predator entirely, that one little mistake can mean I won’t ever feed my Todestrieb again—but it does nothing to temper my perilous whim, so I don’t fight it.

Knowing the concept of fear, captivity is the one thing I should fear more than anything else. I should dread and avoid it at all costs, but my pace remains steady as I exit the block in plain sight. My heart doesn’t so much as flutter, because fear is just another empty word I had to teach myself to understand.

 

***

 

I come home at quarter past one.

Morning news or afternoon news? Have they or haven’t they found him? Perhaps one of the neighbours from above, stomping down to quiet the inveterate violinist on floor two, stopped in their tracks at seeing the door to flat nine suspiciously open. Perhaps they knocked, waited, called out a tentative hello?—then entered at last to the sight of their neighbour’s freshly disembowelled cadaver, surrounded with photographs of all the girls he’d raped while they slept soundly upstairs.

Ah, now I feel too roused to sleep. I might as well stay up the night and get some work done, but not without coffee. I enter the kitchen, pull out my biggest mug from the cabinet, and—

Noise. Screaming, pained and ferocious, muffled from the rooms above. Making me smile.

So then your demons come at night. You cannot do anything about it, can you, when they hunt you through your dreams? In our sleep, we are most vulnerable. We cannot control or deceive our unconscious. Pity... isn’t it?

I don’t wake him. He’s always fought his demons alone and tonight shall be no different. I take a pot, pour milk, and put it on the stove. Waiting for it to heat up, I drum my fingers on the counter and listen to Ciel thrashing in his bed. 

No, no, stop, don’t touch me, help, please. 

Something heavy bangs on the ceiling. He must have knocked his bedside lamp to the floor, which jerks him finally from the throes of his nightmare. There’s silence.

I add a spoonful of honey to the hot milk and walk upstairs. I knock for the sake of it, but enter without permission; as a worried caretaker, I reserve my right to intrude in good will.

He’s not in his bed. The balcony door stands ajar, letting a current of cold air into the room. I find him outside, barefoot and wearing only his nightgown, leaned against the railing on the first night of December. He turns my way—and I freeze in rapture at the threshold, mug in hand.

It’s like I’m seeing him for the first time.

Scars span from his brow to the lower lid: silvery, jagged, like a row of strings on a broken harp. A small, coma-shaped gash mars the bottom corner of his eye, where only residues of some ironic luck had saved him from his aunt’s knife digging into the pink tissue of his tear duct and leaving behind an empty socket. The iris has lost nothing of its vivid violet but everything of that fierce, iridescent gleam so striking in its blue twin. It looks desolate, hollow, like a cold hearth where only a burnt blanket of cinders remained after a once magnificent fire. And if eyes are windows to the soul, the light in one of his windows has gone out for good.

An unfortunate waste of beauty, most would say, but I can’t help but think it adds him charm. It speaks to the torments of his past, and torment suits him well. 

My gaze pans lower, following that trail of torment to the slender length of his neck, down to the thin arched ring of a scar not often seen on the living. Here, too, he’d been rescued by a stroke of morbid luck. He wouldn’t have survived had the cultists received their call just a few minutes earlier, while he still had strength enough to resist them. It was only later, seeing no chance of either fight or flight, that his body shut down and braced for unavoidable impact. His heart rate slowed and prevented him from bleeding out just long enough for his aunt to snort cocaine and drive him to an underground doctor. Now here he is, dreaming of it three years later.

That which does not kill us is supposed to make us stronger, but Ciel Phantomhive seems to have left his strength in the clutches of nightly horrors. Come morning he will reclaim it—dress himself up in indifference and lordly decorum—but for now his hand trembles on the balcony’s frost-bitten banister. For now his gaze is glassy, hair tousled, lips red from being bitten. He stands there with the stillness and melancholy of a painting, set against the moody background of a crescent moon and two straggling stars.

I do, in my own way, appreciate fine art. Even I can stop to marvel at something other than death and decay. Angelina Dalles was right: perfect things like him were meant to be broken. They break beautifully. 

“Come inside. It’s cold.”

“Good,” Ciel says, voice rasped from screaming.

I step forward and hand him the hot milk, steaming in contact with December air.

“How did you know?” he mutters, wrapping his hands around the mug.

Your aunt spat it out to me with her dying breath, I don’t say, leaning on the other side of the railing. I never come out here, I realise, and it’s almost unreal how much of London’s lights can be seen from my little hill in Hampstead.

“Your aunt spoke of you a lot in therapy,” I say instead.

“Aw. How sweet of her.” He aims for a smirk, but it comes out dim and wearied.

I must ask. “How often?”

A sip. “At least once a month. Sometimes more.” A pause. He takes a deeper breath and looks away. “I mean—I have nightmares almost every night. Just not always so real. In these, I can... feel it. Hands, all over me. Pressing me down. Like sleep paralysis, only I can kick and scream and it never works. They don’t ever let go. I can feel their too-hot breath and that itching scratch of stubble and the stink of their sweat, and—” Ciel stops, realising he spoke with emotion. “Just—all of it, everywhere. Again.” 

I put on my best mask of compassion, then immediately drop it. He confided in me not because he seeks my sympathy; he wants a solution. If I help fend off his nocturnal demons, will I gain his trust?

“We’ll try something called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy at tomorrow’s session. You can sleep longer; I’ll make breakfast for ten. Fruit salad or scones?”

“Both,” he says, drinking the rest of his milk. Soon a raw gust of wind chases us back inside; under the mellow light of the chandelier, I can see the splashes of pink on his knees and the goosebumps that cold has dotted across his pearly skin. I pick up the fallen lamp (not broken, thankfully; I’d rather not repair an Edwardian) and watch him crawl back underneath the covers.

I pause, hesitant. Surely he wouldn’t want me to tuck him in.

“If you try to sing me a lullaby or kiss me goodnight, I swear I’m calling child protection,” he grumbles, buried all the way under his silken sheets. I chuckle. “But don’t go. Stay with me until I fall asleep. Fulfil your duty as my legal guardian or whatever.”

I flip off the lights and sit by the bed until his breath grows even.

Chapter 9

The house has three bedrooms and three bathrooms; two parlours and two halls; one dining room and one kitchen with spiral steps to a multi-section cellar; a study connected to a library and a waiting area for patients leading out to a sizeable garden. It amounts to seventeen locations in total, but to find Ciel Phantomhive I only ever need to look in the library and his quarters upstairs. If my bland, tempered reaction to all things unexpected can be called ‘surprise’, I am reasonably surprised to find him lounging in the main parlour with a cup of Darjeeling, immersed in some cheap talk-show on some no-name channel exploiting sensation to kick up their ratings.

I stand behind the sofa and listen.

“Is it, though? About getting their just deserts?” says the host to his guest, Dr Stoker, the alleged voice of authority in the matter—even though I haven’t seen his surname published in anything ever. “If I were out to deliver poetic justice, I would’ve burnt the arsonist alive. I would’ve shot the arms dealer. And instead of disembowelling the rapist, I would’ve— well, aimed lower—”

How erudite. They don’t even seem to call the victims by their names anymore, and I have been seeing this tendency all around. Have they been dehumanised already, viewed solely through the prism of their crimes? No one seems to call their deaths ‘tragic’, only ‘brutal’. No one seems to weep their loss or celebrate their memory. I am still a ‘heinous killer’, but they are not ‘martyrs’ to my atrocious cause. They went down as arsonists and rapists and it already says a great deal about the nature of human morality. 

“Everyone assumed ‘just deserts’ for the lack of alternative,” replies Dr Stoker, adjusting his sleeve. “But he’s definitely not going for the ‘hero’ angle—his executions are far too brutal, and he doesn’t seem eager to explain his justice to the rest of London. We’ve truly got ourselves one curious vigilante.”

I don’t leave signatures, I don’t leave memos, I don’t send letters to the media. Any intervention would distort the results of my experiment. The less they know of me, the better. They are the ones supposed to ascribe philosophy to my deeds, not I. They need to explain why I do this and show me how they think. I can’t call it justice, they need to.

I take a seat next to Ciel. We didn’t see each other this morning; I made breakfast and left for an early engagement at Broadmoor. It was Mr Tanaka, as usual, who drove and picked him up from school. He’s still in his Weston uniform – the well-tailored indicative of an elite private institution – except without his usual scarf underneath the emerald blazer. Looking again, I notice that the skin of his neck is smooth and unmarred. 

I hardly ever do things involuntarily. The menace of consequences has trained me to think at least once before acting. And yet I reach out to trace a finger along Ciel’s throat entirely on a whim, smearing the thick layer of make-up masking the pale halo of his scar.

He freezes. Skin on skin; I shouldn’t have. My skin tingles at the touch, but his own must bristle and crawl. Am I to lose the progress we made on yesterday’s session? Is he going to slap my hand away and scrub himself clean?

He fears touch more than he lets on. More than he’ll ever admit to me or himself. No one can command fear, though not for a lack of trying. Touch, through repetition inseparably linked with pain, has conditioned an automatic response of fear in his nervous system—a response almost as absolute as the laws of physics.

Consciously he may realise I mean him no harm, but his body will react on instinct. Just as with any other phobia.

“What are you staring at?” Ciel asks, pushing off my hand. A firm push, but not abrupt. “They turned up the heating at school. How else do you think I hide it in summer?”

I blink. My finger comes out dabbed in dry, ivory concealer. I can see him itching to rub the spot where I touched him, but he endures it and turns back to Dr Stoker. The show is ending.

“Is everything all right? The TV alone is unusual, but a tacky talk show on top of that? Should we have an extra session this week?”

Ciel scoffs, lifting his teacup. “BBC’s too prudish, so tacky is all I have. They may be talking nonsense, but at least they’re talking.”

“My, so it takes a murderer to get you involved with the real world. What grim interests, for a thirteen-year-old.”

“Don’t sass me, Doctor. As if you don’t pounce on every bit of news yourself.”

“Professional curiosity, on my part. Penny for your thoughts?”

“Ha, always seeking to dissect me. It’s your area of expertise; perhaps you could share insight for a change. The police asked you to do a profile, didn’t they?”

They did. I will tell some crafty lies, offer some fresh yet misleading perspective, beat about the bush…. I am good at that. But I will not meddle with my own experiment. 

Ciel regards me expectantly above his tea. His countenance brims with aristocratic grace, magnified by the elegant uniform fitting snugly on his slender frame (though I’m sure he could manage to look regal even in dirty rags). His sapphire eye, fringed with long lashes, appears capable of seeing right through my elaborate lies: inquisitive, astute, daring me to test him.

I choose to steer a middle course.

“Even if it is about just deserts—which still remains the most plausible interpretation—hardly anyone seems to entertain the possibility that the ‘vigilante’ kills because he likes it. He hasn’t formed a telltale modus operandi because he seeks unique experiences, not repetition, and he doesn’t match the victim’s crimes because everything depends on what he wants at the moment of the kill. Or”—I reach for the remote to turn down the volume—“justice might not even come into the equation at all. Perhaps he wishes not to punish, but to mock his victims. ‘Look how easy it was to catch you, look at the photos you never saw me take and all the evidence you’d failed to cover. I can kill you in your own bed and get away with it just fine. I know how to commit crimes, you don’t’. Perhaps it’s a way of asserting superiority.”

“What, like a God complex?”

“Could be.”

“A need, you say. Hm.” Ciel’s pink tongue flicks over his lip. I watch it disappear into his mouth perhaps too closely. “The killings are violent, but not impulsive enough to suggest a need. Needs, urges, especially primal ones, tend to overcome. He selects victims too carefully, waits too patiently to strike.”

Ah. If only I could do away with patience and planning and unleash my urges every time I felt that tingling at the base of my spine! If only, instead of telling my Todestrieb to wait, I could smile and let it execute its wild bidding! …

“Impulsiveness and blind catering to one’s primal needs are symptoms of stupidity. He’s not stupid.”

Ciel pours more tea, musing over the matter. “You know, the question people ask the most is whether he’s mentally ill, or biblically evil.”

“I reckon that one’s a subject for a later and longer debate. He seems perfectly aware of what he’s doing – that he’s acting against the commonly conceived notions of ‘good’ and continues consciously along the notions of ‘bad’ – and this would make him, in that same broad understanding, evil, not mentally unsound. But I doubt it’s that simple.”

“Why not?”

“He might, for instance, be choosing to channel his irrepressible urges in the least destructive fashion. The evidence he leaves of his victims’ crimes is meant to provide him with a viable motive—a noble justification to alleviate the weight of his actions and soothe his plagued conscience. For many, the definition of evil is remorselessness and premeditation; it would therefore become debatable where exactly someone so aggravated by their own nature would fall on the spectrum of good and evil.” 

Ciel hums and pins his gaze to the television, now running commercials before afternoon news: shampoo and toothpaste and new diet yoghurt. 

“Curious, isn’t it,” he says. “The web’s full of anonymous voices hailing him a hero. A serial killer on the loose normally means widespread dismay, but with him on the loose, no one is afraid to turn off their lights after dark. Those with a clean conscience sleep even better.” He huffs, tracing a finger along the porcelain brim of his favourite cup. “And yet no one will publicly condone him. People are scared to condone murder in any form, ever. Inwardly they are glad for the world to be rid of arsonists and rapists, yet they balk at the idea of someone usurping the right to pass judgment. Quite lost in this odd little dilemma, aren’t they.”

Yes, yes. I thought you might understand, little one. That’s precisely my point.

“Where do you stand on this?”

A shadow seems to come over him at the question, like a dark cloud appearing out of nowhere to shroud a flawlessly blue sky. Have his demons finally come out to play? 

“He’s killing vermin,” he spits, hushed and contemptuous. “I might have bothered once to consider it from a wider angle, but not now. I could have taken the moral high ground and condemned this feral, pathological need you claim that he has, or denounced him on the simple basis that circumstances or motives could never excuse cold-blooded murder.”

The teacup shakes as he tightens his grip on the saucer, staring intently at the flashing screen ahead. There is a hint of madness in that stare; in his voice, more than a hint of ire.

“But no, I don’t care for wider angles. My only angle is selfish, subjective. Too narrow to make room for moral dilemmas. He’s killing vermin, and it serves them right. I don’t actually give a shit if he’s sick or evil or if he’s doing it for justice or amusement. London is full of vermin, and they should be eradicated. I don’t want him to get caught—no, I root for him—because I like knowing that vermin die while I sit and sip my tea. Write that down in your notebook, Dr Michaelis.” 

I breathe deeply in, letting the words wash over me in slow, luscious increments.

There is so much hatred in you, little one! Your lone eye flares with its malignant fires. Such raw, exquisite wrath; locked within your petite body, twisting at your pretty face, darkening your brilliant iris into a murky hue.... I find it rather alluring. It pulls me in. With a hatred so passionate and pristine, it seems a shame to try to cure it. No, I want to cultivate it, refine it, polish it like the rarest gem. I want to watch it unfurl and consume: yourself, or those around you. 

I have good news for you and your hatred, little one. If you wish to see the world burn, you happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Chapter 10

Snow has fallen. Not to melt at once into the dirty brown slush that sticks to shoe soles and floods the pavements; it fell in pure, plentiful heaps that encased all of London just in time for Christmas.

From the first white morning, Mey-Rin has made it her mission to drag Ciel for walks through Hampstead’s picturesque parks and narrow, snow-capped streets. I don’t think he stuck his nose outside the house ever since he moved in; walks are pointless, he maintains, and Mey-Rin has not succeeded in changing his mind. One time, giddy with festive spirit, she tried to persuade him into making a snowman—the first and last opportunity of his lifetime, she urged—only to end up making one all by herself, singing off-tune as she trundled balls of frost-hardened snow through my garden. Ciel sat watching her on the bench, gloved hands linked under his chin, and did not even chuckle when she tripped and fell face-first into a loose pile of snow. He did not crack the faintest smile when she emerged from it red-faced and giggly, chiding herself for being a klutz in a final, doomed attempt to infect his sadness with her childish joy. Ciel hated winter, and there was nothing she could do.

Two days after the snowfall, the Midfords showed up without notice for what I can only describe as a home inspection. I clashed gazes with Frances Midford in the doorway and gave her the most glaringly insincere, most nauseatingly sweet of smiles as I said, “Welcome, please stay for dinner.” I wound up stranded in the kitchen for the better part of the afternoon, preparing a three-course meal while Elizabeth pranced noisily around the house and Mrs Midford bombarded Ciel with endless questions. 

She had to make sure her treasured nephew lacked for nothing, and I had to make sure she regretted daring to doubt me. I set out to impress my unwanted visitors with French cuisine – knowing they had wined and dined in Paris for over twenty years – and took great pleasure in Mrs Midford’s fruitless efforts to find something wrong with my bœuf bourguignon. She threw each of her children a murderous glare, as in ‘don’t look too pleased or act too nice’, which meant that Elizabeth had to stay silent all dinner because she didn’t know how to be anything other than ‘pleased’ and ‘nice’. Edward pretended not to have noticed, going through that rebellious age when his parents’ word existed solely to be defied—and also that curious, confused age that caused him to blush and shift uneasily under the table every time I caught him staring. Mr Midford played the mediator, or tried to, glancing to his wife for approval after each of the clumsy, ill-timed puns he prepared between strategic sips of Pommard.

Rather frightful company, the lot of them—if not for Ciel. Ciel who kept everything glued together, Ciel who transformed into a decorous host and the star of the soirée. Ciel who always had the right words at the ready, filling charged silences with pleasantries and elaborate nothings, steering the conversation into safe harbours whenever it drifted too far into dangerous, hostile waters.

Such dedication! Anything to avoid a fuss. At one point, while reminiscing in detail about his visit to France, he set about extolling my culinary skills in a way I hadn’t heard him speak even of chocolate. “Such authentic taste—wouldn’t you agree, aunt Frances?” he said, dabbing a napkin at the corner of his mouth, and aunt Frances had really no other choice but to agree.

He delivered his final act over blueberry sorbet and the dulcet sounds of Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, engaging me in a cultured discourse about impressionism in French music—which, I must admit, pulled me out just in time from an outbreak of decidedly less cultured thoughts. For some time now I’ve found myself indulging in the way Ciel eats his desserts; in the way he’d pop a forkful of cake into that pouty, insolent mouth and sometimes, if the taste hit just right, he’d let slip a small hum of approval or unguarded purr of delight. It’s made me crave delicacies of a different sort than meringue or pudding; it’s awakened a taste for something much sweeter than sugar.

Mrs Midford wouldn’t have liked where my mind went just then, as he sucked on his little spoon until the sorbet melted on his tongue, but her instincts had been too dulled by the dazzle of Ciel’s performance to notice anything out of order. Look at us, he was all but saying, what good friends we are, how marvellously we get along.

Yet for all these artful efforts to weave an illusion of happiness, he did not lift his rosy lips into a single smile; he did not so much as try to fake it, the way I fake it, even though the entire evening had been nothing but a giant, sophisticated fraud.

“You were perfect, as always,” he told me once we were alone, breathing a sigh of fatigue. “Let us hope they quit fussing after that.” 

But they didn’t. On his thirteenth birthday, after he’d explicitly forbidden any manner of celebration, the Midfords made a tremendous fuss and abducted him for a full day of shopping (courtesy of Elizabeth, who paraded him around London’s finest tailors in a momentous task to make him ‘even cuter’). He came back looking like he’d been through a world war, and the worst had yet to be over. I helped him brainstorm excuses to weasel his way out of Christmas, but none could have saved him. The best we managed was to cut five days down to three.

“I know you’re an atheist, Doctor Michaelis, but you are welcome to join us for dinner all the same,” said Mrs Midford with a none-too-covert hint of don’t come, looking just as pleased when I declined the invitation as Ciel looked disappointed. 

Oh, how he wished I could have been there: an ally to share the brunt of his aunt’s scrutiny. He’s grown to view me as a practical presence in his life, promoting our relationship on the base of mutual profit and intellectual attachment. I know he always looks forward to our outings to the Opera House or Festival Hall; to our matches in chess, which I keep losing; to the exhaustive, post-session discussions he’s willing to conduct on every subject but his own. Emotionally he remains as distant as the day we shook hands at his aunt’s funeral, and his mistrust of me has not diminished since the day he pronounced me a sociopath—but even this cautious sympathy counts for remarkable achievement, seeing how he’d kept everyone at an arm’s length for no less than three years. He’d been alone, both by choice and by chance, severing himself from human contact because he felt safer without it. He didn’t want it, he didn’t need it, everything was pointless. But I made room for myself and bit by bit I will make more, expanding my presence until he’s filled to the brim.

Therapy was neither failing nor succeeding; his nights had to get worse before they got better. His birthday, Christmas holidays, snowfall... it all took him back to his dark room in Earl’s Court. To him, the merriest time of year symbolised the most hopeless time of his life. He had no choice but to resort to medication during his stay at the Midfords’, relying on prazosin to keep him from waking everyone with screams and shattering his illusion of everything’s fine.

He threw the pills away as soon as he came home, though. They made him drowsy, and we both liked his mind sharp. He’d rather have the nightmares, he said, and I lost count of how many times I had to wake him. Shivery, sweaty, he’d sit waiting for his cup of milk and then clinging onto that cup of milk he’d scramble for courage to voice his terrors. No, not for courage—he wrestled with the distaste for his own weakness, loath to have me snooping through the cracks in his walls. Such a prideful little creature, to be cross with himself for having nightmares! He may not tolerate weakness but his weakness, like his hatred, is a luxury from the highest shelf. While he rejects it, I want to bask in it. I want not a small sample but the full course of his misery, and when it comes to misery I am a connoisseur with the most finicky palate.

The night he finally broke the Edwardian lamp, I found him curled up in a ball with his hands clasped around the scarred column of his throat. I called his name and shook his shoulder – nothing. I tried to pry apart his hands – nothing. They were locked stiff, like in rigor mortis. I managed to take the pulse from his wrist and counted a feeble 32 BPM. His chest barely rose and fell, his skin was corpse-cold to the touch, and his eyes stared into nothingness in that torpid, lusterless way only the eyes of the dead stare into nothingness—which I would know all too well. And he might as well have been dead in that moment, anaesthetised and disengaged from the waking world, trapped in the impenetrable sphere of his disassociated mind.

I sat by him and was tempted to touch, to steal a peek at all those secret scars I knew had been burned into the skin of his back. I could have lifted the thin layer of cotton over his hips and looked—but I didn’t. Just this once, I was stopped not by the danger of consequences, but the pull of another temptation.

For what would it be worth without his lucid and willing submission? Ciel is the kind of prey I want to lure and tame into trust before sinking my teeth in the flesh. It’s a whim of mine: nothing new. I’m used to my whims coming and shifting and going, spinning like a lottery wheel, like a casino roulette—forgotten once satisfied, replaced with another, then another, like pages torn from a calendar.

My breath rustled the fine hair on his scalp as I leaned close and inhaled; just one deep lungful of his scent was all I allowed myself that night. I stayed with him until morning, a phony display of solicitude, dozing off in the armchair next to his bed.

 

***

 

Days passed, well into January, on sleepy winter mornings and early dark, on warm sounds of cello sonatas and rich, fruity spices of Amarone sipped by the crackling fire. And all the snow; I don’t think it has snowed this hard in England since my blurry, numb years in the children’s home on Chapel Street. It’s snowing now, as I sit in my office, powdery flakes swirling whichever way the wind happens to blow them, piling atop the slanted curves of the roof to then shower and cascade in little avalanches onto my garden.

The evening’s a slow one, all dim lamplight and Glenn Gould on repeat. My unbridled affinity for chaos hardly means I cannot appreciate a moment of quiet. A glass of dry vermouth sits half-full on the coffee table – apéritif before the nearing dinner and refreshment to my monthly lecture of The British Journal of Psychiatry – and I take the last sip just as the entryphone announces a visitor at the gate with a series of loud buzzes.

I open to the sight of Bard wiping his shoes on my welcome mat, stomping around in a tenacious effort to shake all the mud off his shoes. There is a flurry of snowflakes about him – on his tweed Irish cap and striped scarf and well-worn coat – threatening to put out the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth in its usual way: limp, and the way he sees it, uniquely flamboyant.

“Sorry to drop in on you like that, mate. You busy?”

My eyes – watchful, inescapable – scan him surreptitiously from head to toe. There is a false note in the smile he presents me in greeting, and I am as sensitised to false notes as a musician with perfect pitch. But it can’t be suspicion; if the thought so much as crossed his mind, it would manifest in the form of a big, blaring dissonance rather than a mere false note. He’s a terrible liar.

“Just finished up. Come on in.”

I pour him whisky on the rocks without asking if he wants it (he always wants it, the well-aged Macallan he can’t afford), and handing him the drink I finally put my finger on the false note.

“So. I guess you’re on the case now?”

“Ugh. I hate it when you read my mind,” he groans. “That’s it. Got a transfer, replacement for another detective. Car crash or something, broken pelvis. Nasty business.”

He swishes the glass in prelude to the first sip. It’s the same whisky I poured Angelina Dalles on her last session, on the anniversary of the accident that took two lives and ruined two more. Miss Dalles had swished her whisky back and forth the same way – had thumbed around it and spun it in her lap like she wasn’t sure what to do with it – only to gulp it all down like gross medicine or cheap vodka, not like 15-year-old Scotch deserving at least a brief moment of respectful contemplation. Did she pick up on the subtle notes of sherry oak, chocolate aromas and warm, lingering finish? Or did it bring back too many memories, released too many demons?

I nearly forget that Bard is still there, seated exactly where she had been that day, burning a hole into her red skirt from Cartier. 

“Feeling way in over my head here, to be honest,” he says, gnawing on his cigarette. Mayfairs, not Marlboros. “Also we have this bloke now, named Spears, consulting on all the uh—behavioural stuff. Tall, four-eyes, giant stick up his arse.... Mate of yours? Studied together at Oxford, he says.”

Ah. Good old Will. Always a runner-up, always ten steps behind me. The only one before Ciel to have caught sight of my innermost nature. For him it was a hunch, a whisper of intuition without proof to support it, a bristling sense of ‘not-quite-right’ he ultimately chose to ignore. Shame—it would have been amusing to watch him pursue it. Now even our infamous battles in the Psychiatry Journal no longer deserve my attention; he just can’t seem to score a win. 

My smile is wan and ambiguous. “Let’s say we agree to disagree.”

“Well, he came forward with some pretty strong ideas. I didn’t catch all of it cause he used too many big words and I was dead on my feet after pulling an all-nighter, but I know he thinks it’s some sort of revenge spree or grand device to teach society a lesson. Too early to be revealed, but not a speck of randomness in it—quote unquote. He’s trying to figure out how he picks them.”

Oh, that sounds exactly as idiotic as the Will I know. He hasn’t changed a jot.

“I actually hope he succeeds,” I say. “Establishing a motive would make the killer easier to catch.”

“Catch him…. Right.” Bard scratches at his bristly beard. “You know, I’ve been going through the victims’ backgrounds a lot this past week. We keep finding shit even the vigilante hadn’t dug out. Like, off the top of my head?” He makes a vague gesture. “His first victim, the arsonist, was the same piece of shit who planted that bomb in Brixton two years ago—we found a whole fucking binder with news articles and whatnot. And the rapist, his most recent? I think we were there when he snatched that blonde back in November, the one that Ronald was so crazy about—ring any bells? Yeah. Real mental, huh? No one saw anything. We still haven’t found her body. But worst of all...” He sucks in a deeper breath. “Christ, the pedophile was the worst. We found more tapes. Not one kid over seven years old, fuck. Nothing’s ever made me that sick.”

I muster a disturbed frown. Bard drags a hand through his face and takes a big swig of Scotch, no regard for aftertastes or aromas. This is exactly why I poured him the 15-year-old, not the 25-year-old.

“They’re all in therapy now, sure. But that’s only thanks to him. Like, if not for him, all those lowlifes would be just prancing about London and hell knows if we would’ve even caught them. And did you know that we already have a drop in crime rates? Like, biggest drop in over ten years?”

Yes, I’m aware of this unfortunate side effect of my experiment.

“But then I look at the photos of what he did to them, and just—shit. No one deserves that. I mean—they showed you, didn’t they? For the profile?”

I nod.

“So you know. Absolutely fucking mental.” 

Another nod. All I know is that photocopies didn’t do my work justice. There’s nothing like the real deal.

Bard has never struck me as the squeamish type that vomits on crime scenes, but I could be wrong. We seem to have conflicting definitions of ‘mental’ or ‘disgusting’; when I think ‘disgusting’, I think of the steak he served me and Ronald the first and last time we accepted his invitation to dinner. I think of his cheap flat, permeated with the smell of smoke and cluttered with dishes, a bachelor’s grimy abode.

I can just imagine him bent over case files in his sooty kitchen, restless in the middle of a lonely night, trying to figure out whose side he was truly on.

He sighs. “Anyway, that’s what I came here to get off my chest. You reckon I should give up my spot for someone who actually wants to catch that wanker?”

No, no. Why else would I bother with you? It’s an exchange. You have someone to vent to and buy you drinks, I have someone to bring me all the juicy gossip at the Met. Believe me, I am paid handsome sums by the hour for lending my ear, and for you I provide that service pro bono. Like a good friend should, so stay where you are.

“I know how you feel. Our lines of work are not as different as it might seem. We both get to see the worst side of humanity and we both must contend with moral dilemmas. In psychotherapy, there’s something we call countertransference—projecting emotions onto the patient and risking to impair the relationship with personal involvement—and there is only one way to deal with it effectively: just do your job. Take a deep breath, take a step back and assume a detached, clinical approach. Free yourself from the burden of overthinking and just do what you do best. It can be easy.”

The false note has not quite gone.

“It doesn’t hurt to be honest, either. The fact you don’t feel sorry for any of the victims doesn’t mean you sympathise with the killer. Tell me something, however…. If you could, with the snap of your fingers, undo all of these murders – would you? No vigilante. All five left to their devices. Would you do it?”

The ice-cubes melt away as he sits, poised like an ancient Greek thinker, on my well-attended cabriole, one hand curled below his chin and the other clinging to his drink. Rarely do I see Bard indulging in any manner of rumination, and the crease it tunnels between his brows seems to bring out some unexpectedly sentient quality in his otherwise shallow features. Has he thought of it during those lonely nights in his sooty kitchen? Smoking through the window, lying still on his bed? 

It’s my favourite question of the experiment. I sneak it in at every opportunity at hand.

“No,” Bard says finally, blue eyes decisive. “I wouldn’t do it.”

“Good call,” comes a voice from the right, interrupting my own. A voice I’ve come to know better than anyone’s.

Haughty, androgynous. Echoing frequently through my thoughts and saturating the vast spaces of my library. Articulate, often sombre, a voice graced with flawless diction and wielded with distinguished mannerism—even whilst slipping the occasional cuss or recounting nightmares on those lurid, fitful nights when they become too real. A voice that carries the loveliest of screams.

“Good evening,” Ciel offers negligently in Bard’s general direction. He’s leaned against the archway, arms crossed and legs crossed, wearing the navy suit Elizabeth force-gifted him for his birthday. He turns to me, tone meaningful, “It’s half past seven.”

I almost snicker. There he is, aloof like a cat, emerging only to be fed; such impertinence, all in front of a guest! I like that.

Everyone has a quality, often more than just one, that I find unattractive. In Bard it’s the all-round tediousness and abominable cooking; in Ronald it’s the stinginess and gratuitous prattle; in Mey-Rin it’s her incredible naivety and downright maddening goodness; in Grell it’s virtually everything except his guile and a sort of amusing unpredictability that keeps me constantly on my toes.

But what could I find unattractive about Ciel? His gloom is either a gripping melancholy or adorable grumpiness, especially when Mey-Rin interrupts his reading or Elizabeth appears anywhere within the range of his vision. His arrogance is not the loathsome sort of snobbery for its own sake but a cold, mysterious air of unavailability and well-justified confidence in the supremacy of his mind. And who could blame him, after everything, for turning his back to the world? I just wouldn’t have him any other way. All his flaws arrange themselves into a cohesive whole—or slowly begin to reveal a whole, piece by piece, like complicated puzzle. What else might lie within him?

I am in no rush to find out. As soon as the puzzle is completed, as soon as he bares himself and leaves nothing more to uncover... well, he’ll be just another page torn from a calendar. He’ll be an old, forgotten painting that took away my breath the first time but kept losing its magic the more I looked, the more I discovered its secrets and learned the meaning behind every play of shadows, every hidden symbol, every stroke of the brush.

“I’m occupied,” I say. “There’s some quiche left in the fridge.”

He raises one shapely brow. “From yesterday.”

So high-maintenance. So easily spoiled. I turn to Bard, who took the opportunity to catch up with his Scotch. “Would you stay for dinner?”

“Nah, I’ve eaten. So I guess you fancy folk go have your fancy feast, and I’ll just be on my way.” He smacks his knees and lifts from the sofa. “Been nice meeting you, uh—”

“Ciel.”

“—Ciel. Fancy name, of course. I’m just a plain old Bard. Say, what got you in the eye?”

“I happened to stand too close to my drunk uncle when he attempted to slice a boar roast at my aunt’s birthday party.”

Bard whistles. “There’s a man—battle scars already! Looks kind of cool, if you ask me. Wait a couple years and you’ll get all the ladies.”

Ciel’s lips twitch in amusement. Perhaps he imagined himself as the archetypal ‘bad boy’ with mysterious scars from a mysterious past, sweeping unsuspecting maidens off their feet and leaving them with broken, lovesick hearts.

“Take that back, Bard. I don’t want him growing up into a Ronald.”

Bard laughs, sans false note, putting on his coat and cap. “Ha. Ronald could use a scar or two, cause the lawyer thing sure ain’t doing the trick anymore.”

He winks at Ciel, thanks me for my time, and steps back into the flurry of snowflakes outside.

I lock the door and turn around. “I trust this is the last time you’ve been eavesdropping.”

“Only if it’s the last time you made me wait for dinner.”

Notes:

bit of a filler chapter I'm sorry goodbye

Chapter 11

Jaw tight, shoulders stiff, steps prudent. His body tenses up every time he crosses the street, fighting against the reflex to whip his head frantically left and right. Mey-Rin doesn’t seem worried; to her, Ciel’s face looks no less and no more sour than always, but I can spot the difference between his daily sour and abnormal, alarming sour.

“Come now, enough with the long face! No brooding on my watch, young man!” Mey-Rin chides him gleefully, marching down the pavement in a springy stride. She’s let down her hair, swapped the thick glasses for contacts and put on her nicest clothes. Does she want others thinking the three of us are family? Mother, father, son? I’m guessing yes, and she enjoys that people might get the wrong idea. Only in the impressions of passing strangers can her fantasy come true. 

“Elizabeth was so sweet and thoughtful on your birthday, wasn’t she? You should surprise her with something nice too!”

Ciel grinds his teeth, ploughing through the steady stream of pedestrians. Walks are pointless, but shopping is torture.

“Not much longer,” I mouth at him, voice low and private, wanting him to know that I know.

“I’m fine,” he snaps.

He’s not fine. He hates crowds and Oxford Street is dreadfully crowded on February 13th, the eve of a no less dreadful occasion—timed rather inconveniently with Elizabeth Midford’s fifteenth birthday. The storefronts have been spruced up with hearts, roses, and glittering confetti, most borderline tacky but some acceptably tasteful, each a tapestry of luminous red and every conceivable shade of pink. The sweetness seems inappropriate under the morose, overcast sky—or is it just me? If love is in the air, I certainly don’t feel it.

Mey-Rin can, though. Her cheeks are as pink as the decorations, and not because of the cold. She can’t wait until tomorrow to find out if this year is finally the year I confess to her my passionate love; she can’t wait to ask me, as always in that casual-yet-hopeful tone, if I happen to have any plans with a special someone for Valentine’s Day, counting that I would look her deep in the eye and say yes, indeed I had, if only she would do me the honour of becoming my date.

But it’s just another one of her fantasies, and this year I have my own (not quite as romantic, no—entirely obscene). I look to Ciel and see that he couldn’t care less about the surrounding sweetness; he has devoted all of his focus to evading the crowd, squeamish as if every passer-by was a stinking drunk or a giant roach. I try to stay close to him and he tries to stay close to me, but he can’t avoid it completely: the brushing of shoulders, little bumps followed with pardons, strangers whichever way he turns his head. His walls can’t hold off that many raiders at once. I wonder which demons are the loudest today: from his dark month in Earl’s Court, or the day he lost his parents?

Not too far away from here, a drunk driver sped past the red light and left him an orphan. Blood on the crosswalk, on the windscreen and the bumper, on the trunk of a roadside tree. Blood and ripped limbs – under the morose and overcast sky, wouldn’t that be a far more suitable decoration than gaudy pink hearts? Or is it just me, again? Somewhere—perhaps in the recesses of the infamous dark web—there exists, and circulates, a photograph or two of Vincent Phantomhive’s severed head; of Rachel Phantomhive cut in half; of their stunned, speechless, ten-year-old son. 

I haven’t been able to find it. Every article I’ve dug up used the same two pictures and told the exact same story: a tragic tale with a handy moral about the dangers of drink-driving. No one else lost their life that day, and I don’t know if Ciel wishes he’d lost his; he stubbornly denies me that insight, using the most cunning tricks to dodge and derail the subject every time I attempt to broach it. Even if he does wish there had been room for him under the wheels of the lorry, he survived three years without falling into the comfortably numb embrace of death. Whether suicide holds to him any allure or not, it hasn’t managed to extinguish that kindling passion for life that skulks somewhere beneath his mirthless smiles. Not everything has to be pointless; not literature, not music, not art. He always has tea, chess, and chocolate desserts. There is a life of inner riches he can retreat to, and he hangs onto it like a shipwreck survivor hanging onto a scrap of flotsam, drifting endlessly above lethal depths that could swallow him at any moment.

Is this the day he goes under? Well outside the peace of his comfort zone, swarmed with strangers and exposed to roaming stares? Amidst clamour and loud, garrulous voices in more than one language? I, too, am reasonably bothered, but I am tall enough to tower above the crowd while he is confined in its broiling centre.

Mey-Rin stops to point out a golden necklace on display at the exact same moment Ciel gets swept up by a group of Asian tourists. They jabber indignantly amongst themselves, trampling whatever lies in their path.

Ah. I remember the night Ciel told me about the Chinese strangers. How the sharp, melodious inflection of their exotic dialects reverberates all too often through his nightmares, engraved into his memory as clearly and permanently as their ruddy, round faces. 

He looks shaken, as if slapped in the face by a cold wave and soaked to the bone. His fists clench in a struggle to regain composure, and he may have regained it and may have mended the breach in his walls, but the tourists notice their mistake and rush to his rescue. They gather to fawn collectively over the pretty British boy in distress, fretting and peppering him with fervent apologies, some in broken English but most fired in rapid bursts of Cantonese. An older man rummages in his bag for a bottle of water; two girls reach out to lay a consoling hand on his shoulder; a middle-aged woman in sunglasses touches a handkerchief to his sweat-soaked temple.

It’s too much. I can sense his sizzling panic like static energy before the strike of a lightning. Time seems to slow down and the crowd melts into a blurry conglomerate of shapes. There is only him, frozen in horror in the middle of Oxford Street.

And isn’t he just so gorgeous like this? Wide-eyed, rosebud lips quivering? My nostrils flare as I wallow in his misery, feeling it in the air unlike the love. I wish I could bottle it up, take home and keep close at all times; I wish I could luxuriate in it longer than those few, short-lived seconds before I am forced to act. For what kind of a psychiatrist would I be if I couldn’t handle a panic attack? What kind of a parent would leave his charge swooning in the middle of a crowded street?

“Get your hands off him now,” I growl at the tourists and shoo them away like a pack of pigeons. They scurry hastily down the pavement, muttering and tossing glances behind their backs.

“Ciel,” I call out, trying to reach his besieged consciousness over the roar of traffic. “Ciel, focus on my voice. You’re not in that room. You’re safe, I’m here with you, and all you need to do now is breathe. Deep and slow, counting to five.”

His gaze finds me – feverish, jumpy – all the blue swallowed by the black of his pupil. A tall man on the phone crashes into his shoulder and doesn’t even look back. Ciel staggers forward, breath coming in jerky gasps, looking for something to lean against or grasp onto: a railing, a bench, a wall.

But there is only me. I am the only lifeline amid a sea of strangers, the last scrap of flotsam to save him from drowning. I have been by his side whenever he startled awake and stayed at his side until he fell back asleep. I brought him hot milk and listened to his hushed, shameful confessions.

What choice can there be? I reach out my hand as if he has one: take it or leave it.

He takes it. He latches on like it’s a thread of rope and pulls himself closer. I don’t expect him to come stumbling so suddenly into my arms—but he does, burying his face in my chest, bunching his gloved hands in my coat. He does, and he trembles.

I feel so shallowly and so rarely that each rare time I make sure to draw up a report, analysing it like evidence in a high-priority investigation. I put my hand around his back and note that it feels good to hold him the same way sitting by a warm fire feels good, or lying on comfortable cushions. And it feels good because it means I’m winning, because I take perverse pleasure in each step he takes towards surrender. See? I want to tell him. I knew you were not fine. And he knew it just as well, only his pride would never let him admit it. No pride to shield him now, is there? Just me. 

How I wish this were an act of trust, not of necessity! Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say; better the devil you know, they also say, but though he’s indeed desperate and I’m indeed the devil, he doesn’t know me half as well as he thinks he does. Ironic, isn’t it—for him to seek comfort with the one who could hurt him most and enjoy it best. And even more ironic that I would, in fact, do anything to protect him, the way a hunter protects their marked quarry. I did not like the Chinese pawing at him and I wanted to strangle the man who had rammed into his shoulder without a word of apology.

If anything should happen to him, I should be the one to happen. His weakness belongs to me, the sole keeper of his dark past, and no one else can be privy to the hatred he carries inside him. All those people who go by and cast quick, curious glances... oh, they have simply no idea, not like I do. Even Mey-Rin hasn’t the slightest, fooled like everybody else by Ciel’s intricate veneer of well-being. All his surliness and bad temper she must blame on losing too many relatives too soon. I can’t see her, but I can picture her stopped still before the necklace on display, peering at us through the spaces in the crowd with her hand pressed worriedly to her bosom, red hair windblown and face stricken with bewildered concern. I’ll wager this isn’t how she envisioned our little family outing; whatever was going on between me and Ciel, there could never be room for a third.

We have to make the most curious of sights, don’t we? A grown man and a teenage boy locked in embrace amid cutesy Valentine adornments, forming a patch of free space in the surging crowd—a bubble of privacy that no one dares burst, a peaceful stone island in the middle of a rushing river.

As we stand there, blocking the pavement and attracting stares, Ciel’s breathing calms down and his grip on my waist tightens instead of releasing. I start to suspect he’s not letting go because it feels good to him too, but the move is purely strategic; he had to stall for time and make sure his face had solidified into a neutral, inscrutable mask.

We break apart, and all is back in order. I can appreciate the fine craftsmanship of his façade: no residue of panic and no hint of embarrassment. A perfectly blank slate.

“I rather like your cologne,” is all he says, tucking the hem of my scarf back underneath the lapel of my coat.

We end up buying the necklace on display.

Chapter 12

A clear February morning at sunrise. White streaks of light pour into the kitchen and the air smells of French toast, strawberry sauce, and freshly ground coffee.

It’s, as usual, a good morning; I am not of the sort to ever have bad ones. How can I, after seven hours of dreamless sleep, unburdened by the weight of remorse? For such a remarkable portfolio of cruelties on my conscience, I certainly sleep no worse than a baby. Other people’s mornings can be spoiled with a thousand problems, big and small – with money, family, climate change, cheating spouses – while I am always as light as a feather.

“Good morning,” says Ciel, entering the kitchen. Now, his sleep is ponderous and not at all like a baby’s. At least the nightmare streak has broken; yesterday he woke only once, not screaming, and fell back asleep after twenty minutes instead of an hour. He rarely has good mornings, but this one doesn’t look bad.

He strolls barefoot to the fridge, no eye-patch and disorderly hair, yawning as he helps himself to a bottle of fresh milk. I remember our first morning in November, when he came down fully dressed and ate his pancakes with the same stony expression his aunt ate her bœuf bourguignon. He never would have let his scars show so casually then, nor would he have allowed himself to be on anything but his best guard. It’s one of those small things that illustrate big changes.

He lets out another yawn and pours himself a tall glass of milk. His nightshirt rides up as he stretches, inching up higher on his toes: slowly, languidly. I look up from my coffee, entranced by the flash of creamy skin, like a magpie spotting a glint of something valuable. Something it would very much like to possess. 

For weeks now, again like a magpie, I have been stealing: quick, sidelong glances whenever I could afford to, furtive yet brazenly lustful, roving over the details of his petite physique. No longer is my marvel purely aesthetic and my obsession, fanned each day into a still fiercer flame, has grown inescapably carnal. I’ve never had or wanted to have one this young, but it comes off to me as no surprise; my whims just happen, and I’m not in the habit of questioning why.

Isn’t it rather beastly of me, however? Coveting one so damaged by the deviance of adults, pretending to help set him free from wrongful touches while wanting to imprint my own? Just when I thought I’ve about reached the heights of depravity, there are always new summits to conquer. Good; otherwise I’d be bored.

Now I must hide this new depravity along with the rest of my sins, and I’ve already come too close to letting it out of control. Night after night I dutifully chase off the boy’s demons, even though I want them to return twice as strong and rip him to tiny, miserable shreds—so tiny that he could not possibly piece himself back together, and so miserable that he would have no choice but to cling to me shivering the way he had on Oxford Street. And how much thinner would be the barrier of fabric, too! No woollen coats, no cashmere jumpers, not even a glove. All friction and heat. I would feel every tremor, every panicked breath he would suck into his lungs. I could count his ribs through the shirt, even pinch one between my fingers.

But December is long over and the opportunities dwindle. I already miss those nights that allowed me into the privacy of his room, where the air was sweet with torment and Ciel would spill his secrets under the dim, intimate glow of his bedside lamp. Sometimes, when he laid himself to sleep on the side, his shirt would stretch just enough to reveal a tease of lucid white skin—a glimpse of his clavicle, or the slightest swell of a nipple grazing the cotton—and I would imagine loosening each button and doing the very things we were working to make him forget. Once the lights were out and he told me to stay, the temptation grew even stronger; my senses felt everything as real as a touch. The evocative whisper of silk as he rolled his sleepy, dainty limbs from side to side and uttered those soft, barely-there sighs into the dark…. What agony! Not quite an empty word to me, no—I might not feel it in my heart but I could certainly feel it in my body, that agonising burn of unrequited lust I had never known until this moment. And how oblivious Ciel was of that very agony, as he chased his slumber with me guarding his side! Not suspecting what battles I led with my instincts, what vulgar desires I held just barely at bay; not knowing that sometimes I had to bite into my finger to keep myself in check, or that every time, as soon as I were sure he’d drifted off, I slid a hand down my pants and stroked myself to completion. And I was always tempted, to the very last second before spending, to slip under the sheets warmed so invitingly with the heat of his body and feel him stir, drowsy and pliant, as I trapped him against the mattress. I wanted to smash his face into that fluffy pillow he liked so much and let it soak up all the loud, luscious screams that would scrape his tender throat raw: no, no, stop, don’t touch me, please. Oh, I know exactly what they would sound like, all hoarse and strangled and hushing bit by bit as he gave up—because he always gave up in the end. His resistance mellowed always into submission and his pain ebbed always into pleasure. I was nothing like those other men who defiled him, I could make him scream not in horror but in bliss and—

Ah. What agony indeed! I can’t do it this way, can I? No, I want his consent. I’m like a dog, no muzzle and no chain, drooling at the salivating treat all ready and redolent under my nose; I look at it but I can’t have it, holding back with a last, frayed string of self-control and the promise of a much tastier feast to reward my patience. It’s like—

A shrill crash rends the air, cutting through the fog of my fantasies. My eyes shoot up to see Ciel gawking at me in scandalised awe, milk dripping from the counter and over his nightshirt and onto the floor, shards of broken glass lying scattered around his bare feet. My furtive glance must not have been so furtive and more of a long stare than a glance.

Even so, shrouded in the wisps of my reverie, I can’t help but watch the droplets of milk run down the inside of his thighs.

It’s the fridge that breaks the silence, demanding to shut its door with obnoxious beeping, and it’s on this signal that Ciel’s shock passes and turns into hatred. That rare, wonderful hatred pointed directly my way.

“Got you, motherfucker,” he snarls. “I’ve always known there was something wrong with you, and there it finally is.”

I frown. So far I have scolded him only twice: once for snooping around in my notebook, once for eating too much sweets and skipping dinner. Scolding hardly works on someone who carries himself like an adult, but is there anything else I can do? Outrage it is, then.

“Just what makes you think you can talk to me like that?”

“Pardon my poor choice of words; you have no mother. As for fucking, I believe you have other tastes. Would ‘vile, perverted vermin’ be more appropriate?”

I shake my head. Such crass words coming from such a pretty mouth, in that well-bred English, with so much resentment! Glorious. I pretend to figure out what he could have meant by ‘other tastes’, frowning pensively as though I’m putting two and two together, and then my face lights up with stunned recognition and my jaw clenches and my gaze steels so that I look positively and utterly appalled. 

Ciel scoffs at my charade. “Aunt Frances got it just right at the funeral, didn’t she? And you handled it so well that no one thought to doubt you for even a second. So convincing then and so convincing now.... But I’m only half-blind, you see. I know that look. I’d know it anywhere.”

Can this be salvaged? He knows what he saw and would not be manipulated into thinking it wasn’t what he thought he saw. I am a bit irked, if anything; all that work to waste. All those mugs of hot milk and chocolate desserts. And how betrayed he must feel, when only last week he sought comfort in my welcoming arms! 

I wet my lips. The key to reading people lies in locating their weaknesses, and I have been able to read Ciel Phantomhive enough to know all the things that drive him mad.

One – being treated like a child. Two – being compared to everyone else. Three – undermining his judgment. Four – being pitied.

Shall I push all the buttons at once and see what happens?

“Ciel,” I say, raising my hands in the air, “I want you to listen. This may all sound very confusing, but you’re getting the wrong idea and I can explain exactly why.”

Ciel opens his mouth to interrupt, but curiosity prevails. He stands listening with clenched fists.

“At the most critical age, when children just begin to discover their sexual drives, you were subject to terrible amounts of stress and abuse. It interfered with your growth, causing you to develop a harmful and unhealthy template of sexuality that will now stigmatise your every relationship. Your experience has taught you that men are sexual predators who want to take advantage of your body, and through that association you unfortunately came to imagine that I must want that from you as well. I do not.”

The fridge is still open, reminding us of that fact between intervals of silence: beep, beep, beep, pause. I can tell Ciel does not believe me – likely because my eyes keep straying to where his damp nightshirt sticks to his thighs – but he lacks arguments and can do nothing but glare. The fifth thing he hates, perhaps even the most, is losing. 

“Think reasonably: you’re projecting your fears onto me, Ciel. You see threat lurk in everyone, not just in strangers on the street. Now that you have finally begun to open up, your brain has launched a defense mechanism to keep me from getting too close. And that’s okay; it’s completely understandable after everything you’ve been through. I knew to expect it because I’ve treated patients just like you in the past. Trust me in this: you are not alone. The core of your trauma lies in the severing of human connections, and the core of your recovery lies in building them back up. I don’t want to exploit your weakness, Ciel; I want to help you overcome it. You need to trust someone in order to get better, and all I want is for that someone to be me.”

I watch him seethe with rage and wonder what it must feel like. I always wonder, but I can never relate. I have felt irritation – all too often. Genuine anger – at rare times I could count on the fingers of one hand. But rage? Uncontrollable whirl of emotions blinding judgment and reason? Rage often drives people to kill – to commit the infamous crime of passion – but I never kill with rage. I don’t hate my victims; it’s nothing personal. I kill with joy.

“Unless,” I press on, “the distortion you suffered runs even deeper. We see what we wish to see. You may have normalised the abuse and may actually want to—”

Slam. Ciel bangs his fist against the fridge, silencing its triple beep and knocking the door shut with a thunderous rattle. The porcelain flower pot on top nearly tips over the edge and shatters on the tiles alongside the glass. I would never have expected this much force from someone so frail.

He breathes shakily in and out: five second inhale, five second exhale, like he’s trying to calm himself from a panic attack—or an attack of fury. His head hangs low between squared, quivering shoulders and his fist twitches as if it hasn’t had his fill.

From the corner of my eye, I glimpse red. I look down and see that Ciel’s stepped on a shard of glass: his blood trickles and merges with the spilt milk, a thin red river swirling into a sea of white. He doesn’t see it, nor does he see me lick my lips.

But when he turns, his eyes are murderous. I mean that. And I barely recognise his voice; low, sinister, dragged through his teeth. The last time I heard it, he told me that all the vermin in London should be rightfully eradicated. 

“Thank you for your input, Doctor, but I’ve heard quite enough.”

How close my mask is to dropping! All I want is to spread those wet thighs and take him brutally against his will, right against that counter. It would be so easy to lift and hold him down; my fingers would press bruises into his snow-white flesh. I could look him in the face while I did it, into that hollow violet and hateful blue. I would tear him open and relish in every ounce of his sumptuous pain. Would he cry? I think he would thrash and scratch and curse at me terribly, then cry. Humiliating, helpless tears that I would taste on the tip of my tongue. I would kiss and he would bite; I would squeeze his scarred throat and he would grab a knife from the block and sink it deep in my guts, making sure to twist the blade before wrenching it out to stab me one more time in the heart. And then he would topple me to the ground, straddle my hips and drop the knife again and again and again, as many times as it would take to quench his boiling wrath.

My blood, his blood, and a sea of milk all flooding the tiles. Everyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances, and Ciel Phantomhive—with his hatred and his demons and deep, deadly glare—would surely go for the crime of passion.

I’m almost painfully stiff.

“Don’t move,” I say. “I’ll get something to patch up your foot.”

He looks down. I don’t think he even felt it. He yanks out the shard in one reckless pull, releasing a thick spurt of blood. I can smell the tang of it when I take a breath. He grabs a paper towel from the counter and attempts to staunch the bleeding.

“I’m fine,” he growls, seeing me get up to help him. “Stay away, you filthy pederast. Lay one finger on me and—”

And what? say my eyes. He falters. Just what will you do, little one? There is no way you could stop me. I am the only one who can stop me and I am the only thing standing between you and me. Be careful, for I keep myself on a very thin leash.

I sigh. “I’ll ring your school and tell them you’re sick.”

He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t eat his strawberry French toast, and he doesn’t go to school. He locks himself upstairs and I doubt he’ll emerge for dinner. I have pushed all of his buttons and such were the consequences, but not even that has managed to spoil my good morning (although the coffee did get a little cold while we were arguing and my trousers are still uncomfortably tight). To every crisis there is a solution, and I never care for means – only the end. I pull out my other phone and dial Grell’s number.

Notes:

Hiii just wanted to remind everyone how much I adore any and all feedback~ If you're reading and want more then please let me know -- it keeps me going! I'd love to hear every opinion and I cherish every smallest comment ^_^

Chapter 13

The sign on the teashop says ‘closed’. Stepping inside from the lantern-lit alley, I smell herbs and dust and something sweet, in the worst way, like rotting fruit. The floorboards creak under the lightest step as I make my way deeper, guided by the only trace of light among the quiet dark. Rounding the corner, I come to a carpeted staircase with heavy, soundproof doors leading down to a cellar.

I knock. Fist against steel, loud.

The peephole slides open, leaking threads of grey smoke in my face. I fan it away with my palm and reveal a bushy pair of brows sitting menacingly over the monolid eyes of an Asian.

“I don’t know the password. Tell Lau I’m an acquaintance of Madame Red.”

I thought he’d blow more smoke into my face or tell me to bugger off, but the bouncer nods somewhat politely and retreats to deliver my message. The peephole slides back shut.

How long has this place been running incognito? It took Grell one week to start looking but only one day to find it, while Angelina Dalles had stumbled upon it by sheer drunken chance. Needless to say, I am loath to show my face in obscure venues of this kind – I don’t blend in, I stand out – but there is no other way for me to get what I want.

The doors open with a clang and the bouncer comes fully into view, shorter than me but bulkier, with a face empty of intellect but a body rippling with strength – the perfect grunt.

“I have to search you, sir,” he says in heavily accented English and proceeds to grope me from head to toe like airport security. He even checks my shoes.

The doors lead to storage with stacks upon stacks of oolong and jasmine. The bouncer guides me through a chilly corridor and soon my ears pick up the first muffled notes of a commotion—the underground din of voices and laughter that gains in power the closer we get to a second pair of doors.

And then I’m inside Lau’s den and it’s like someone turned the volume knob on a stereo all the way up. I’m smacked in the face with a jarring overload of sights, smells, and sounds.

There’s shuffling of mahjong tiles and knocking of billiard balls; cheers of victory and groans of defeat; clinking of glasses and banging of fists. Wreaths of cigar smoke coil below the ceiling and slither between tables, unable to escape the sealed confines of the basement. The furniture looks like authentic, imported antiques—the sturdy, lacquered rosewood and symmetrical ornaments of Qing dynasty. Lanterns shine bright and yellow above tables but dim and red in the corners, decorated with lunar year stickers and charmingly ironic pendants with the Chinese characters for ‘fortune’ and ‘auspicious’. The air intoxicates just by breathing, thick with opium fumes and spicy with incense, undercut with sweat and alcohol and a smothering blend of rich perfume—all of which coalesce into a sensory onslaught that stings my nostrils and prickles at my eyes. My head spins even without the aid of drugs or baijiu.

The bouncer leaves me in the threshold without a word. I am greeted by a handsome couple in traditional Chinese raiments, the kind seen mostly in history films and high-end tailor shops in China. With a foxy grin and narrow, sly eyes, Lau’s face strikes me as not empty but brimming with intellect, with strength far more potent than the strength of muscles. It does take intellect and the slyness of a fox, no less, to rule a secret empire in times when secrets are so hard to keep; in times when they can be hacked from hard drives, reported with a single phone call or proven with the click of a camera; when it takes mere seconds for them to be transmitted through every available media, posted with clickbait titles all over the web and commented by thousands of users worldwide.

In the London of old, secrets used to be a much more lucrative business. They didn’t bubble so often to the surface but were flushed down like waste into the sewers, dissipating silently into everyday squalor without echo, without scandal.

“Welcome, friend!” Lau bows. “You look like just the type to do well around here.”

“And how do I look like?”

“Rich,” says the woman clinging to his arm, her voice as blank as her face. She has golden eyes and full breasts that bulge indiscreetly beneath a snug qipao from purple silk.

“Thank you,” I answer, smiling, “but I intend to keep it that way.”

Lau gestures for me to follow, long robes sweeping like a wedding veil across the floor.

Friday night has yielded an ample, cosmopolitan crowd: men and women dressed in black ties, evening gowns, and Chinese garments, a peculiar jumble taken out of yet another film or another century altogether. We take a side path behind folding screens, but I am still noticed; five patrons turn their heads to follow my passage through the room, and I know that the unearthly red shadows do little to blur my features. I suppose it could have been worse; two of my patients are addicted to gambling and I half-expected to spot them by one of the tables, feeling up waitresses and squandering riches against their therapist’s explicit advice.

Whatever my five observers think as they look me curiously up and down, I can think of one thing only: have any among them been to Earl’s Court? Who in this crowd has touched Ciel? There is so much my eyes can take in but they look for only that, as though it would manifest itself as a palpable trait: some bright, beacon-like imprint in their aura, or a mark as clear as a scar.

To have possessed his body, even if inert and unwilling; to have kissed his lips, even if cold and pursed shut; to have debauched his innocence and made it flourish into hatred... it should show, shouldn’t it? To have had what I could not have myself, what I could not stop craving?

They’re lucky I can’t know.

We arrive at a canopied alcove, private and perfect for shooting me without disturbing the clientele. Lau settles himself among an abundance of embroidered cushions and picks up the hose of a gilt, oriental water pipe sitting erect on the lounge table. His companion, plastered to him like a brooch, crawls into his lap and fixes me with a blunt, expressionless stare. 

“Now... you said you were a friend of Madame Red’s?”

“Yes.”

“Poor thing; I miss her! I’ve heard all about what happened. She brought so much life to this place, you know? Beat all the men at drinking and laughed louder than all of them combined.”

I send him a knowing smile, dismissing the skimpily-clad waitress headed towards me with a tray. “Didn’t have much in the way of luck, though, did she? At poker in particular.” 

Lau measures me through the slits of his eyes. I can barely tell they’re open.

“You’re that shrink, aren’t you. I heard gossip of a shrink. No one but the regulars would know she used to come here, and you’re no regular.” He brings the pipe hose to his lips. “Some peculiar shrink you are too, seeking me out here on your own when I was kind enough to leave you be. Hmm.”

“Hmm,” repeats the woman and crosses her legs, slowly and shamelessly as if to seduce, granting me a first-class view of the gun holster and sheathed dagger she keeps strapped to her thigh. She winks at me, features frozen in permanent poker-like nothingness, as though she were capable of even less emotion than I. 

I look up at Lau. “Do you remember the last time she came here?”

“Why, it was all very sudden. She handed her last share to Xiao Li—I mean, the bouncer—and told him to tell me that our business was concluded. Didn’t even come in to say goodbye!”

“And you just left it at that?”

“Why not? She was all paid off. It was good money, but all good things must come to an end. I kept her monitored for a time and everything seemed more or less in order. Paths cross, paths diverge.”

Lau is a puzzling specimen, but not indecipherable. He may act friendly—even comical—but underneath that friendliness lurks vigilance and danger, a certain ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ quality that I can relate to. 

“Speaking of paths, you left a breadcrumb trail right to your door. Her nephew could have identified your clients.”

He throws his arms wide. “I’m still here, aren’t I? Surely you didn’t come here to question the way I do business? You’re the shrink, so tell me: how often do abused children speak up about their abuse? They’re scared, they repress it, they don’t understand what’s going on. And that’s only if we don’t drug them, and we always drug them. They don’t remember a thing.”

Now, this I like. Lau speaks of drugged children as one might speak of cattle trade or chicken breeding. Such refreshing remorselessness in such an ethically complex world.

“Besides, have a look around: my clients are rich, they have good lawyers. An accusation is not enough.” 

No photos, no taping. No permanent damage. Use a rubber. In other words, leave no evidence behind. He’s not stupid; he’s clueless. Just as I thought.

“You simply have no clue what happened, do you?”

It’s clear he doesn’t like the sound of that question. I wouldn’t, either. No one likes having simply no clue. 

“Madame Red was a troubled soul. I presumed her conscience had finally caught up with her.”

“No, something else had caught up with her. I’ll tell you if—”

“I always reveal my cards last, dear Doctor.”

Fine. I can go first, but not without a touch of suspense. I recline confidently in my seat, taking a while to bask in the exclusivity of my knowledge. 

“Miss Dalles never gave your drugs to her nephew; she wanted him fully aware every time. You would have been lucky if he’d repressed it, but I can tell you—as a ‘shrink’—that everyone processes trauma in different ways. He hasn’t spoken up until now, but who knows what he might do in the future? And as much as I didn’t come here to question your business tactics, you should really find a better way of monitoring your clients. Remember those three men you sent to Earl’s Court just before Miss Dalles cut ties? They were members of a cult, likely Satanic. They burnt the boy’s back and cut his throat, leaving scars. Not exactly according to the rules, was it?”

Lau’s thin eyes open just the littlest bit wider, but that’s all he lets show of his surprise. He takes a deep drag of whatever is in the pipe, then exhales. Clouds of creamy smoke twirl and roll unhurriedly from between his lips, obscuring the pensive cast of his face.

“He survived having his throat cut?” he says with a quaint little chuckle. “What kind of a cultist doesn’t know how to properly cut a throat?”

“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me. Who were they?”

“They? You don’t get a ten-year-old to handle three grown men at once—I’m more thoughtful than that! I didn’t send three, I sent one. And you’re right, I had no clue about any cult.”

“All I want from you is a name.”

Lau bends forward, jovial manners abandoned, throwing an arm over his companion’s lap. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re trying to play here, friend. You had everything to get me convicted and chose instead to dig up history and risk your life. How can I let you go, knowing what you know? How can I let the boy go? You’re loose ends.”

Ah, the wolf decided to bare his fangs. How scary.

“Your loose ends have taken precautions. I have a confidant, who knows just as much as I do, and a recording from Miss Dalles’s session that couldn’t be more explicit. Should you prove inhospitable to me in any way or so much as look at the boy, my confidant will release the recording and point right to your thriving little venture. If you want to get convicted, that’s one sure way for it to happen.” I browse through my array of smiles and select the one most suited for the occasion: personable yet not quite reaching my eyes. “I can assure you, however, that I had meant this visit to be nothing more than mutual courtesy. No blackmail, no threats, no police. A simple quid pro quo. You play your games, I continue to play mine. Let this be the last we see or hear of each other.”

Lau recites something in Mandarin, slow and melodious like a verse of poetry. Having built a little suspense of his own, he smiles his vulpine smile and leans away.

“You’re lucky I have good memory. Your Satanist is Azzurro Vanel, an Italian drug dealer. I haven’t seen him since Earl’s Court and I’m fairly sure he’s using a false name, but he has quite the conspicuous scar across his nose, if it helps.” He puffs on his pipe, releasing neat little hoops of smoke. “Ran-Mao? Be a dear and see our guest out. Politely.”

 

***

 

Driving back to Hampstead, I think of Ciel; I haven’t thought of much else these days. Not my experiment, not my Todestrieb, not my patients. Just Ciel and the little war he’s been waging against me the entire week.

He’s completely shut me off: no more therapy, no late evening discussions, no chess or trips to town. He misses meals and ignores everything I do or say. If he speaks, it’s usually to insult me; if at home, he’s always locked upstairs. Once more he reminds me of a cat, leery and hard to tame, bolting at the slightest hint of danger.

What will he do, I wonder? When he meets an old friend? Because I will make sure there is nowhere to bolt. No turning tail and ducking into an alley.

I failed to coax him peacefully out of his shell, so now it’s time to try smashing it open and yanking him out by force. I’ve never really wanted a war, only surrender, and what choice will he have except to surrender? He can hate strangers and vermin and the whole wide world, but I’m supposed to be the one and only exception. I need to redirect the beam of his contempt toward its origins, to rotate and steer it as far away from me as possible. I need to give him a scapegoat to hate in my stead. 

Which will prevail once they’re reunited: his weakness, or his hatred? If he screams, clutches at his throat and curls on the ground, I will shield him. I will help him back up. And if his hands clench into fists and his eye flares up with vindictive wrath, I shall become its instrument. I shall see that its bidding is fulfilled.

Whichever prevails, whatever he does, there can be no more hiding behind walls or even corners, no locking himself up in lofty towers to seek shelter from the perils below. It’s all coming down and he will have no place left to run to, absolutely no one else to turn to but me. If not on trust, I will have to count once more on necessity to push him into my arms. 

In the end, no matter the means, I always get what I want. It’s just a matter of time.

Now I return to Hampstead, mission accomplished, and stop my car in the driveway to look up at the silent house. An arrow of light winks at me through the drawn curtains, just by my desk in the study, where at half past midnight should be completely dark.

I release my grip on the steering wheel and chuckle faintly below my breath. I’ve never seen Ciel use a computer – he keeps his distance from electronic devices with almost technophobic adamancy – and yet he bypassed a fingerprint reader and hacked my password. Did he learn how to do it just this week, just for this?

I drive under the carport, turn off the engine, and climb through the rear door for patients. Ciel must hear me come home but must not care; I find him staring fixedly at the screen of my laptop, face illuminated by the scattered glow of its ghostly light. His gaze is absent and glassy, but he hasn’t been crying. His tears are a delicacy I am yet to be afforded.

“Ciel?” I call out. He doesn’t even lift his eyes. Is he disassociating again? I’m about to shake his shoulder when he finally answers – dull and apathetic, as though I were asking him if he’s done his homework.

“There you are. Suppose you’re about to lecture me on snooping around and patient confidentiality and so on and so forth…. To spare you breath, know that I don’t care.”

“What are you doing?”

A glimmer of dry, dark humour passes through his eye. “I was looking for underage pornography, of course. Instead I found a folder titled ‘A. Dalles’ and couldn’t resist.”

He leans back in the chair and honours me finally with a glance. I cannot tell what he’s thinking or feeling or intending to do. Is he in any way affected? Sad, angry, shocked, all at once? Everything about him is thoroughly inscrutable. 

“Quite the story she told,” he says, inspecting his fingernails. “Surprisingly put-together. Which is the opposite of how I remember her, to be honest; my mother used to say she had a potty mouth and couldn’t string two sentences without a cuss. Half the bad words I know I’d learnt from her.” 

So many questions on the tip of my tongue. What was it like, listening to her confession? Hearing her voice, reliving it through her eyes? Do you forgive her? Did you even hate her to begin with? Or did you love her despite everything she did to you?

“Ciel.”

“What?” he snaps.

“Are you okay?”

He considers. “No. Would you like to hear what bothers me most, out of everything I’ve heard?”

It’s almost teasing, the way he baits me and stalls the answer. He stands up and draws closer, looking me straight in the eye. 

“That the tape stops, that’s what bothers me. Why does it stop? Just what did you tell her? You gave her that drink—what else did you do? Is it your fault she killed herself?”

“Whatever you think I might have done, I didn’t do it,” I say, summoning honesty into my voice and upon my features. “I simply couldn’t get her to stop crying.” 

Two more steps. He punctuates every word, voice barely above a whisper, while I trace unwittingly the movements of his lips:

“I don’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth anymore.”

Among silence and midnight dark, it feels like the most intimate confession. Our gazes collide, charged with tension, but there is nothing to read from my eyes and there is nothing to read from his. He curves his mouth and withdraws a creased piece of paper from his blazer.

“I found it in her wallet. She kept it around all this time and didn’t even cross out my face. Awfully touching, no?” He chuckles, tapping his finger against the photo. “All worn out too, as though she used to take it out and reminisce about happier times. As though deep down she still cared and was sorry…. But that’s not why it’s worn out, is it? Now that I know what it’s been used for, it makes me sick. She was right: it all had happened in another lifetime indeed.” He thrusts the photo into my chest and turns to leave the study.

“Here. Take it, see for yourself. Didn’t I use to have the prettiest smile?”

I watch him leave and stand listening to his footsteps on the staircase. For some reason, it feels like I’m preparing to do something forbidden. I wait for his door to close, then walk to my desk and flip on the light.

There it is, the proud edifice of the Louvre. There she is, so radiant in her glamorous red, grinning honestly from ear to ear. There they are, gallant and comely, the perfect husband and perfect wife. And there he is, a tiny lovely thing, already with that imperial poise, looking into the camera with a pair of uniquely mismatched eyes: one a deep familiar blue and the other a ravishing violet so full of life. Such lightness there is about his shoulders, such aura of ease! Such happy obliviousness to the events of near and unmerciful future.

I touch my finger to his face. Yes, little one; I have certainly never seen a prettier smile.

Chapter 14

It’s one of those shops that still have a bell hanging above the entry. At five minutes to closing there is no customer nor vendor in sight, only rows of furniture and miscellaneous trinkets filling up every cramped nook and cranny: frilly lampshades, marble figurines, gilt baroque frames and Florentine frescoes copied with careful care. I stroll around the shop, inhaling the mild yet unmistakable scent of age that hangs in the air: musk and dust and musty, old wood. I prefer it to the soulless, factory smell of brand new furniture. I prefer scarred surfaces, scratched varnish and peeling paint. Years add flaws and flaws tell stories. 

A mumbled greeting reaches my ears. I turn to face Azzurro Vanel, also known as Marco Ferrara, the search for whom should have been like searching for one tiny needle in a haystack—but wasn’t. My Italian Satanist turned out to be none other than Grell Sutcliffe’s former drug dealer. Strange thing, to be able to say ‘it’s a small world’ while living, of all places, in London. 

He wears his hair long and trims his stubble into a short, unappealing goatee. He looks like a mafia boss with his costly (if tasteless) pinstripe suit and the broad, jagged scar slanting from his forehead all across the bridge of his nose. I don’t wonder what story it could tell; my nostrils flare at the sight of him, like I’m allergic. Vermin, says Ciel’s voice inside my head, and I combat the urge to snatch the brass candelabra within my reach and splatter his brains across the fake Botticelli behind his back.

It’s no novelty, this urge. My Todestrieb tempts me all the time. I get my urges and whims the way others get a sudden craving for strawberry sundae or a mug of cold beer after work. And yet—as I look at Azzurro Vanel also known as Marco Ferrara—my familiar urge tugs at me in some unfathomably unfamiliar way. It takes me longer than usual to bite it back.

“Signore? Good afternoon?”

There: he needs only to open his mouth and already I am irked. Doesn’t he know the English word ‘sir’?

“Yes, sorry, hello. So many things to look at.”

Vanel gestures around the shop. “Looking for anything specific?”

“Well, not quite. What brings me here specifically is the unfortunate circumstance of death, I’m afraid,” I say, watching for the clench in his jaw. How many throats has he slit in sacrifice? How many bullets has he fired in his dealings? How many ‘unfortunate deaths’ has he caused and which one sprang first to his mind? 

“Grandfather,” I clarify. “Italian.”

“Ah.” His shoulders drop. “Riposi in pace.”

I let out a snicker. “I don’t think it’s peace he’ll be resting in, necessarily, given that I intend to sell off his precious ancestral furniture. It’s more of a ‘rolling in the grave’ sort of situation, if you will. Especially if I get a rough deal out of it.”

“You need a trained eye,” says Vanel with a confident smirk.

“Exactly. But you see, the issue here is that a lot of trained eyes have been saying a lot of different things. The pieces need renovation, yes—but the provenance, year, price? No agreement. As a layman, I find myself increasingly at a loss.”

I click my tongue, continuing to look around the shop until my gaze stops on a sturdy, neoclassic armoire from cross-banded walnut. I wonder how much heroin had been smuggled inside it, and how much of it was bought with my money to be shot up Grell’s veins. I also think it would look good in the guestroom upstairs. 

Vanel tracks my every move. “A man of modern tastes?”

“My tastes are measured in zeroes on my bank account, and sentiment brings no profit. You’ll find it’s a timeless approach to life, not just modern. But if you happen to share that approach, I’m afraid I’m going to have to look for another pair of trained eyes.”

His laugh is almost candid. “No, no; my approach is passion. Italians are known for passion, taste, and their passion for taste.”

Taste? Not with that suit on. Passion, however…. He has deep, abundant reserves of the wicked sort of passion I should feel drawn to, but I feel repelled. Everything about him puts me off, from the sound of his voice to the way his thumbs stick out of his pockets. He is a flaw, but not in the same sense a graze on patinated wood is a flaw. He is a pesky speckle on polished glass, a blotch of ink on snow-white parchment, a gross stain of grease on dry-cleaned trousers—a flaw in the sense that I want to wipe, erase, and wash away.

“Passion sounds good,” I say. “My grandfather was certainly passionate about those chunks of old wood he saw fit to leave me in his will.” I reach for my wallet to procure a card with my other number and other name. “I’m always busy, but equally eager to get rid of said chunks cluttering my basement. Please give me a ring whenever you’re free to come have a look.”

 

***

 

I leave the antique shop with Vanel’s own card and a quizzical sense of unfulfillment. He won’t wait long to reach out – I made it clear that time is money and money is the only thing I am after – yet the pocket where I keep my other phone feels mysteriously heavier.

I’ve been impatient before, but never ‘on-tenterhooks’ impatient. I am met with a need to distract myself with something petty, and I cannot think of anything pettier than dinner with Bard and Ronald. I ring home – the landline I couldn’t be bothered to remove – and have to dial three more times before Ciel decides to pick up.

“I won’t be home for dinner,” I say.

“Fine,” he says. 

Dinner. That is all our conversations lately amount to. He’s becoming a ghost in my home the way he’d been in Earl’s Court, fading into the background and flitting unnoticed in the corner of my eye. It suits him, being a ghost, evanescent and forgotten, living by himself and for himself in this spectral quasi-existence: not quite life and not yet death, suspended between the outside world and his own remote kingdom. He would rather withstand all plight silently instead of leaving the blessed solitude of said kingdom, and would sooner suffer more injustice than be heard or seen. He would rather risk more abuse than make the smallest fuss. 

Stuck at red light on my way to the restaurant, I watch a group of kids parade mid-laughter through the crossing. They couldn’t be more than sixteen and couldn’t look more untroubled, as if their only concerns were math tests and silly crushes and hitting enough likes on social media. Worlds, worlds apart from Ciel, who has more to worry about than the choice of outfit for a first date or the terrible last season of his favourite show. Twice he’s escaped death and survived the tyranny of adults only to find himself at the mercy of my protean whims, and my whim dictates to put him in the same room as Azzurro Vanel and watch what happens. Oh, the poor thing just can’t catch a break.

I park in front of the restaurant that Ronald picked for us without voting. Elegant, ideal for candlelit dinner, the kind of locale where fiancés go down on one knee while the waiters bring in flowers and champagne and everyone else starts clapping and cheering. It can work for ripping off a rich friend just as well as planning a proposal, I suppose, and I don’t complain because it serves Italian. Exactly what I’ve been in the mood to eat.

Ronald’s grin is broad and unapologetic as he orders the priciest thing on the menu; Bard is abnormally quiet and, as usual, underdressed. For once I try to pay them actual attention, but I’m still on the so-called tenterhooks. The staged reunion drifts doggedly on the edge of my consciousness and eludes petty distractions.

What’s going to happen once they are put in the same room? Ciel told me that two of the cultists took off their masks, that he remembered their faces better than he did his own parents’, that he could hear their voices not only in nightmares but whispering to him insidiously in the light of day. Ciel would recognise Vanel, but would Vanel recognise Ciel after three whole years? Just another kid, just another lamb for slaughter? No, he didn’t think him good enough for even that. A sick lamb, bad sacrifice. A useless thing; a flaw.

My fist tightens around the fork.

“What’s up with the two of you today?” asks Ronald, looking between Bard and myself. “Grim and grimmer.”

I, for one, know exactly what is up with Bard: he’s overworked and losing faith, both in the justice system and in himself. He sleeps badly, eats badly, smokes two packets a day, and has probably turned to hookers. Bard, to me, is an open book: a book with predictable plot twists, shallow characters, and banal ending. 

“I mean it. You gentlemen look like shite. Let’s fix that.” Ronald snaps his fingers at the waiter. “Bring us your best bottle of vodka, son.”

“Certainly,” says Ronald’s ‘son’, by my estimate well in his fifties, and excuses himself with a patient bow. His mouth doesn’t so much as twitch, as if putting up with condescending customers was the purpose of his existence. He, too, must maintain a façade. He must conceal his true sentiments behind a servile smile and make sure his thoughts never transcribe into words. Were he to scoff at Ronald for snapping his fingers and ask who the fuck orders vodka in an Italian restaurant, there would be consequences. Everyone, to a degree, plays the same game as I. 

The vodka arrives in an ice bucket.

“I’m driving,” I say, covering my glass with a hand.

Ronald snorts. “That’s the best excuse you can come up with? Good old Tanaka will pick up the car: problem solved. Now drink, rich bastard. It’s your damn treat.”

I watch the waiter pour me a perfectly measured fifty millilitres of vodka. Humans seem to harbour a collective and erroneous assumption that liquor can make everything better. It’s solace for a lonely evening, respite after a tiresome day, shot of good humour and liquid courage for those who lack it sober. It’s what people resort to when stress or grief or reality in general become too much to bear, even if the next day they have to deal with the exact same problems and a pounding headache as the cherry on top. But what liquor does essentially and unfailingly, is remove boundaries. 

Need I say it’s better for everyone if my boundaries remain intact?

We drink. Barely an hour and we have already gone through the entire bottle, which is enough to send Bard on a spree of self-pity and mundane complaints (of which I did not miss a single mark). I pay him no mind, watching lovestruck couples on their dates and anniversaries as I swallow shot after shot of vodka. I watch women in their chic cocktail dresses and designer heels, pecking sparsely at pastas and salads in between sips of Chardonnay. There is a calculated grace in every move of their forks and every lift of their glasses—the overconscious mannerism of a royal guest dining at Buckingham Palace. A lot of the women watch me back, like it’s some unspoken game: they sneak quick glances whenever their dates aren’t looking, trying to mask their distraction with fervent nods and sweet, overdone smiles.

Everything about them, like everything about me, is for show. I pick up bits of conversation, low honeyed nothings that blend into the background drone of Italian ballads and Bard’s slurred tirades. I nod in his direction in measured intervals, but tune the words out—as does Ronald. He seems bent on spending as much of my money as possible in one evening, snapping his fingers every now and again for the waiter to bring him another snack, another chaser, another bottle. The candle at our table has almost burnt out.

“We’ll get you a girl another time, mate. For now you’re getting drunk,” he cuts into Bard’s overly detailed account of how he ruined his last date. “Shall we?” He lifts his glass, spilling some of the vodka. “And whatever’s eating at Dr Michaelis, I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t be handled in the same simple manner. Only difference is that he, unlike us, can also comfort himself with a girl.”

My whims are more complicated than that, I’m afraid. I take another swig, easing fluidly down my throat, crispy cold and leaving behind a bitter, satisfying burn. I can feel a restless buzz stirring in my limbs, a miasma-like haziness slowly beginning to cloud my mind. It is a tempting risk—the sort I’ve lately acquired a dangerous taste for—to keep downing glass after glass until I lose my inhibitions, until I care no more for consequences and yield to the one true side of my nature. I can never stand still; I always need to be taking another step forwards, and I am curious to see what I would become unable to stop myself from doing.

I push my glass out of reach. My reason is still there, fighting for survival alongside my patience.

“Remember when I told you about countertransference?” I ask, looking into Bard’s rueful, unshaven visage. 

“Caught it bad, huh?” He huffs, fiddling with his napkin. “Can’t you take your own advice? Just do your job?”

“Doesn’t always work, it seems.”

“Ha. You said it first.”

My gaze drops. “I can’t stop thinking about one of my patients. I’m afraid I’ll fail him like I failed Miss Dalles.”

Ronald rolls his eyes. “Angsty, much? Take some honest advice from a lawyer: not everyone can be saved. Some cases are lost from the start. You’re a shrink, not a god.”

If I were a god, I would be the God from Old Testament. I would send plagues and great floods and force fathers to kill their sons. I am the furthest thing from a saviour, and I couldn’t save Ciel even if I wanted. He’s not a piece of worn furniture that can be patched up with glue and topped with shiny enamel. No, his flaws are there to stay. 

“It’s not that. You don’t understand.” I scrunch up my features into a pinpoint image of martyrdom. “My job is to deal with life tragedies. My job is to deal with emotional baggage without catching any of it myself. And it may sound heartless, but… at some point, I started to feel immune. Like I’d heard every sad story and solved every problem. But this? This is too much even for me. It keeps me up at night.”

I can tell it piques their interest. The way they see me, I’m stoicism personified. Calm, rational, dependable. I’m not a man easily disturbed or coaxed into confessions—and vodka or not, I certainly never blab about my patients.

I pretend to weigh words while my eyes bore invariably into Bard. “Have you ever run across a case suggesting the involvement of a Satanic cult?”

Ronald’s immediate response is a burst of cynical laughter. “What? You taking the piss, right? We’re not in the eighties; devil worship is a hoax. Hollywood fiction, rebellious teens, old church ladies spinning paranoid fantasies…. That’s all it’s ever come down to.”

“My patient would beg to differ.”

“Wow, you’re serious. Okay. There’s no underground Satanic mafia—if there was, don’t you think NCA would’ve caught a whiff of it? Maybe your patient’s a bit off his trolley? Like, full-on confabulation? Maybe you’ve tried one of those, ah, dubious techniques of recovering memories?”

“I’m not some inept college shrink, Ronald,” I all but growl, feeling an authentic spark of anger. I don’t like people questioning my expertise. “Brain scans show no anomalies in his frontal lobe. And memories can be fabricated, sure, but not scars. Not the kind that he has.”

“So why not go to the police? I know they can be useless”—he chances a quick look at Bard—“but worth at least a shot, no?”

“I’ve tried convincing him, but he wouldn’t listen. My own hands are tied: I can’t file an official report without his consent. But then I can’t simply leave it be, either. Just thinking they’re out there, walking around with impunity after everything they’ve done...” I add a dramatic tremble to my voice, pinning my tortured gaze somewhere above Ronald’s shoulder. Woe is me, a righteous man pained by glaring injustice, so powerless in the face of human evil.

Bard caves in. If there is anything he can relate to, it’s the struggle between duty and virtue. 

“Look, I don’t know about an entire cult, but there have been some singular cases that I guess could be linked to Satanism if you squint. You know, details—like an upturned cross here, a desecrated Bible there, a bunch of stolen Eucharistic hosts....” He sucks his teeth, tracing a finger through the cold droplets on our bottle of Belvedere. “Also a few dead priests who may or may not have had creepy occult symbols carved into their skin.”

Ronald lets out a quiet whistle. “You lads sure manage to hide a lot from the media.”

“Yeah, cause the last thing we need is Satanic panic based on flimsy evidence and—”

“Carved-up priests are flimsy? Got it.”

“We were looking into it. But now there’s better things to do.”

I raise my brows. “Better as in waiting for the vigilante to drop another body?” 

Bard’s lips press into a thin line; I’ve touched a nerve. The vigilante remains a police priority, even if gradually losing his reign over the media. It is high time I gave London my sixth victim: Henry Barrymore, the king of illegal dog fights, laundering his blood money in real estate business. Personally I wouldn’t mind if all dogs were put down, but I chose him because a great many people seem to value the lives of dogs above those of fellow humans—which might just be the thing to win me a proper round of public applause. Curious, aren’t they, the double standards of humanity.

Except I don’t care about any of it, not now. Ciel has usurped all of my thoughts.

Ronald snaps his fingers, suddenly enlightened, making our waiter turn his head with a frown. “Hey, speaking of the devil—maybe he’ll take care of them! No offense, but he does seem better at sniffing out the baddies than dear old Met. I say quit worrying and leave it to our own morbid superhero.”

Thank you, Ronald, for touching an even deeper nerve. Bard glares at his flattened napkin and his brows crease once more in that peculiar, pensive frown that seems to appear whenever he tries to give something some actual thought. He needs to regain at least a semblance of faith in the justice system and in himself. 

“Okay, so freelancing. Where would you start?”

Well. You won’t find them, but you can at least pave the way. You are my plan B in case Vanel fails to lead me straight to the source, so you’d better not muck it up.

“Dig up those old cases. And look into child disappearances within the last five years.”

Notes:

If you want a little more context, look up Satanic panic/Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy (it's what Ronald refers to, and therapists were a big part of it).

Chapter 15

The lights of London blur before my eyes the entire way to Hampstead. The bill was staggering and so were Bard and Ronald as they bid me goodnight and mounted into their respective taxis. I am mostly sober by the time I reach home, but following a strip of light into the main parlour I see that someone else is anything but sober—and that he doesn’t seem to care I caught him drinking any more than he cared I’d caught him breaking into my computer. 

I step further inside. Ciel is up on the sofa, clothes unkempt and feet propped leisurely on the coffee table, trying to watch some old French film on some obscure French channel. On the ground lies a corkscrew, tossed aside after an apparently fierce combat with a bottle of Moscato d’Asti, the sweetest wine I had in my cellar. Now three-quarters empty.

“I tried the whisky from your decanter, at first. Disgusting swill,” says Ciel at my sight, and not even inebriation has managed to impair the clarity of his speech. It shows, instead, in the slackness of his limbs and the smoky, half-lidded gaze he cannot seem to focus too long on one spot. His world must be swimming, doubling, jumping before his eyes.

I measure him critically from head to toe. “Well, party’s over. Think you can brave the stairs?”

Ciel peers askance at the bottle, clearly wondering if he should defy me, but he is in no condition for defiance. He puts down his glass to motion me closer.

“No. Carry me.”

He really is drunk, to quite literally throw himself into my arms after two weeks of treating me like a leper. I step over and lift him from the sofa, carefully as though he were made of fine china, while he loops his arms around my neck and studies me from up close—the closest we’ve yet been. I can smell the Moscato on his breath and the lingering scent of herbal shampoo on his hair.

“You stink like a Russian drunk,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “And I liked your other cologne a lot better.”

I smile. “Note taken.” 

His head drops to my shoulder as we leave the parlour and cross the dim hall. Such a human thing to do, drowning one’s sorrows: the most predictable and unsophisticated way to cope. I would have expected it of absolutely everybody but him, and I have no doubts that he will condemn himself later for succumbing to such a lowly temptation. He’s the one supposed to governs his sorrows, not the other way around, coping not with intoxication but with dignity and defiance; he’s the one supposed to govern his demons, like a monarch struggling to keep his unruly subjects from riot, hanging with all might onto his declining, despotic reign. For now it shall end in a small mutiny quelled overnight, but little does he know there’s a full-scale rebellion brewing around the corner.

He’ll be as powerless to stop it as a sand castle facing against a great tide. And I shall be there as his lone defender, of course.

Halfway up the staircase, he cracks up with laughter: the manic, grotesque sort of laughter that reminds me of the way his aunt had laughed when she confessed to me her gravest sin.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Just that the last time someone carried me across the stairs, I was dying. How did I not die then?” 

I make no comment. An image resurfaces in my mind, like a memory, of Angelina Dalles barrelling down a flight of stairs with her dying nephew’s limp body in hands, one under his bruised little knees and the other around his blistering back. I imagine him as I imagined him before we met, as a gaunt and tortured orphan bleeding out on his aunt’s crimson clothes. He laughs at it now, if not with humour then certainly with bitterness, as though he’s left it all behind—but I think he’s stuck in that moment no matter how hard he tries not to look back. It’s catching up to him more and more.

“I remembered it while listening to the tape,” Ciel says, all laughter gone in an instant. “My throat was slashed open. Charred skin was peeling off my back....” He toys idly with a lock of hair on my nape as we walk down the corridor. “I hated her and I hate you too.”

So he’s talkative at last. My mind throngs with possibilities—questions he might be swayed to answer, strategies I could use to pull his tongue—but Ciel sees all of it coming.

“Shut up,” he grumbles and puts a hand over my mouth, refusing to let go until I set him down on the edge of his bed. Once there, he sits staring drowsily at the open door to the bathroom.

“Shower?” I ask.

He shakes his head, reels backwards, then commands with as much lordliness as he can muster:

“I’m tired. Undress me.”

“I’m not your servant.”

“Ha. No such luck. You’re worse than that: you’re nothing to me right now.”

I raise my brows. “That’s an awful lot of attention to be giving a nothing.”

“I’m drunk—have you noticed? Pissed. Sloshed. Legless. Smashed.” He giggles, such an odd sound to be coming from his mouth. “Liquor appears to make me benevolent towards lowlifes, so enjoy it while it lasts.”

Oh, I intend to. Never would I ever miss the smallest opportunity for touch. I intend to pounce on it and take from it as much as I can, bleed it dry and begin hunting for another. I liked having him close—nuzzled up warmly to my breast—and I like the idea of undressing him even more. 

I commence with his eye-patch, untying the thin string at the back of his head in one, effortless pull. Then, sleeve by sleeve, I take off his Weston blazer and toss it unfolded at the armchair by his bed, where I’ve sat during those restless nights he woke me with screams.

The buttons on his shirt are tiny, but I am nothing if not precise. Ciel surveys my every move like he doesn’t trust me to remain decent, but my hands are as slow and deliberate as if performing a delicate ritual, and the only indecencies I commit are the ones I commit in my thoughts.

Perhaps he can read my mind. Among the uncanny quiet of the room, where every smallest exhale and rustle of fabric resounds like a noise, it feels like I’m thinking out loud. Are Ciel’s own thoughts as fuzzy as his gaze? Or have they retained the same lucidity as his speech? I undo the last button and slip the shirt off his shoulders, ever so briefly allowing my eyes to roam his bared skin.

He really does look like he’s made from fine china. Like he would shatter if tipped just slightly over the edge, though I know it would take more force than that to break him. How many more cracks could I make before that happened?

I shall find out soon enough, I suppose. For now I must behave.

I drag his nightshirt from under the pillow and pull it over his head, covering him up while I take off his bottoms. Ciel looks groggy, as if swept and repelled by a wave of dizziness, closing his eyes to immediately snap them back open. He flops onto the mattress and lies there with hair spilt across the pillow, blinking up dazedly at the ceiling.

“You know,” he says, at last with a faint slur, “I think I get the appeal. This does feel pretty nice, all things considered.”

I reach underneath his nightshirt and hook my fingers below the waistband of his trousers, feeling his belly flutter under the touch.

“Yes, well… wait until you wake up tomorrow.”

He chuckles, lifting his hips while I ease down his underwear.

“Ooh, the dreaded hangover. Will you nurse me to health, o faithful servant of mine?”

I pause at his tone. I find no other way to describe it but flirtatious—sultry, even, paired with the pliant way he’s stretched upon the sheets. All I have left to undress are his socks: a black blend of silk and cotton ending just below his knees. 

“I think not,” I tell him, seizing one slender leg. “Perhaps you ought to learn a thing or two about consequences. Suffer due punishment for your thoughtless behaviour.”

His glossy lips twirl into a lazy, coquettish smile. “Yes, I’m sure you could think up a variety of ways to punish me accordingly... Sebastian.”

I stop. The name feels like a hot stab to my abdomen and I want it moaned, screamed, choked on. I slide off one sock down the slope of his calf, too slowly and taking too much care to drag my fingers along the softness of his skin, lingering too long around his ankle and the bridge of his slim foot. I don’t want to let go. I want to make the same journey but up, farther and preferably with my tongue, until I press my cheek to the plump inside of his thigh and breathe not air but his scent alone—

Except I can’t. I’m still behaving, still pulling on my thin thin leash. I lay his leg on the sheets and reach for the other, watching him watch me unsteadily below drooping eyelids and fluttering lashes, his blue iris now nearly as hazy as the violet.

Agony.

Should as opposed to want – how often one must choose between the two! It’s a burden I share with all of humanity, this primeval struggle of sentiment versus reason that in my case, bleached of sentiment as I am, comes down to navigating the wild fancies of my capricious nature. For all the juicy temptations I have had to resist in my thirty years, I find it particularly difficult to resist the urge to unzip my fly and use the boy’s body in every indecent way I can think of: to press his thighs together and thrust myself in between them, or to rub my cock on every inch of his milky skin and cum all over, or to keep pushing in and out of that pink, parted, wine-sweet mouth until I sate the wanton burn in my loins. I shouldn’t do it this way, but I want to. Predators of all kind, however keen of the hunt, can have a tough time denying a tasty morsel when it presents itself so readily for their taking. Such delectable prey, having eluded me doggedly for so long, now lies dosed and defenseless and dares even to tease me. How can I not at least consider, if only this once, to face the consequences I have been evading all my life? I really shouldn’t but I really want to fuck him—just lift his legs as far as they would bend and give him no more than two fingers, no more than spit, before stuffing him full of my cock and taking him every which way at once, because how could I decide on just one? He would be too docile from wine to resist me and his senses too numb to feel much pain, and he wouldn’t scream but only whimper weakly at the wall or at the ceiling, he would be perfect.

My leash almost snaps. My mask, so rarely escaping my control, must slip and reveal the agony of lust wreaking havoc upon my body, for Ciel sees it and chooses this precise moment to slide his bare leg between my thighs.

“Ha. Got you, motherfucker,” he drawls, this time not with disgust but with triumph, with venomous pleasure. “Or is your cock so hard because of my ‘unhealthy template of sexuality’, hmm?”

My lips twitch. Is that what this is all about? He lost the fight in the kitchen and had to prove his right through all available means? Sly, intractable brat. 

“If you’re calling me names again, I thought we’d agreed on ‘perverted vermin’?”

“Yes, but isn’t that too lenient? Does it not sound more like a pet name? English—no, human tongue in general—lacks means to describe exactly how sick you are, and believe me when I say that I’ve looked.”

“What would you call yourself then, to be taunting me in this manner? Because I would call you a hypocrite.”

“And I would call myself drunk.”

“A drunk hypocrite, in that case. Not mutually exclusive.”

Ciel snorts, then yawns. Then all his drunken impishness drops like an act and his face sobers with gravity.

“Are you going to do something?”

I want to counter his question – if I were to do something, what would you do? – but I can tell he is too weary not only to fight back, but to so much as think of what happens once he sobers. Besides, I think I know what he would do. He would not let his debasement go unpunished, not this time. Not again.

It’s not so much a question of ‘if’, but of ‘how’. Would he find a discreet way to sabotage my reputation? Or relinquish his pride and finally make a fuss? Would he abandon the transparent identity of a ghost and take up the role of a helpless, bestially abused child? I cannot predict if he would trust his aunt, failed as he had been by family in the past, but I do know that Mrs Midford would move heaven and hell and all of Great Britain to see me put to justice. My consequences could take form of either a creeping downfall, or a public outcry and an army of top lawyers. Whatever the means, I am sure Ciel Phantomhive would not rest until I was well and truly destroyed.

So I don’t ask him anything. “No,” I only say, lifting the covers so he can burrow himself underneath. 

He takes this without relief, just dull acceptance and overpowering exhaustion. “Well aren’t you a saint,” he says, giving me a last glance over the shoulder before, without so much as a ‘goodnight’, he sinks at once into drunken slumber.

I sit there beside him for a longer while: listening to his ponderous breathing, calming the flow of my raging blood. I smooth the duvet over his back and cannot help but laugh a little into the quiet of the room.

“You play it off like you planned it but the truth is that you slipped, didn’t you? Lost the ground under your feet. Couldn’t focus on your books and couldn’t seek my help, so you went and took the easiest way out.”

I pause, as if expecting an answer, but Ciel does not stir. He lies immersed in his stuporous sleep.

“You can’t get her words out of your head, can you? She said she hated you. Wished you had died instead of your parents. Didn’t give you Lau’s drugs because she wanted you to feel every second of torture and shame. She had a gun and didn’t lift a finger to protect you. When she carried you down the stairs, she did it to selfishly salvage her own skin and not yours. But most of all, you can’t forget the sound of her wailing: how it blared through the laptop speakers in my dark study, raw and real as if she were there with you in the room. Isn’t that why you drank?”

I smile and rise to my feet, halting with my hand on the light switch. “I hung her to have you all to myself, you know. Don’t shut me out.”

Notes:

Sad to announce the next chapter will be late due to my writer's block ;-;

Chapter 16

At the word ‘therapy’, most will invoke the image of a troubled individual lying on a chaise longue with hands twined upon their stomach. They’ll think of bolster pillows, Freud quotes, and sad monologues delivered at the ceiling. They’ll imagine a blasé therapist staring at the clock and doodling senselessly in their notepad. 

It’s not true. With Irene Diaz, however, I must admit the call is close.

A session without a monologue is not a session. The monologue is the session—sometimes sad but mostly peeved—the only treatment for her neuroticism that has yielded any fruit. The clock conspires against me and the recorder acts as my only true ally: keeping dutiful track of her opera repertoire and marital squabbles, noting for me the names of her cousins, girl-friends, and West Highland white terriers (all of which she has more than anyone should ever want or need). 

People listen to her with bated breath during concerts, and she has come to expect the same treatment off the stage. My strategy is to hum and nod along with practised interest, maintaining sensible intervals between each hum and nod so as not to spoil the flow of her inane rhetoric. To maximise my input, I may occasionally throw in a smart quote or an improvised, motivating speech to help her out of an impasse. It tends to sound like pseudo-spiritual drivel straight from a trashy self-help book about midlife crisis, but Irene always seems greatly impressed by my therapeutic wisdom. It’s not altogether a bad arrangement; I like my work to be challenging and my time to be well-spent, but if she chooses to pay me a pretty penny for what could be just as well achieved by one of her dogs or girl-friends, so be it. 

If only the clock could make an exception and turn its hands faster.

I may not doodle, but I do have a habit of staring through the window above her shoulder. Halfway through March came a thaw and torrential rains, showering London with as much ferocity as the January snow. Watching the furious downpour, I think of Bard’s freelance cult-hunt and Ciel’s date with Vanel. I mind-edit my lecture for the psychology congress in Paris while Mrs Diaz prattles, on and on, about her sister’s upcoming wedding and how the good-for-nothing clod she calls a husband got drunk last weekend and how her vocal coach dared imply she should improve her German accent when she lived in Germany for two years and that was where she met her good-for-nothing husband and then finally how smart I am not to have married—and although I listen to that stream of consciousness with a minimum of sustained attention, I do notice once it cuts off mid-sentence and doesn’t start over.

A phone call vibrates through the suddenly quiet study.

“Oh.” Mrs Diaz blinks, flow broken. “Is that yours?”

Of course it’s mine; her ringtone is a terrible midi rendition of Bach’s Violin Partita which she never puts on silent. It’s mine, and I have been waiting for this call long enough to have come up with more than one plan for kidnapping.

Others would describe the arrival of a long-anticipated moment with words like ‘uncontained excitement’, ‘nervousness’, or ‘leaping heartbeat’. After almost two weeks of anticipation, I naturally feel nothing of the sort—but I do feel something. Wakefulness, I think, as if I’ve downed two shots of espresso or taken a stimulant. I feel greed, and even more impatience, and that devious thrill I get before scoring a whim.

That’s everything I can name, but not everything there is. All of the above comes undercut by something I cannot quite label, some odd twinge in an odd place I have no time to inspect any closer.

I take out the buzzing phone and shoot Mrs Diaz a remorseful, ‘puppy-eyed’ look.

“I’m terribly sorry, but do you mind if I take this? It’s my emergency number.”

Normally she would take grave offense, but I have an effect on people that makes it hard for them to refuse me. 

It works particularly well on women in failing marriages.

“Of course, go right ahead! I can wait.”

I hurry outside, close the doors, and lean against the frame.

“Good afternoon, Mr Ferrara.”

“Signor Landers. Is your grandfather’s furniture still cluttering your basement?”

“Sure is.”

“I could use a couple of new arrivals. How busy are you today?”

Busy. I glance at my wristwatch. “You happen to have perfect timing. I’m off in twenty minutes,” I lie, opening the contact list on my business phone to search out my next appointment. Mr Redmond will be shortly receiving a call with ‘deepest apologies’ for an ‘urgent cancellation’. 

“Glad to hear it. What’s your address?”

“Ah—are you at the shop?”

“Sure am.”

“I’m not far. I can pick you up.” Whatever happens, I don’t want his car anywhere near Hampstead. “My place is quite tricky to find, anyway.”
 
Vanel hesitates—as he should, in his profession, at the prospect of getting into a stranger’s car—but he can’t seem to recall anything suspicious about the fetching businessman who came into his shop to rid himself of family heirlooms.

“Sounds fine by me. See you, signore.”

I slip back into the office. Mrs Diaz, alarmed by my distraught features, generously offers to add the remaining minutes to our next session.

It’s time, then. As I leave through the front door, car keys in hand, I see Ciel coming slowly down the left wing of the stairs: oblivious. Always getting ambushed by fate.

He looks in my direction, but his gaze goes straight through me. As if I were the ghost, not he.

 

***

 

“Blasted London weather,” Vanel says in greeting, drenched after the short walk from his shop to my car. “Only way is to keep an umbrella strapped to your belt all year, I guess. It’s at times like these that I miss Italy.”

I hum in agreement and roll off the pavement. We don’t chat; I keep my eyes trained on the road and Vanel keeps his on the cracked screen of his phone. My heart beats steadily, but I don’t think I am calm; I know well my default state of emotional unbeing, and this is something entirely else. That odd, unidentified twinge is sure to be the root of it, swelling like a mild headache swells into a throbbing, insufferable migraine.

I let it be. Maybe it’s one of those small aches that pass when ignored.

We push through central traffic and the jam seems to have no end. At the last crossing in Marylebone, mere seconds before I make it past, the light turns red and condemns me for two idle minutes of toiling thoughts.

I crank up the radio. My ears pick up bits of the weather forecast, announcing more deluge for the rest of the week. I listen to news of tomorrow’s rain and watch today’s rain beat against the hood of my car, each droplet heavy like hail, knocking at the windscreen as if trying to get inside.

A strangely deafening sound.

Out on the street, tides of pedestrians waddle hunched under a sea of umbrellas. Their grey figures loom indistinctly through thick jets of rain battering upon them from a ceiling of leaden clouds. And this is the London that I like: lightless and plunged into all-encompassing gloom, veiled in ashen fog that seeps into every cranny like it might never lift.

But I’m not in the mood for contemplation. The dismal charm is lost on me today, overshadowed by the events I have orchestrated towards an uncertain finale—events that are waiting to unfold just a little further beyond the crossing. 

Left. I’m supposed to go left. Any time now, just one more minute, just as soon as the light turns green.

My gaze strays inevitably to the passenger side. Vanel is busy typing a message I cannot read from this angle, but I do see clearly his jagged cuticles and the speck of dirt under the nail of his left thumb. His skin is dry, hands hairy, lips chapped. He has blackheads on the side of his nose and his eyebrows could use a plucking. A pungent, citrusy-fresh cologne lingers under his rain-wet stink, invading the agarwood car scent I sprayed only this morning. And is that the same horrendous suit from before? It’s hard to tell. I can see only a trench coat too thin for March and a pair of Chelsea boots with pointed toes. I see only the mud they have splattered over my custom-fitted mats. 

Filth.

Wherever I look, I see filth. All of him is filthy and ugly and wrong.

I look away. My mind gropes for distractions, resting itself with the image of Ciel. That glimpse of him I’d caught before leaving: chin high, gaze imperious, one hand placed on the banister…. Was he not sublime? Was he not pristine? Yes, every inch of him worthy of worship. To now think that this lowbred mongrel will look at him with his wrinkly, drab eyes; speak to him in that ill-accented voice; might try to touch him with those dirty, calloused paws... again.

Something grips me, and this time I recognise it without fail. I think I’ve been feeling it all along: since the rusty bell rang above my head and I smelled old wood and heard a voice calling behind my back. It has wormed its way under my skin, this hate. It awakened what I had put to sleep for the winter, what I had long since given a name. It has been summoning me, and I always try to answer. Don’t I?

It’s loud now. Everything is so loud.

The blurred radio chatter and the drumming of rain; the rhythmic ticking of indicators going left, blinking green; the irregular tap-tap-tap of Vanel’s fingers on the keyboard, fast and smooth then slow and stuttering, and why is no one’s phone ever on silent? Even my own breath is loud, and the purr of the Aston Martin’s powerful engine, and the slow creak of leather as my hands tighten their grip on the steering wheel—no gloves, just whitening knuckles on matte black, just short of a tremble.

And all of it in fortississimo, louder than loud. A cacophonous symphony pulsing against the inside of my skull, splitting it apart as with a stonecutter’s chisel. The wipers beat like a metronome to the hectic tempo, breaking up swarms of raindrops as they swing hypnotically from left to right. I stare ahead through the arch they clear on the windscreen and the light is still red, still saying stop, piercing bright like a beacon through the murky air. My vision smears and my head feels like it might explode if I don’t give in right here and right now. 

I have to, I need to. It’s unbearable. Trying to suppress it feels like struggling to stay above the surface of a stormy sea. Monstrous waves toss me angrily to and fro, one after another, pulling me further and further down into icy depths until I sink.

The light turns yellow. I indicate right and step hard on the gas, full throttle, swerving with impetus onto the neighbouring lane. The BMW driver behind me lets loose a furious honk, and the only thing that stops him from flipping me off is British politeness.

I feel the tickle of Vanel’s questioning stare on my cheek.

“Sorry about that,” I tell him with a syrupy smile. “Wrong lane.”

He shrugs and goes back to his texting. I set the new course, turn off the radio, and ring the landline. Ciel doesn’t pick up until the second dial.

“I won’t be home for dinner,” I say.

“Fine,” he says. 
 

***

 

Earl’s Court welcomes me with complicit silence.

A private peace reigns within the house walls, like it’s a sanctuary where the rumble of central London is not allowed. Car horns and squealing brakes blur together in the distance, and the rain sounds like it’s falling from two blocks away.

The world outside the window might as well not exist. I, for one, find my thoughts unable to drift anywhere beyond the bleak spaces of Ciel’s old room. 

It’s a dark room, with a darker past. The curtains that have kept so many shameful secrets will now keep one more, warding off prying eyes and banishing all light from the street. The chandelier’s dimmed bulbs serve only to lengthen the shadows, and the fire I have kindled in the adjoining parlour casts only a weak, orange flicker across the stale carpet. Every piece of furniture has been covered with plastic sheets to keep dust at bay, stripping the rooms of all shape and soul they might have had when still lived in. Not one thing has changed since the day Ciel wheeled out his suitcase through the door, not even the locks. The townhouse has stood unoccupied for months on end, unable to find a buyer, and in my wait I took the time to wonder why not.

Perhaps Angelina Dalles’s suicide is rumoured to have happened in here, not the clinic. Perhaps the dark past has saturated every corner of the house with a tangible air of haunting. Perhaps all who come here for viewing can sense it—like a putrid, unwashable stink that has settled into the foundation—but cannot quite put their finger on where it comes from. 

Or, perhaps, the house has been waiting for this moment all along. 

Could I have picked a better place to end Vanel’s life? It’s the poetic justice befitting of a vigilante. I cannot help but appreciate the fatefulness of what I’m about to do—and what a word, fatefulness, for me to be throwing around! I’ve never believed in fate, the alignment of stars, or any cosmic harmony that rewards good deeds and punishes the bad. If the universe has laws, I am there to defy them. What goes around comes around, goes a saying, but the saying’s wrong: not one thing has come around after my thirty years of sinning. No taste of my own medicine, no divine retribution, not a silver of just deserts.

For the sake of dramatic effect, however, it could be said that karma has at long last come to collect its due from Azzurro Vanel, also known as Marco Ferrara, to punish him for all the misdeeds he had committed and for one misdeed in particular. It could be said that it was destiny, not violent whim, that had driven me to take a different turn at the crossing in Marylebone.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, but it had been as easy as if I had planned it all along. I found the key at the bottom of my glove compartment, waiting for this day like the house itself. I told Vanel my umbrella had broken and watched him run from rain, hands above his head like a schoolgirl shielding a hairdo. He didn’t stop to look around and wonder if he’d ever been here; he dashed for the porch with all the obliviousness of cattle tumbling blindly to slaughter. He might have wavered, dripping wet in the front hall, with a prickle of déjà vu, but I was only one step behind him. I struck a swift blow to the back of his head and dragged his heavy, motionless body all the way up the winding flight of stairs. I found the right room and there I flung him onto the plastic-covered bed in the middle, the very same upon which three years ago he committed his most fatal misdeed.

Once the fire was stoked, the zip ties fastened and the rope tied tight, I began my vigil. I sat down on the room’s only chair by its only window and waited, while twilight lowered and the pelting rain dwindled down to a patter.

For an hour now, I haven’t moved. I’ve watched Vanel lie unconscious and I watch him stir finally on Ciel’s old bed with a small, pained sigh. He wakes with the calm of someone used to the idea of peril: be it used to facing peril or posing that peril himself. He doesn’t scream, even though I haven’t gagged him; he doesn’t wrestle, not even to check how strong are the restraints.

Where is the panic, the confusion? I miss it. Dismay is fuel for that unparalleled high of dominance I reap from killing, and I want to exert that dominance over Azzurro Vanel in particular. So how dare he awaken with such infuriating composure, as if he had anything under control?  

No matter. I shall have more fun this way, crushing that composure. Kindling fear as I have kindled fire in the silent hearth next door: from a small spark to a potent, roaring blaze.

“Good evening,” I say to him in Italian. “Do you recognise this place?”

His eyes roam all over the dusky room. The bagged furniture, floral wallpaper, and burgundy carpet are not enough to jog his memory.

“Hint one: we’re in Earl’s Court. Hint two: you came here in winter three years ago.”

“Ah.” His face brightens with belated recognition and his lips twist up into a malicious grin. “It took you three years to find me?”

“It took me one phone call to find you,” I correct him coolly, glowering from above. “But you’ve kept me waiting long enough as it is. Allow me to cut straight to the chase here: you’re going to die tonight, but you can still do yourself a favour and persuade me to make it less painful. All you need to do is tell me what I want to know.”

“Might as well skip the quiz. I’m not talking.”

“Ah, don’t give up so fast. The questions aren’t that hard. Here’s one: what are the names of the other two men who came here with you that night?”

“Brother Asmodai and Brother Forneus,” he replies, without pause, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. I wait for an elaboration, but there is none. 

“Question two: how does this work?” I ask, pulling out the small device I found in his pocket: a black one-way pager, the sort to have fallen into rapid disuse with the introduction of mobiles. After pushing every button in a variety of configurations, I was left staring at nothing but rows of illegible symbols. “I assume this sends you time and location for the next gathering. How do I read the code?”

“You don’t. Only the initiated can read it.”

I can try to pull his tongue. I have the time, I have the means. But I have no desire: to hear him speak another word, to wait any longer to appease my bloodlust, or to grant him anything approaching a merciful death. Now that I have him in my grasp, ensnared the way a spider ensnares another in its deftly spun web, I fully intend to see him squirm.  

“Game over,” I say, rising from my seat. “Your score is two wrong answers out of two.”

I pass into the flame-lit parlour next door. There had been no Italian antiques in the cellar, but I did find an ample storage of wood. The oak has built a fine, lasting fire that filled the vacant rooms with warmth and heated the wrought iron poker I’d picked out from the tool stand.  

I wrench it from smouldering embers and come back holding it by the shaft through a pair of oven gloves.

“Perhaps this too looks familiar?”

Vanel lifts his head off the bed. “I think we used a different one. Blunt end, rounded handle. Didn’t have that little upturned hook at the end... oh, and much shorter.”

My lips twitch. I say nothing, only come closer. He snorts.

“You can’t scare me with this, Signor Landers. I bear the mark of The Beast! Branded into my flesh!”

“Be that as it may,” I breathe, shoving a rag into his mouth, “this might still sting.” 

His face blanches as I turn him to the side and yank down his pinstripe trousers. He has a mole on his right buttock, just where it joins to the thigh, and his flaccid cock swings out from the tangle of pubic hair to curve at his hip. The plastic sheet crackles as he tries to worm away, twisting his neck to gape at his back with bulging eyes.

The bed shakes, the rope holds, the zip ties sink viciously into the flesh of his wrists. No more insolent smirks, no more audacity. It’s wiped off his face and succeeded by ugly terror—the most delicious terror I have ever beheld. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.

His pucker sizzles at the first nudge of scalding iron. The spiked edge penetrates with ease past the clenched ring of muscles and I push, inch after inch, tearing a path through his bowels. The deeper I get, the harder I have to push. I brace myself against the bed and bear down with both arms, flexing my muscles, searing and piercing further still along his spine. Impaling. Vanel screams himself hoarse into the rag, thrashing savagely against the rope but it’s no use, it’s too late, he’s stuck with the poker buried all the way to its looped little hilt. Any further and it would jut out of his throat.

My tranquil voice overlaps his strangling cries, “If one follows the vertebrae without puncturing vitals, this lovely torture can last up to several days. But I haven’t really done the best job of avoiding internal damage, now have I? Sorry. It’s my first time.”

I hear retching and take out the gag, soaked with vomit. He tries to swallow it back down and chokes, but not to death. Droplets of perspiration bead like dew on his veined forehead, trickling down the slope of his brows to then pour inside the creases of the plastic sheet under his head. He wheezes for air and finds just enough of it in his lungs to spew out a gargling string of insults.

And he looks straight at me, with eyes that are at once beast-like and human. Possessed by lunatic fury, ablaze with pain. 

It’s something that cannot be grasped unless seen, this look. It’s like witnessing a display of aurora, or sighting any of the Seven Wonders of the World. One can view photographs, and read the most exhaustive descriptions, and try one’s best to imagine the beauty—but it’s never going to be the same as seeing and living it for oneself. Some things just have to be experienced in the flesh, drank in with several senses at once. Close and intimate, real and within reach.

What I see in Vanel’s eyes is rarer than Northern Lights and to me more wondrous than any Wonder. Something that can be borne only in the throes of imponderable agony, and only by someone teetering on the brink of inescapable death. That is why I kill: to see it.

But not this time. This time I have different reasons.

“You touched him,” I whisper. “Filthy, unworthy hands. Marked him like you owned him, like you had the right.”

Vanel splutters, straining out every word like it might become his last. “Oh, get over yourself. In the end we did the kid a favour. He was practically a vegetable.” He chortles, a burbling wet sound. “To sacrifice him would’ve been an affront, so we ended his misery. You’re welcome.”

“Affront,” I repeat blandly. 

He lights up, forgetting pain. “Si, si. A sacrifice is not only a token of reverence, but a gift. Would you gift someone a broken, headless doll? A gutted teddy bear from a dumpster? A one-eyed puppy with fleas?”

I press the rag to his mouth, seize the poker, and jerk it around by the handle like a giant spinning reel. His eyes bug out of his head and he blabbers something that sounds like Latin, blood and spit foaming at his mouth in the likeness of a rabid dog. 

And something swells in me all the while, expands in my chest like a growing core, like a rubber balloon pumped full of hot air, about to pop. I would call this ‘anger’, but it’s nothing like the anger I’ve felt in the past. When it consumes reason and tears control from my grasp, it can only be ‘rage’. Stifling, swirling, caught high in my throat. I must have always carried it in me, stashed somewhere deep to prevent an outbreak, like a dormant pathogenic virus now spreading in a toxic rush through my system. Mutating.

Vanel grins at me. His bared teeth glisten with blood. I have to lean in to make out what he’s saying:

“Did you buy him a pretty little coffin?”

“He’s alive,” I hiss, looming closer. “You stupid fucks didn’t even stick around to make sure.”

I pull back just in time to evade an eruption of spittle. His body shakes with mad, guttural laughter, the last of his life. Bubbling red froth spills and sprays from his mouth as he says, “Ah, mi dispiace. I went all out, but you know how it is after a good fuck. Your whole body goes slack and your muscles stop listening…. Vegetable or not, I have to admit he was good for one thing and one thing only. Still a pretty cum bucket, if rather disposable.”

For a second I cannot believe this is happening. My hands are shaking, and I don’t remember them ever shaking before. Not like this, not with emotion. 

It doesn’t feel good, being enraged. It makes my head spin and boils me from the inside like a fever. There can only be one cure.

I seize the poker and pull. 

And Vanel’s howl is so wonderfully inhuman that I pull harder. The thorny little hook shreds through his mangled entrails and the shaft comes out black with blood. The odour of feces hits my nostrils, but I don’t care. 

Vermin, affront, filth.

I lift the poker high in the air and bring it back down with all my might. Once, then twice, then over and over. I crack his skull, pulverise his nose, poke out his eyes. His jaw splits with a crunch and his teeth collapse shattered into his mouth. Blood pools around his head, branching out in rivers across the sheet; fat crimson globs splatter over the faded wallpaper like paint, tinting the flowers a newer red. My arms throb but I swing again, and again, until I have nothing more left to break.

What used to be Vanel’s face is now a soggy, gory, jam-like pulp. I pull from it with a squelch, and then—as I straighten myself with heaving chest and blood-sticky hair falling over my face—somewhere on the edge of my vision looms a figure.

I’d had, thinking of fatefulness as I waited through the evening, a certain reflection. Wouldn’t the justice be far more poetic if Ciel were here to watch his defiler take his last breath? Or, better still, if he stopped that breath himself? I thought then that life could never invent such perfect scenarios without aid, but I was wrong. Life has an unmatched sense of drama and I am no longer alone.

“When did you get here?” I ask, dropping the soiled poker on the sheet.

The room is small, but Ciel’s his voice seems to reach me from afar.

“Does it matter?”

Something wet runs down my temple, and I can’t tell if it’s blood or just sweat.

“Why are you here, then?”

“I wanted to see why you’ve been acting so strange. I stuck a GPS tracker in your car and saw that you had come here.” 

His syllables don’t stutter. His gaze doesn’t shy away from death, studying the mutilated body like a museum exhibit. He hardly bats an eye: no slack-jawed horror, no startled exclamations, not so much as a gasp. He doesn’t keel over with nausea or run outside to yell murder, nor does he take a single step back as I come closer. When I’m just a few inches away he tears his gaze from Vanel and looks up at me with starry, spellbound eyes—as if he were watching fireworks shoot up in the sky, or admiring a beautiful sunset by the sea. Like I were one of the Wonders of the World.

My rage was brief and violent as a cloudburst. I cannot name the feeling that takes it over as Ciel brings his hand up to my face, swabbing gently at the drying blood with a silken handkerchief I think used to belong to his mother. It smells like jasmine, and he lets it stain.

“Have you had dinner?”

He shakes his head, peeling a lock of hair off my cheek.

“You must be hungry. Go home, little one; I have a lot of cleaning to do.”

He nods without moving from the doorway. I lift up my hand and pry the dirty handkerchief from his fingers.

“Go on now. I will see you tomorrow.”

His gaze lingers on my lips before gliding above my shoulder towards the bed. 

“Riposi in pace,” he murmurs, the words leaving him barely formed, without resonance, like vapour.

He throws me one last glance and turns his back to me slowly, somewhat wistfully, as if hating for us to part. He disappears into the dark and the tap of his heels on the staircase is cadenced, mechanic. As though I’d put him under a spell and he moved in some hypnotic trance, unable to defy my bidding.

The spell was infatuation. To have killed in his name was like sending him a valentine, signed in red ink.

The front door clicks shut but I stand rooted to my spot, searching out the darkness ahead like he might still return.

We used to be strangers, in a way. I underestimated the depth of his hatred and he misjudged the enormity of my vice. But now I know him, and he knows me. I know that the nine-year-old boy with sparkling eyes who smiled so prettily in his family photo is gone in more ways than one. And he knows what I hide behind my mask now, what I show only those who won’t live to tell the tale: that black, rotten soul he glimpsed in the pool of my eyes but only now has seen for all that it is, and for all that it’s not. He’s seen it as clearly as I have seen his own—dark too, no less twisted, beyond all salvation. 

We met for the very first time, and were smitten.

Notes:

Soo this chapter was a big milestone in the story! I hope this solution was not disappointing (compared to Ciel confronting Vanel), and I'm very curious to hear what you thought of it!
also I hope it wasn't too gross

Chapter 17

Notes:

Sorry for the wait, especially after the amazing feedback I got on the last chapter! Hope this one will prove worth it ♡

When I arrived back in Hampstead, the air smelt of rain and dawn had not yet broken. The raging, storming sea had finally spat me out, though I couldn’t say how I came to wash up on the shore. My memory ended on the moment Ciel left the house.

A curious mechanism, the ‘autopilot’. One might forget locking the door but lock it infallibly every time, out of habit, in a deeply rooted ritual of the subconscious. As I stood on top of the front stairs in this humid interlude between night and day, I knew without remembering that I had got rid of every print, every speck, every droplet of blood. I had gone through that checklist too many times before; I didn’t need to be around for another clean-up. I delegated the job to my autopilot like a boss delegating an employee to do their dirty work.

There was no need for inspection, nor supervision. The pendulum clock ticking in the foyer proved I’d been busy until five, and the deep-set ache in my muscles testified to a long night of labour.

I kept only a handful of flashbacks. I could see Vanel’s corpse spread out on the bed, still replete with fresh blood, yielding not without resistance under the wood-saw I had found in the cellar. This much I chose to remember: every bone I had cut through and every limb I had wrapped with plastic, bundling him up as though he were a pile of rubbish destined for a landfill.

My memory, fragmented like the corpse, kept playing tricks long after I’d turned up in haze on my doorstep. Though at no point could I remember setting the alarm, it rang faultlessly at nine sharp to wake me in time for the first patient. To this moment I cannot, off the top of my head, recall what I prescribed Mr Woodley for the recurring of his hallucinations, nor am I sure what I advised Miss Hopkins as the next step to overcome her acrophobia. All I recall with certainty is not having seen Ciel: not in the morning, not in the afternoon, not even come evening. Mrs Midford drove him from school to their house and phoned later to present me with the fait accompli. She didn’t think she needed permission to see her nephew.

I slammed my phone on the desk without a word.

Ciel’s absence felt like an empty pit, and I sought to fill it. I arranged to meet up for dinner with a colleague from Broadmoor, but not even gossip about high-security patients could win my attention. I did not live but only witnessed the evening, like a passive and uncaring observer. Small talk was made; drinks were downed; a battle was fought over who should get the bill. In flesh, I had been present—seated by the round table and dining on lamb chops in red wine gravy—but my thoughts had been absent. Words could be heard leaving my lips in the low timbre of my voice and it had been my money, ultimately, that paid off the restaurant bill, but my mind had been adrift elsewhere from beginning to end. Disengaged from reality in a fit of depersonalisation.

Has my imposture gone so far already? Almost as if my disguise—the Doctor Michaelis I present to the world as a decoy—has acquired sentience and continued to function on its independent own. I didn’t have to pull any strings or whisper directions from behind the stage; I didn’t have to actively hold up my mask for it to stay fixed in place. It resembled splitting myself in half—or multiplying, rather, for my original self has suffered no losses in the creation of its alter ego. All my parts still make a whole. Instead of battling for hegemony, the two entities coexist peacefully in a single body and mind, wherein one takes a turn at the steer and the other sails into reverie.

My turn didn’t come until I found myself back on the front stairs, as if time had warped itself around me and turned a full cycle.

I looked to the pendulum clock and saw midnight. Early enough to catch Ciel awake, though I could tell he’d already switched off the lights. I stopped before his door and lingered, listening out for sounds from within. I put my hand on the knob and almost turned it. When prey comes close enough to touch, should I not go and get it? Reach back and trap it once and for all? Or will it startle if I make one false move? What if it’s not tamed enough, what if I misread the trust in its eyes? It has been known to fool me before, after all.

To ruin months of patience by rushing the end... foolish, I thought, when so close to claiming my prize. Better wait until daylight than corner him in the dark.

I turned around and went to bed, if not yet to sleep. I had waded through the day in a dreamlike state only to find insomnia waiting at the end of it. As I lie now on my back and stare listlessly at the ceiling, sleep does not inch closer but slinks farther out of my reach by the minute. I am myself again, for what it’s now worth, no longer hovering but anchored among the dark outlines of my bedroom. There’s the leafy shadow of my potted ficus tree, and the bronze-framed mirror from Alfies antique market mounted above the dead fireplace, and the half-cranked door to my walk-in closet filled with black suits. There’s my paper-strewn desk and the narrow bookcase with titles I haven’t picked up in months.

I sigh, turning my head on the pillow. The rain has retreated to gather more strength and left behind an almost uneasy silence. Tonight’s moon shines without flare, unaccompanied by stars, barely in sight through the opened curtains. It floats insubstantially on the overcast sky as though it would rather be anywhere else, doing anything other than illuminating such a still, stifling night. 

When the knocking comes, it comes so softly I mistake it for another trick of my jaded mind. The knob seems to turn by itself and the door swings open in a ghost-like motion to reveal a shape. It enters, wispy and out of focus, pressing against the door to close it with a quiet click.

“Sebastian,” Ciel whines, like a little boy who fell and scraped his knees. “Are you awake? I can’t sleep.”

I lift off the pillow, straining my senses.

How could a voice so distinguished be capable of such sweetness of pitch? How could it moan infantile complaints after all those clever words I heard it speak? If that voice came from a faceless crowd or behind my back, I would take it to be the voice of a stranger. It couldn’t possibly belong to the Ciel Phantomhive I know.

But who else could have sneaked in so late after midnight into my bedroom?

I sit upright.

“Why? What’s the matter?”

Ciel shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m having bad dreams.” 

“Is that so? What kind?”

“About this one mister,” he says. I can sense the impish smile on his lips. “He seems nice at first but he actually likes to kill people, and in my dream there was a lot of blood and it was so so scary.” 

“My, that sounds awful.”

“What if he comes for me? Please can I sleep with you?”

I draw a deep sigh, as if I’d rather he didn’t but it couldn’t be helped.

“Very well,” I concede, extending my hand in invitation. And my blood is singing, a lusty chorus in the nocturnal quiet, each beat of my heart pumping a fresh hot flood, overflowing.

Yes, yes. Come to me, sweetheart. Just a little bit closer.

He comes, barefoot across the parquet and the soft woollen rug, almost there. He gives me his hand and my fingers clamp down on it like the jaws of a trap, closing around his wrist like a manacle—and I won’t let go, I won’t. I lift the duvet and Ciel slips unashamedly into my arms, upon my lap, under the warmth of my sheets. Right where I want him, where he fits so well.

We make no move yet. His hands rest wrapped around my neck, thumbs pressed on either side of my Adam’s apple, tuning into the thunderous throb of my pulse. Our gazes fight to pierce the dark, and keep failing. The moon idles and we’re nothing but grey, featureless shapes. I can’t see the lust in his eyes, nor can he see mine, but it flows between us like a current. It’s only getting stronger, swifter, impossible to resist.

Our foreheads touch, our lips just nearly. Only millimetres apart now. His breath is sweet from honeyed milk, tumbling in erratic puffs from his mouth into mine. The points of his thumbs dig into my neck and one of us will snap soon, one of us will give in.

It shouldn’t be me. Not this first time.

If I tighten my grasp all at once, he will reject it. If I rough him up too hard, he will only hate me anew. Even in the wild fantasies that have swarmed me all winter, I never forgot that my touch could trigger his demons. Strangers have taken him by brute force too many times, and I must be the one to help him regain lost control. It’s the only broken part of him that I wish to set right. I have to show restraint and let him take one careful step at a time; adjust to his pace even if it has to be gentle and slow; submit to his will until he begins submitting to mine. There can be no bite of pain, only pleasure, and not a single touch without consent.

But honestly, who am I kidding?

I curl a fist into the hair at his nape and hold him still as our mouths collide. My tongue laps up his sweetness and my arms lock behind him like steel bars, crushing. Final. I make my embrace into a prison, but Ciel does not wish to escape it. He tears the buttons off my shirt and weaves his fingers into my hair with a deep, delighted groan. And so hungrily he kisses me back; as though I too have been swarming his winter dreams. His cheeks radiate a fevered heat and his body, as I free it from his nightgown in a single rip, arches up inflamed beneath the rough press of my hands. Burning, for me. 

I lay my claim and ask not for permission. Greedy, unbounded, I paw up his thighs to the soft swell of his bottom—grabbing handfuls, leaving imprints—until I freeze mid-touch at the base of his spine. 

There’s no more silky skin to caress, no more softness. It runs out and transmutes into a puckered expanse of scars: ridged, imperfect, spamming irregularly all the way to his shoulders.

A jolting contrast. I forgot they were supposed to be there, those secret scars I’d imagined him showing me so many times. I don’t like the way they feel under my fingertips. 

The pause makes Ciel impatient. He huffs, wriggles, nibbles on my bottom lip, and tugs at the drawstring of my pants. Down, off, and my cock springs free. Ciel tests his grip on it, firm yet shuddering, and measures me closely in the dark: thumbing at the wet slit, tracing the thickest vein, circling two fingers around the swollen shaft. My own hands unfreeze, dropping back to where no flaws taint his skin, and before I can stop to think or think to stop my fingers spread his cheeks and push into him forcibly—

Easily. Slipping into a wet, ready heat. Loosened but still tight, clenching.

“Oh, you poor thing,” I groan into his ear. “Really couldn’t sleep a wink, could you? Were the dreams that bad?”

“Horrible,” he drawls in the same childish voice, pumping my cock. “I couldn’t stop thinking—”

“—about the mister?”

“Yes,” he gasps when my fingers curl just right. “Yes. About the mister. And then I heard someone outside my door, and—”

“And what?”

He loses track of his words, breathless, lifting his hips off my lap. “And I just… I just kept thinking of what he would do to me, if he caught me.”

I pull out from him, mad with need. His fingers slide up and down, slipping and tangling, fumbling to guide me inside, quickly, clumsily, until I find a grip on the base of my cock and push. Such a tight fit, the head alone, but he keeps bearing down like he wants all of it at once, and I bury myself inside his lithe little body with one harsh snap of my hips. His nails sink into my chest; his lips tear from mine with a sharp hiss from between his teeth. But he didn’t ask for gentleness, and his wish was my command.

He moves and I move: no subtlety, no finesse. I bite down on his shoulder and his lips latch to my neck in revenge. And the sounds he makes as I fuck him—intoxicating, erotic. Dripping with an ecstasy of pain, a music sweeter even than screams. He’s chanting my name, pressing me into the headboard, claiming control without my giving it up. And no matter what liberties I take with my touch, his demons remain slumbering.

Maybe his mind has rebelled against logic, like mine. Maybe his instincts have taken over, or the shelter of darkness granted him a sense of ease.

Or maybe it’s because of me. Because he trusts me.

Yes, it has to be it: all of this for me alone. No one else, not ever.

I throw him onto the mattress, and he lets me hold him down. His thighs, hot and slick with sweat, lock tight around my hips as I shove into his yielding body. The white of his skin is so pure it gives off a phantasmal glow, pale against the black sheet and the black of the night, luminescent. I can almost see him, almost clearly, shaking with the force of my thrusts, spread out in the height of pleasure beneath my ravenous eyes. Is he tearing up? Is he flushed to the tips of his ears, all the way down to his collar? Are his lips still their dusty pink, or bitten red? Glistening, gasping? I can reach just a little to my left and flip on the bedside light—

But I won’t. Because if I see him right now, I will lose it. I will break him in half. 

If that ever happens—if I do decide to break him—I want to watch myself at work in the full light of day. Tonight he will break only in pleasure, and die only the little death.

My kisses leave marks but not bruises, a small bite of pain with the lightest graze of teeth. He’s the ruthless one of us two, scratching up my back into a vicious sting. We’re on the brink now, tipping, Ciel’s moans climbing higher, husky like his screams, gorgeously desperate, stumbling over the syllables of my name. Close, closer. He thrashes, tenses, tightens—and my hips can’t stop moving, my dark vision goes darker and I come, long and hard, spilling into the snug heat of his body, growling from the depths of my throat in a fit of wild, exhausting bliss.   

I fall, drained, on my back next to Ciel. We lie spent and sweaty under a mess of silk sheets. I can’t tell whose breathing is heavier, or who falls asleep first. But in those last conscious seconds, as I find myself staring once more at the blank stretch of my ceiling, the only thought that crosses my mind is how the world always seems to lay everything at my feet. 

How in the end, no matter the means, I always get what I want. 

 

***

 

I wake to the whistle of wind flinging itself against the windows. A new rain beats on the glass in shared assault, stronger for having rested the night, blown in fresh surges with every ferocious gust. The shapes of my bedroom come blearily into focus, no longer eclipsed in dense dark but seeped in the monochromatic grey of dawn.

Another sunless March morning. Another beautifully bleak beginning of day. 

And yet I am restless.

All night I kept tossing fitfully from side to side and drifting in and out of shallow sleep: one moment acutely aware of the small figure curled beside me, the next moment believing him to be only a dreamed-up, feverish mirage.

Yesterday I walked around as in a drug-induced daze, and not all of it has left my bloodstream. It coats my mind like a membrane which I lack momentum to pierce; I cannot fall back asleep, and I cannot think straight. I am distracted by the naked glare of Ciel’s back, draped like a sculpture with a spread of black silk. 

A flawed sculpture, not meant for display. A landscape of hypertrophic scars, mismatched like an exquisite cloth stitched haphazardly with whatever scraps lay at hand. The mystery has been uncovered, but I don’t like the sight of it any more than I liked the feel of it in the dark.

I reach out to stroke at random along his blemished back, mapping out the discoloured net of unevenly healed burns in purposeless patterns: with a finger, with open palm, with the back of my hand.

Ciel lies still, awake and unflinching under the surprise of my touch. He must have been expecting it, waiting for the moment I woke so that he could ask his questions.

“Are you him? The vigilante.”

“I am.” There is one scar—a thick, stain-like patch running between his shoulder-blades—that I don’t like in particular. My finger traces it mindlessly back and forth.

“Did you kill my aunt?”

“Yes. I staged her suicide.”

Ciel falls into a silence so charged it makes me drop my hand on the sheets. I watch the twin slope of his fine-boned shoulders, unsure what emotion could be causing them to tremble. I listen to his quivery breathing and wait for the moment it breaks into sobs.

But Ciel laughs, as sudden and sharp as a whiplash. Peals of wicked, unapologetic joy come bursting out of him into the quiet of the room, shaking his entire body in seizure-like fits.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he chokes through a stream of mad giggles, making me blink. Shouldn’t he be asking a different question? Shouldn’t he end it, at least, with a different pronoun?

He turns with a swish of silk and looks at me over his shoulder. His eyes—amused blue and desolate violet—burn in the dull dawning light like a pair of coloured coals. His beauty stops my breath.

“No, I mean really.” He snorts one last time, grappling for composure. “The happiest day of my life is a funeral. The most romantic gesture I have found to be squashing my rapist’s head with a shit-smeared fire poker. And considering I’ve just willingly jumped into bed with a murderer, I can’t help but start wondering: what is wrong with me?”

I let his question sink in, making sure it’s not rhetorical.

“Do you want me to define you?”

“I want you to dissect me,” he says, “like you’ve been trying to do since the start. Pretend you’re writing a book about your patients and I’m one of the chapters, not too long not too short, detailing my case study from start to… well, whatever you’d consider to be a relevant end.” 

I pull myself up, burying one hand under the pillow. Ciel mirrors my position.

“Why a whole chapter? All your complexity can be put into paradoxically simple words. No need for ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ or clinical dissections. It suffices to say that you are damaged, deeply and irreversibly, as are your morals and values and the depth of your feeling. Every part of you deviates from what society calls ‘normal’, and what society calls ‘abnormal’ ends up branded and exiled for life. You are scarred, not just in flesh; warped, but warped into the most beautiful shape I have ever laid my eyes on.” 

Ciel’s brows press together. “You’ve just described the furthest thing from beautiful I can imagine.”

“Then imagine art without tragedy. How far would it have gone without war, pain, and injustice? What would it mean without death, sickness, or unrequited love? Transforming ugliness into beauty is art’s highest form and greatest achievement. Just think of all the masterpieces that otherwise would never have been created.” I brush my thumb over the small gash on his bottom lip. “You are one such masterpiece, little one, and masterpieces are not meant to be confined into mere explanations. They are meant to be contemplated, extolled, admired. They are far too rare to fit into labels, too unique to be measured by simple conventions. Too elusive.”

In one moment, Ciel is struck silent. In the next, he smiles.

It’s not the maniacal laughter or his usual sarcastic cackle; not his mischievous smirk or the forced, lopsided grin he uses to fool his aunt; and it’s not, by a long shot, the innocent smile I kept tucked between the pages of my journal, immortalised in a photograph full of dead people in the city of love and lights.

It’s a new smile, just for me.

“Nice save,” Ciel says. “But I still shouldn’t find any of this romantic.”

“And who makes those rules? You should start following your own ‘shoulds’, I think.”

He arches a brow. “Oh, you mean like you follow yours? All sounds well and good unless it comes from the mouth of a serial killer. Context matters, you know.”

I settle for a cryptic smile. He wets his lips and sidles over to me across the mattress. Bare in the nascent daylight, his body looks much more fragile than it had felt beneath me at night, taking everything I had to give and clawing into me as he begged for more.

He lays his head on my pillow and asks, holding me with his gaze, “What is wrong with you?”

I decide to tell him. The big bad truth with a sprinkle of sweet lies. I tell him in a soft, sedate voice that harmonises with the monotone of rain and weaves into the howling of wind. My story is a long chapter, and I tell him everything: from what I consider the beginning towards an unforeseeable end.

Chapter 18

Notes:

The story is slowing down after the last two chapters, so prepare for a dose of internal monologuing. Also, thank you all once again for the wonderful feedback!!!

Not Enochian, not Theban. Clearly not a pre-existing cipher at all. I have leafed through numerous books on the occult and found no match. I have copied, compared, and counted every symbol both separately and within the most repeated combinations. I sat staring at my finished chart for over an hour, but no pattern emerged and no grammatical logic became apparent. It felt like attempting to dismantle a math problem: I listed the details, prepared the formula, and then failed to solve a single equation. I don’t even know if the code encrypts English, Latin, or some obscure extinct language.

If only Ciel could take a look. I’m certain he’d fare much better—with his love for puzzles and whatever insight he may or may not possess from his close brush with the Satanists—but it’s not like I can ask him. He wouldn’t react with enthusiasm to the idea of assisting me in the search of the cult responsible for his gravest scars. 

Not when I have planned something other than its complete annihilation.

I cannot let them become fodder for Ciel’s revenge—not yet. Wouldn’t it be a waste to let them all die so soon? I am impressed by the flourishing prosperity of underground crime in London: first Lau’s gambling den and child sex trafficking, now a full-fledged evil cult straight from horror films and twentieth-century conspiracies. How could I let such a rare opportunity pass me by? I have stumbled upon a gold mine of knowledge and wish to plunder its riches. Discover their history, hierarchy, philosophy—morality, most of all, and the stories of its corruption. Through what twists and turns has it become so perverted? What meandering paths have led them all so astray? I want a first-row seat for the spectacle of their sin, and my only hope for a ticket is the pager sitting uselessly in the palm of my hand. A stolen invitation to a secret ball.

I thumb along its plastic edges, examining every angle. Non-alphanumeric, filled with encrypted messages, no serial number and no brand. Custom-made or remodelled to suit the cult’s purposes, most likely. With my limited technological knowledge, I cannot fully appreciate the ingenuity of such a system. I cannot even guess where the messages are being sent from—surely not an online operator or a regular radio transmitter—but I care only for what is being delivered, not how. The important thing is that it comes straight from the highest chain of command, in one direction only, reaching every member at the exact same instance. 

I haven’t heard it ring yet. When the time comes, however, I know it will ring in the melody of Ciel’s nightmares. In the voice of Miss Dalles’s guilt.

I switch off the pager and throw it inside the topmost desk drawer, burying it under two cryptography books and the sheet of paper scrawled over with undeciphered code. Ciel has come home, undressing quietly in the foyer, and I need to clear the coast of all incriminating evidence if I am to let him in. We haven’t seen much of each other these past three days, and spoken even less. Not because he shut me off again, no. I shut him off, in a way.

Because I need to work. He’s monopolised my headspace and set me back an entire week. Full patient schedule, overdue research, unfinished speech for the congress…. I rolled up my sleeves and got down to it with begrudging efficiency, like a child not allowed to play outside before finishing their homework. I slept little, abused the coffee machine, and scarcely left the study. I exiled myself half by necessity and half by choice, tending to the enormous backlog of tasks and thoughts and distractions. The moment I let down my guard, my focus scattered and wandered invariably to the mysterious cult.

And to Ciel, always. To all the things he made me feel and do that I didn’t understand. 

When I stepped into the shower that gloomy morning, the significance of what I had done revealed itself in a brand new light of lucidity. My own urges had seized and enslaved me, pushed until I bent to their implacable will. I always listened to their demands, but I listened in due time. I ought to have mastered them years ago, once and for all, and yet here I had danced to their every tune. 

An odd tune, at that. Conducted, of all things, by feeling. I’d only ever killed in order to feel, not because I felt, and it contradicted everything I had established myself to be. I needed to pull back and plan ahead, withdraw and judge myself from an objective distance. People call it their ‘comfort zone’, I believe, and in facing this surfeit of foreign emotions I felt like I left mine. My comfort relies heavily on control—over my own actions and the actions of others—and it snapped when the traffic lights in Marylebone turned green.

I was impelled, for the first time, to commit the infamous crime of passion. Of wrath. I was driven to my messiest lapse in control—messier even than my second kill, when fifteen years ago I went and stabbed that hapless drunk because I couldn’t stave off my freshly discovered thirst. I never thought I’d feel that way again; I’ve always looked back into that grimy alley with something approaching nostalgia, with the same fondness one might reflect upon the mistakes of a rebellious youth. I understand why I did it, and I remember what it felt like to be devoured by instinct, and I have long since learnt to subdue it.

But the fury that burned so recently through my veins and drove me to bring the bloodied poker down and down and down… I didn’t even understand it. Not at first. So palpable then yet so tenuous later; once cooled and dissolved into apathy, it felt like something that had no right to happen. A momentary aberration, a system error unexplainable by logic. A glitch, a virus, now quarantined and removed. How did it make sense for me to have hated Vanel with such instant, virulent passion? Didn’t he play a vital part in shaping—warping—Ciel’s psyche? He may have left foul scars, but the scars served a purpose. They were a sweeping brushstroke across the canvas of Ciel’s skin, a pivotal part of the masterpiece.

The answer came to me on the first day of my isolation. My hatred, as well as my rampage, had been evoked by nothing more than the insufferable knowledge of my property being harmed. I had never before felt rage because never before had I encountered anything to induce it. Nothing had ever got in my way.

But were my pride soiled or plans trampled; were I to be outsmarted, humiliated, or robbed of anything I considered mine, that rage would surface just as it surfaced when I faced Vanel. When I met the man who had touched what I claimed my sole right to lay hands on.

He wasn’t the only one, of course. Many more had paid for a taste but paid no price. Many more still breathe and walk and shit and speak, but at least they do so out of my sight. They’re nothing but a nameless mass of vermin that lurks in Ciel’s past. 

His demons, I simply call them. To Ciel, of course, they’re much more. They’re fleshed out, and tangible. They all smelled and tasted of things he now hates, of vodka and cigars and sweat-soured cologne. They all had voices, and faces, perhaps even names—shared carelessly in the heat of vile passion, for what harm could have come of telling it to a dumb, drugged child?

But then I met one of his demons, one of his biggest and scariest. He stood before me all real and repugnant, like an insult spewed straight in my face. A target.

It should have made sense since the start. From whim to obsession, from obsession to possessiveness, from possessiveness to rage and hatred and the lust for blood. A straightforward path with no stops, no turns—almost simple. Almost, because anything that involves emotions hides a depth of complexity.

Anything that involves me.

It always comes down to the nature of emotions, doesn’t it? It’s the first thing I studied and the thing I’ll be studying all my life. I’ve had to start from the basics, unaided by experience, and I haven’t left a stone unturned or a theory unexamined. Psychiatry, neurobiology, sociology…. I drew from and fell back on the richness of modern knowledge. To someone like me, the twenty-first century has granted a lot of favours. I could have easily been born to the unenlightened bigotry of the Dark Ages, when the most common answer to my questions would have been, ‘We are but God’s faithful children, created in his image and following his design.’ A little later, and I might have been met with a general sentiment of ‘It is what it is and the heart wants what it wants.’ No: I was born in just the right time to thrive. I could follow a path paved by centuries of research and contribute a few cobblestones of my own. The imaginative yet largely erroneous answers supplied by philosophy over the years would not have led me far, while the answers supplied by science have explained enough for me to find my footing.

They are yet to be set in stone, of course—the cobbles are still being added, removed, and rearranged—but humanity has at last arrived at a set of practical truths about its own nature. Abstract talk of souls has been replaced with facts of biochemical reactions, shedding light on the origin of emotions and giving them shape: patterns of neural activity recorded on PET scans and fMRIs. We can watch emotions light up like bulbs on the map of our brain and point them out with a finger. ‘Here’s that little spark of fear you’ve just felt.’ ‘Here’s the grief after your mother’s death.’ ‘These clusters here, and there, are your anger issues and childhood trauma.’ ‘And this is the image of your chronic depression—see how many bulbs are not burning?’

And that’s just the beginning. Emotions come in a staggering range of variables, overlapping and interweaving in unique interactions to produce unique results. They differ from person to person, from instance to instance, and theory can cover only a basic fraction. After all, I never really understood rage until I felt it. Dry, clinical definitions fail to do emotion true justice; life stories can’t ever be told in a sequence of molecules; decisions depend on more than hormonal whimsy. Electrical impulses cannot express art, the intricacies of culture, or the sinuous trajectories of thought that our minds traverse on a daily basis.

People are more than chemistry. Life is more than materialism. It might seem oddly moral of me to say this, even spiritual, as though I held humanity sacred—but aren’t I too a part of humanity, no matter how deviant? Latest events prove I have more in common with the rest of my species than I initially thought. I have a specified (though far from simple) idea of who I am, and it’s not an idea based around chemistry. I have never snooped around in my brain to figure out ‘how I worked’, and what bulbs were ‘malfunctioning’. I have never compared my brain to a ‘healthy’ one or traced the pattern of my ‘pathology’, because I don’t see the point. It doesn’t matter what I would or wouldn’t find; none of it could capture, or even summarise, the core of my being.

Emotions are complex that way, and oftentimes fickle—but it doesn’t mean they defy all reason. They can make sense, like a surge of fear makes sense at the sight of a pointed gun: a reaction arising from a stimulus through a natural process of causation. So whenever my thoughts leapt backwards to a certain moonless night (all too often, always on the forefront of my mind), in that too I sought rational order. That, too, I tried to solve like an equation and answer like I answered the mystery of my wrath.

It should have been easy. Because sex, unlike emotions, has always been simple. Mechanical, unsaturated with feeling, an action with one end in mind.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy it; it’s that the pleasures of flesh come off so overwhelmingly inferior to the pleasure I find in death that I rarely feel the need to chase them—wherein ‘chase’ might not be the best word choice in my case, I admit. No, all I’ve ever needed to do was select and take. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’, it is said, and I am the furthest thing from a beggar.

And yet with none of my previous lovers—seasoned, eager, well-endowed lovers—had I come anywhere near the satisfaction I reached with Ciel in my arms. It wasn’t immaturity that made the difference, though I wouldn’t have put it past me at all. I look at children and see nuisances no better than dogs; I look at adolescents and see halfwits unworthy of my exclusive attention. Immaturity holds to me no universal appeal, but it does appeal to me greatly in the shape of Ciel’s boyish charm; in his doll-like features and tender limbs; in the fairness of his skin and the delicacy of his bones. In everything I had never before known myself to desire.

But he’s an exception, always the one and only exception. Never the rule.

He could be thirteen, he could be thirty. I lust for people, not age. For unique beauty, in whichever form it might come, and Ciel’s happens to come on the outside and inside alike: radiant on the surface but murky below it. Were he but a hollow yet beautiful husk, I would have looked once but not twice. There would be nothing for me to feed on. It’s all about the fusion, about each particle of his exquisite whole. It’s about the chase, the challenge, the conquest.

He was slippery from the get-go, a tricky catch, then at once out of reach. Humans are wired, myself included, to view what is difficult to acquire as unusually worth acquiring. Haven’t we all longed for distant stars while neglecting the ground under our feet? It’s the allure of the ‘forbidden fruit’, and the fruit I coveted happened to hang on a very high branch of a very tall tree. Had chance not turned the tides in my favour, I do wonder to what sacrifices and dirty tricks I would have been pushed to win Ciel back. Only a few days ago my fatal lust was barrelling head-on towards failure; by killing Vanel in the secrecy of Earl’s Court, I chose to forfeit the only plan I had for redemption. I was tossing away the only string of rope I could grab for scrambling out of the pit of Ciel’s hatred. Now look: not yet has March ended and I am back on the surface, back in good graces. One moment he was cursing my very existence, the second he was offering himself up for the taking.

Oh, my fruit was ripe and sweet and tasted of triumph. I was drunk on it quite terribly. It intoxicated me like an aphrodisiac and redefined my notion of pleasure. I had fantasised of so many ways I could possess him that even in the chaste dark it seemed to me the pinnacle of bliss. And if, for once, I wasn’t selfish—if I cared for his need as much as mine—I did so only to keep him attached. On the hook, wanting more. Dependent. Such is my whim, it seems, to become his everything: the one who showed him pleasure, the one who killed his demons, the only one who could ever see him for who he is.

And thus, one by one, I mended the holes in my thinking. For three days, I sat and reasoned with myself from the safety of my voluntary confinement. I’d asked Ciel not to disturb me and not once did he come knocking, not even to pester me about dinner or to check how I was doing. Now that I have shed some of the weight off my mind and caught up with the overload of work, the doors of my study have gone from shut tight to wide open.

I have reclaimed equilibrium. Preserved my integrity.

“Ciel?” I call out before he can disappear upstairs. Or in the kitchen, for tea. Or in the library, for yet another book. “Come here for a moment.”

Unhurried footsteps shuffle my way from the main hall. Ciel appears in the doorway, brows raised only slightly, perching there as if on the threshold of enemy territory he hesitates to breach.

I gesture him inside, watching every step he compliantly takes closer. No, I still cannot presume to guess what mental processes and emotions are raging behind that unruffled demeanour. While my mind had been juggling between multiple tasks, Ciel had the luxury of focusing on one project only: everything that is wrong with me and what it means for him both in the short and long run alike. I told him everything, sparing no detail, and colourised only a little. I painted myself as a heartless beast learning to care—the plot of a fairy tale, really—but I do wonder how much of it he actually bought.  

“I’ve been occupied,” I offer by way of introduction.

“Oh really?” He looks at the self-explanatory mess upon my desk. “That’s a relief. I thought you were giving me the cold shoulder.”

“Have you had time to think things through?” I ask, as though the three-day intermission had been for his benefit, not mine.

“Think: yes. I think a lot in general. If through, however, I’m not so sure. Nor what you meant by things, exactly.” He cocks his head. “I’m sorry, is there some particular conclusion I was supposed to be reaching while you sat barricaded in your lair?”

“Not particular, just any at all. Time grants new angles and perspectives.”

“I haven’t suddenly grown back a moral spine and run to the authorities, if that’s what you’re asking,” Ciel says, taking a seat on the chair opposite mine. He puts his elbows on the desk, links his hands together, and rests his chin on the little bridge he forms with his fingers. “Or did you want me to answer the infamous ‘what now’? If so, I won’t. It’s lackluster. So far things have taken quite the interesting turn on their own, don’t you find? Without meddling and overthinking. Laissez-faire, I say.”

Ah. So you haven’t a clue ‘what now’, then. You hadn’t planned it out before climbing into my bed that night.

I wonder how you really feel about us, little one. You hoard your secrets and feed them to me in small doses. You never make things easy, and I like that. Please, do keep me guessing, do keep me chasing, for that is how you survive me. The moment I smell boredom will be your end.

“As you wish,” I concede. “Now tell me, have you been lately to your aunt’s?”

“Since someone was too occupied to make dinner....”

“I’m flying this Sunday to Paris for a congress. You can either go with me, or stay with the Midfords. Surely you can afford a week off from school?”

“A congress? What are you presenting?”

“What everyone wants me to present: vigilantism. I’m even a keynote speaker. See, it’s still a hot topic.”

“Oh? I’m not sensing enthusiasm. You don’t seem to care much for keeping the legend alive. Might it be you’re abandoning the experiment before its time?”

Ah, he’s already beginning to see right through me. I’m not abandoning the experiment itself; moral relativism will never cease to fascinate me, nor will the duality of human nature. I’m abandoning the experiment’s object for the sake of another.

“I am merely taking a detour,” I say. “A little time off might coax new reactions from the public. Perhaps I’ll even be missed.” 

“Of course. That makes sense,” says Ciel with a devious little smirk. “Anyhow. A congress equals no time for babysitting, correct? Does this mean you’re giving me free rein around Paris?”

I intended to let him roam, yes. Relive his lost childhood, revisit the streets he’d walked with his parents, unearth buried memories and tell me all about them. An excellent plan for luring out his secrets, yet something in the tone of his question makes me pause and rethink it. Images come swarming vividly before my eyes—scenes of Ciel beaten, violated, and abducted in a back alley of some shady neighbourhood in the banlieue.

I shake them off. Laughable, but not without logic. I can’t stand the thought of something happening to him—of my property being harmed. After all, I am hardly done playing.

“Of course,” I say. “Shall I book another ticket?”

Notes:

A honeymoon? In Paris? How innovative. Who's excited? :D

Chapter 19

When Ciel steps out of drizzle into the Sunday bustle of Heathrow, his gaze is vigilant but his features at peace. When he steps out of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle into the late evening sun, his lips are pursed and his skin a tone paler. This is how he greets Paris: with silent treatment and a scowl.

Perhaps he’s cross with me about the stewardess; that she flirted and I flirted back. That our fingers touched when she handed me a glass of cognac and my lips shaped too easily into a dashing smile. He must be cross—I noticed his thumbnails digging reflexively into the page of his book—but the muddied depth in the pool of his eye is something else. Melancholy, I think. The bad sort of nostalgia. As though the burden of his past collapsed upon him the moment we touched French soil.

I imagine him walking through the same airport at nine: led under the arm by aunt An, excited to visit aunt Frances. Safe under the watchful gaze of his parents, their figures looming like guideposts through the mazy terminal and unthreatening crowd—figures that weren’t supposed to leave his side for long years to come.

He looks through the window as we drive through the city, watching the vistas of his lost childhood unravel before him faster than he can follow. I let him take it all in: the city that only four years ago he saw with both eyes instead of just one. The city that hasn’t changed since their last meeting, not as much as he’s changed himself. No matter how many buildings have been torn down or erected, no matter how many people have come to stay or left to never return, the soul of Paris remains the same—unlike his own.

He’s silent as we roll off A1, silent as we pass Champs-Élysées, and silent as our taxi pulls up on the street. He leaves me to carry both suitcases and squints up at the building.

I didn’t rent a suite in one of the packed hotels near the convention centre; I rented a private flat in the 16th arrondissement just twenty minutes away. It has furnishings as lavish as the famous Ritz and a row of tall windows overlooking the Seine, but it’s not the view or luxurious décor that make the place worth its price. It’s the lack of cameras, the quietude so rarely found in the heart of a metropolis. We have the top floor to ourselves, the apartment below ours stands empty, and the walls are thick enough to muffle screams. I chose well.

The lift rattles as we ascend. I made sure to book two bedrooms, always mindful of appearances, but Ciel has no intention of sleeping alone. “You’re going to be my scarecrow for nightmares,” he announces as we settle inside, throwing his pillow onto my bed.  

How naïve of him to think this could work. Here, in the city that symbolises all that he lost, his dreams will be anything but sweet. He ought to have braced himself for the worst: nightmares flavoured with guilt and grief and gore, visions where he wanders lost through the terminal and calls for someone no longer there. I leave the curtains open to let the night lights inside, thinking we might ward off his horrors as we did before—make me exhaust him until he blacks out into a torpid sleep—but he lays himself far on the side and faces away, like a statement.

I stay awake in the pale dark for an hour, watching the breadth of that forbidding back for signs of surrender. Any minute now, I tell myself, and he will turn. I will hear the rustling of sheets and feel the press of his body against mine. Unless he wants me to make the first move? I whisper his name, but he doesn’t whisper mine back. He doesn’t look over his cold little shoulder and beckon me finally to his side, or let my hands roam at leisure beneath his shirt, or stretch out his neck in a generous offering.

I’ve waited in vain. Is that his strategy? Withhold my touch to rebuild the tension he snapped? Stoke our lust so we can sate it again at its finest, at the breaking point of our patience?

Fine. I’m willing to let him play it this way for a day or two, but a nightmare will leave him no choice. Soon enough I’ll be awakened by a gasp and the sharp tug of the duvet being snatched off my shoulders. I’ll settle for holding him at least in comfort, however false, if it means I can gorge myself again on his misery. And once I lull him back to sleep, once I’m high on that narcotic scent of dolour, I’ll wedge a hand between our bodies and relieve myself as I used to on those oblivious nights back in London, back in the dead of winter. This time I’ll venture to touch him—only a little, only gently. The lightest of caresses in the quietest hour of the night, leaving no trace of it in the morning.

But he sleeps well. Too well, almost, too soundly. No screams to hush, no shivers to soothe. My alarm wakes us both at seven sharp and it’s Monday. Ciel lies yawning and stretching on the bed while I dress, reluctant to rise, wallowing in the rare afterglow of a full night’s sleep. “I had a dream,” he tells me, or tells himself while I happen to be in the same room, “a pleasant dream.”

But he shares only that, no more. It’s like he relives the dream in his mind all morning, over and over. Guards it enviously like a treasure belonging to him alone. 

I want to be the one he dreamt of. Or to have made the dream possible, at least. Aren’t I, ironically, the most pleasant thing to have happened to him in years? But I don’t ask, only tell him to hurry.

By seven forty we’re out the door, stepping from the silent refuge of our apartment onto the narrow, rowdy street. Ciel shivers and fastens the topmost button of his coat; at the irresolute beginnings of April, the morning carries a biting chill and the sky drowns in a sprawling swathe of grey clouds. We head for breakfast to the nearest café, perched by the junction, with dark red awnings and a row of round tables cramped on the pavement. Our knees touch when we sit on the wicker chairs outside, but neither of us says a word. We absorb silently the bustle of Paris and all that comes with it: the rumbling of scooters, wafts of exhaust fumes, distant melodies of street buskers and streaming, hurrying pedestrians. 

Has there been a time I needed respite from the din of urban life? Most people tend to, I’ve noticed. Every so often they seek to unwind and escape to summer homes by the lakeside, where the roar of traffic yields to birdsong and the pulse of nightlife gives way to the chirping of crickets. Is Ciel one of those people? Instead of swapping one capital for another, would he have rather spent his vacation in the company of nature—someplace far? Someplace he could remember what the stars look like, and how it feels to really breathe? I imagine him stretched out on grass by a forest stream, sipping tea from a thermos and watching, through the swaying treetops overhead, the languid progress of clouds across the sky. Yes, he would have loved to break away from civilisation; to look around and find not a single soul in sight that could hurt him, disturb him, or ask what had happened to his eye. 

The vision does have its charms—but I’m standing outside the picture. Solitude is not my element, and too much peace would drive me mad (or madder still, were I to be described as such to begin with). I can’t see myself hiking through woods, scaling a mountain, or relaxing on the sands of a wild beach. No, I belong in the city. My hunting grounds are noise, waste, and pollution. I’m not made for watching birds or flowers; I’m made for watching humans, and Paris teems with the finest of specimen for me to contemplate. Its streets brim with diversity that trickles before my eyes in all shapes and forms: every nationality, every race, every religion. Both transparent nobodies and eccentric somebodies alike. The rich bump into the poor, the happy rub shoulders with the miserable, the beautiful tread alongside the disfigured.

No matter who they are or what they show on the surface, on the inside they all contain a hidden universe of thoughts and secrets and feelings—a private microcosm invisible to the naked eye of a perfect stranger. As a random Englishman breakfasting on the corner of just another street, I can only imagine the borders and structures of their universe as they pass me on their way to unknown destinations. It makes for the most addictive of games.

It’s not Ciel’s element, but I can tell he’s playing along. His Sunday grimace has smoothed overnight and his blue eye trails after pedestrians with a mild, detached interest. Squeezed safely between the table and the café’s glassed front, he doesn’t seem to mind the strangers as much as when he walks among them. Here he can judge without being judged back, watch the way he’d watch animals through a glass pane at the zoo. Here he can feel invisible, inviolable, outside the picture. And though in no way does he acknowledge my presence, I know he’s aware of it acutely at all times. The current is always flowing, our knees are still touching.

Here, with me, he can feel safe. He can’t escape into the wilderness, but he can try to escape the glum confines of his universe and imagine the world through somebody else’s eyes. The middle-aged Muslim’s, for instance, shouting his morning frustrations at the person on the other end of his call; the truant teenager’s with dreadlocks and bulky headphones playing music audible only to himself; the red-headed tourist’s frantically consulting Google Maps on her scratched-up smartphone. 

Has he ever wished he could trade his life for theirs? I have no way of finding out, not when we sit spinning our separate stories in comfortable silence. It feels like a pact; like one glance or one remark would break its unspoken rules. We too seem like perfect strangers, sitting at the same table only because all the other seats were taken. It’s like we don’t know each other’s darkest secrets and don’t share a secret that would stun and stop every pedestrian dead in their tracks.

The waiter would drop his tray, if he knew. The businesswoman two tables farther would spill the rest of her flat white. The driver in the yellow Renault would crash into the kerb.

But who could guess, by the mere look of us? 

My watch hits eight sharp. I finish my croissant, settle the bill with a handsome tip, and leave Ciel to plan his day over a second cup of café au lait (sweetened, no less, with three spoonfuls of sugar). 

“See you at dinner,” I say.

“Fine,” he says, watching me hail a taxi. 

 

***

 

The convention centre proves as much of a fertile ground for people-watching as the streets.

I’ve come here for work, of course—symposiums, note-taking, lunches with professors and doctors and anyone who may mean something or have something meaningful to say—but it doesn’t mean that I have to stop playing. I can take my game to the next level, in fact: go from watching to exploring. Select a target and dismantle them piece by piece, secret by secret. I may have left my main project alone on the sidewalk, but I can always find a replacement. A side gig, as it were. Someone to keep me amused while we’re apart. 

And I don’t even have to look long; my side project all but volunteers. She takes the seat next to mine on a neuropsychology lecture—Professor Isabelle Rousselot, says her nametag—and gloats at me brazenly before holding out her hand.  

“I know you,” she blurts, half-laughing. “Your work, of course—but mostly because my students and colleagues have been raving about you the entire week. You’re like a film star.”

In response I give her a smile: the same one I gave the stewardess, the same one I use to appraise how much power I hold over a person on the moment of our first meeting. If they flush, look away, clear their throat or answer with a coy smile of their own, I mark them as slaves of my debonair charm and know I am free to do with them as I please.

But Isabelle is not one to be subdued by a single suave smile. She’s unfazed, like Mrs Midford—except much nicer.

So I pick her. We talk in broken whispers for the entire presentation and stick to each other throughout the day, walking hand in hand from lecture to lecture like freshmen in a strange new school.

To describe Isabelle, most would begin by gushing in detail over her beauty—over the storm of black curls, luminous hazel eyes, and perhaps the ampleness of her bosom—but I am used to beauty and beauty by itself does not impress me. I, too, had heard of her before we shook hands; I’d picked up tales of her academic dominance and exceptional quickness of wit. She worked hard for those labels and wears them with pride, strutting about the congress centre with an air of scathing confidence and immovable self-worth.

More often than not, however, hard shells exist to protect tender cores. As I uncover layers and dismantle pieces, I find she is no more of an exception to that rule than Ciel.

Sensitivity is seen as a weakness, so she keeps it at bay; compassion is often exploited, so she doles it out exclusively to the deserving. Like me, she cultivates a professional persona and takes it to work. But mingling on the corridors or gossiping over a cup of coffee, her steely temper transforms at once into cordiality, and the edge in her eyes softens into a cheerful glint.

This part of the game is my favourite: the wonders I can work with more than a glimpse in the crowd. In less than a day, I get to know her like I’ve known her for months—all without revealing my hand. I wouldn’t call Isabelle a bad player, per se, but she does fail to detect what her new colleague hides beneath the surface. When she tells me about her research on antisocial personality disorder, she has no clue that I would make a ground-breaking case study for the paper she has begun on that very subject. Such adorable irony; such a tasty choice for my interim project.

But something feels amiss. It spoils my fun and trails after me like a foul smell. So many people around, so many distractions, yet my thoughts bounce back to Ciel with almost infuriating persistence. I worry: in my own twisted manner and for my own ignoble reasons, but I worry without cease. It’s the first time I’m using the word in relation to myself, and I equal my worry to the worry one might feel at the thought of losing a wallet filled with cash—or losing, quite accurately, whole months of hard-won progress in a valuable project. I get the compulsive urge (which I resist) to check up on him every other hour just in case, to ring him on the mobile he begrudgingly agreed to carry and ask what he’s doing, how he’s doing, has anyone touched him. Yes, not unlike an overprotective parent; very much like an overzealous lover. Come afternoon, I turn down all invitations to dinner and hurry back to our apartment in the sixteenth. I find him leaned over the balcony banister, watching the streets below as if he hasn’t had his fill.

“You’re late,” he says, “I’m hungry.” And if what I’ve been feeling all day was worry, what I feel at that moment must be relief. I take him to a restaurant and listen, waiting on our order, to what he’s been doing and how he’s been doing while I prowled the congress halls with Isabelle.

Yes: he speaks. In the evening his lips unseal at last. He speaks without looking me once in the eye, choosing to suspend his gaze on the darkening cityscape behind the window. He speaks in slow-paced, dispassionate tones—although with a touch of something tentative in the way he builds each sentence, as if he’s forming his thoughts for the very first time. As if they’ve scattered throughout the city and he has to retrace his steps to retrieve them, or he hasn’t found the time to think them and they’re all making their debut in his mind. He needs to catch up with himself and speaks to himself alone; I can only be thankful for the privilege of overhearing. 

His first stop in Paris had to be the Louvre. He stood where four years ago a stranger agreed to take their picture, between the roundabout and the old triumphal arch on the Place du Carrousel, with the pyramid and the museum composed together in the near distance. He moved into position and waited for something to come: a crushing tide of sorrow, a grievous longing for better days, a bout of anger at the entire world for taking away every good thing in his life and replacing it with pain, nightmares, and ire.

But nothing came—only a twinge of nostalgia. The memory itself had never left him; how could he forget the lengths everyone had gone to just to see him smile? He’d been difficult on purpose, secretly enjoying the show of silly faces and embarrassing banter. ‘Cheese!’ his mother kept saying, then, ‘Ouistiti!’, then flashed him the entire lineup of her own smiles—to demonstrate, as if he didn’t know what smiling was supposed to look like. Ciel could still hear that saccharine lilt in her half-forgotten voice as she laughed in encouragement. He tried to smile then, just for her, but it came out crooked. ‘Lazy’, said the woman waiting to take their photo.

So they kept trying. Angelina started tickling his sides and telling lewd jokes; Rachel scolded her with an eloquent string of French curses and a sound smack on the head. In the end it was Vincent—the only match for his stubborn, precocious son—who had baited him with afternoon dessert and thus brought that sweet bright smile into being. 

He didn’t know, of course, that three years later that same smile would be put up for bidding at an underground auction, raising the price of his little boy’s innocence by thousands of pounds. Lining up to pose before the grand Louvre, neither of the Phantomhives suspected they would never get to admire the photo in a family album and reminisce about the good old times. And the stranger, too, had no idea what she’d authored; what role she’d played while wanting only to help. Maybe she remembers the family even now—who wouldn’t? All those beautiful people. Picture-book perfect and enviably happy. Maybe she imagines what has become of them, or smiles to herself at the memory of the pouting boy with uniquely heterochromatic eyes. Maybe she wonders how big he’s grown, and whether he’s learnt how to smile.

Which the boy, of course, hasn’t. He left the site of his childhood photoshoot and took his place in the long queue to the Louvre. Not for pleasure, or to sate a hunger for artistic impressions: he had an objective. He wanted to find the painting his mother had called her favourite.

It was a quest for remembrance. After all, he’d scarcely spared it a glance when she’d pointed it out to him and told its story. He’d been busy deliberating whether he should have crêpes or mille-feuille or chocolate mousse for that afternoon treat he’d been promised—while I, even knowing his love for sweets, struggled to picture him as a carefree little boy whose worst life concern was choice of dessert.

He recalled settling for chocolate mousse, but Rachel Phantomhive’s beloved piece of art had trickled away from his memory like something useless. All he knew was that it hung somewhere among the French paintings in the Sully Wing, so he marched there without stopping to admire anything on his way. He bounded from canvas to canvas in strategic order, hoping the mere sight of the painting would trigger some sudden revelation and yank the memory from whichever recess it was stored in, no matter how deep. 

Was it Satyr preying over the sleeping Antiope? Was it the tragic wreck from The Raft of the Medusa? Or could it be The Valpinçon Bather with her milky, unblemished back? He watched, studied. Nothing spoke or jumped at him from the frames. The paintings remained silent; his memories remained slumbering.

He rushed back the way he’d come, desperate to start over, whipping his head left and right, stumbling aimlessly from room to room—until a guard came up to ask if he’d lost his parents.

Ciel wanted to scream at him. Yes, he’d lost them. So what? He knew perfectly well where to find them: stacked in the Phantomhive family grave on Islington cemetery under a tall sycamore tree. They left him with a fortune and a crazy aunt and with memories he couldn’t dig out of his head, but if he just shut up and left him alone he might yet be able to remember—

No; he wouldn’t remember no matter what. He couldn’t even attempt to guess. He had no idea what his mother would have liked because he hadn’t been allowed to get to know her.

He returned to the Carrousel square, passing under the old triumphal arch, and moped over his defeat around the Tuileries Garden until his feet ached for a rest. He bought a box of macarons, sat on one of the chairs around the great fountain, and stayed there listening to the rush of water, wishing the trees were already green. 

The second day, after another speechless breakfast, he climbed on his lean legs to the bottom of Sacré-Cœur. He perched on its steps with a book and hugged the railing to make himself smaller, blending alone into the thin morning crowd. It wasn’t the ideal reading spot, he knew—windy and noisy and the opposite of peaceful—but no one bothered him there for long hours on end. He could, above all, gaze into the sweeping urban panorama every time he lifted his eyes to contemplate a passage. For the desolate prose of Pessoa, the grey sprawl of Paris rooftops felt more appropriate than a quiet bench in the park. Like a limb severed from the collective body of society, he removed himself completely from everything and everyone around him. Right there on the basilica steps, he muted the chatter and edited the migrating figures out of his vision. A group of street dancers performed an entire routine directly below him, but he didn’t snap out of his trance until a sudden burst of applause. He looked about and saw the sun high but descending, felt the soreness of his limbs on cold stone, and realised he’d missed his lunch.

He went down into the narrow alleys of Montmartre, past the souvenir shops and bakeries and colourful little cafés. He passed the rows of portraits and landscapes arrayed on the cobble pavement, stopping for just a second to watch the artists at work.

And this time, a lost memory replayed in flashes at the familiar sights of Place du Tertre.

He visited the square four years ago with his aunt: just the two of them, looking to pass time while his parents discussed work with the Midfords. He remembered a man preying on tourists on the junction of Rue Norvins, sticking unsolicited roses into their hands and demanding five euros for accepting his ‘gift’. When Aunt An found herself holding one such rose, with deep red petals matching the hue on her dress, she thanked the ‘salesman’ and paid for it without complaining. She broke the stem in half, plucked all of the thorns, and planted the flower in the breast pocket of Ciel’s blazer, laughing heartily as he winced at her ‘gift’.

She laughed a lot back then, in loud peals and with abandon, but it was hard for him to think of her as she was that day: beaming, buoyant, beautiful in red. In his mind, aunt An was not laughing but reaching out to claw at his eye, livid and quivering with fury. Instead of her smile, he could see only the inhuman look on her face when she nursed him once the strangers had gone. He didn’t think of happier times; he thought of the time he woke up in a foreign basement hurting all over and she was there, leaning over his cot with madness in her eyes, threatening to finish what the cultists had started if he ever breathed a word.

Now, as we lie down to another chaste sleep, I keep thinking not of his words but the manner in which he spoke them. I think of the blind eye and deaf ear he turns to me and my questions; of those brief, leery glances he sneaks my way as I walk through the room.

I’m not sure where we stand, nor where we’re headed. I haven’t learned to navigate his moods. He may no longer harbour that February hatred, but neither can I see the infatuation that took hold of him in Earl’s Court.

Perhaps he keeps wisely in mind that a predator, even domesticated, will forever pose a threat. That his fangs are no less sharp and his temper ever so fickle—especially when he gets hungry.

 

***

 

On the morning of our third day, playing it off as laziness and sore muscles after his climb to Montmartre, Ciel announces he’s not going downstairs for breakfast and locks himself in the bathroom. 

Today is the day of dear old William’s symposium on ethics—which I would love to heckle and smear later with a disastrous review—but Ciel’s tiny tantrum takes precedence over it all. I have no intention of waiting until dinner to find out what’s wrong.

I have just enough time to make a quick run to the bakery, move the armchairs to suit my needs, and brew two cups of coffee. By the time he emerges, bathed and dressed and expecting me to have gone, the sun has climbed high enough to soak the living room in dappled beams of golden light. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be going?” Ciel asks, arms crossed as he takes in the coffee and the chouquettes waiting for him all fresh on the table.

“I certainly can spare an hour.” 

I gesture for him to sit, but he doesn’t budge. “I thought I was ‘irreversibly damaged’. What use is therapy if I cannot be fixed?”

“Therapy is not always about fixing.”

“No,” he says, a wry curl to his voice, “this particular therapy is about you getting your rocks off, for instance.” 

“Touché. But I’m unwilling to believe you don’t have any unresolved conflicts that would benefit from it as well.”

“You know what?” He lifts his chin. “You’re right, I do. A certain matter has been weighing heavily on my mind, Doctor, and you’re the only one who can help me.”

He sinks into the opposite armchair, links his hands, and fires without preamble, “Pray tell: how did you find the Italian? Through Lau, wasn’t it?”

I realised something recently. I’d always thought it were books and life’s little pleasures that kept him anchored to this world, but I was wrong. What he’s been holding onto this entire time was a glorious vision of revenge served cold.

“Your aunt’s sudden death captured Vanel’s attention. He learnt that you’d survived and began snooping around Earl’s Court to find out where you’d moved. He came to Hampstead while you were at school and pretended to be your father’s old friend... which I didn’t buy. The rest you know.”

Yes, revenge. Vanel’s death has sharpened his appetite and now he seeks more. I’m sure he would love to watch Lau’s teashop burn with everyone inside it; I’m sure he would want me, as vigilante, to help him eradicate the vermin that dwells within. But I have dedicated myself to another project, and Lau’s charming little den of iniquity is one hornet’s nest I dare not disturb—at least for the moment. I would rejoice the chance to carve up every last piece of filth who laid hands on what is mine, but I can make myself wait for the right moment. I can make it a lesser priority.

Ciel can’t.

“So you never went to Lau. You never talked to him, you never made any deal, and you don’t know where to find him.”

“No. But I can help you start looking.”

“What you can do is stop lying.”

“I’m not your enemy, Ciel; I want your enemies dead. What would I have to gain from lying? You have seen Vanel, haven’t you? What I did to him I would gladly do again to Lau, and to his clients, and to the remaining two cultists.” 

Ciel falls unnaturally silent, unnaturally still. Only his eye is alive, boring into me with a severity that would have folded any other liar in half. He looks, and looks, as if summoning telepathic powers to read my mind—only for his eye to give up and cloud over, having neither gauged my sincerity nor stared me down into admission. He sits, and thinks, and considers. Shuts down like a computer during an exigent task, running simulations of every move and calculating his next words, calculating mine.

Come now, little one: you owe me this secret. I have divulged so many of my own. I have told you in such beautiful detail how I killed your aunt An, just like you asked me. I have done nothing but shower you with gifts and I will shower you with many more, but there can be only so much taking without giving in return.   

“Remaining two cultists?” he says at last. “No, there is just one. I killed the other.”

Chapter 20

“Any theories?”

I clench my teeth. Of course he’s going to make me admit it.

“No. Not exactly.”

“What about a guess, then? You like to play guessing games, I noticed.”

My smile comes out a little too crooked. “Let’s see. Did you do it before we met?”

Ciel gives a small wave of encouragement, beckoning me to go on. 

“Did he reveal his name that night, and you looked him up?”

“No.”

“Was he a public figure and you saw him on the news? In a paper?”

“No.” 

“Did he find out you survived, like Vanel?”

“Decent guesses, but no,” Ciel sighs, like a disappointed parent. “The truth is much simpler. Would you like to know the truth, Sebastian?”

Of course he’s going to make me ask for it.

“Yes, I would.” 

He raises his brows, unconvinced.

“Very much so,” I have to add. But I’m not adding ‘please’.

Ciel shrugs, as if it weren’t a big deal to begin with, and reaches over to grab a chouquette. I watch him bite into the crisp round bun, sprinkling crumbs onto the pressed whiteness of his shirt. He chews, licks his lips, licks his fingers. I point a finger to my face, showing him where a speck of pearl sugar has stuck to the corner of his mouth, and he sweeps it back in with the tip of his tongue. I watch.

“It was all a shameless coincidence, really,” he says, washing down the sweet treat with a sip of sweet coffee, “with astronomical odds. Have you ever wondered about fate, karma, all that spiritual malarkey?” 

“Quite recently, yes.”

“Well, it was exactly like a gift from fate. Wouldn’t you agree I was owed one? Life is of course unjust, and when it rains it usually pours, but haven’t I gone through enough? In my case, the overload of misery was frankly bordering on the grotesque.”

I give a light chuckle. “Almost as if you were a protagonist of a Shakespearean tragedy.”

“Right? Putting King Lear to shame. Both plays and real life should have a modicum of balance, however, so it was high time I got a break from my stroke of ill luck.”

He stalls—eating his breakfast, sipping his lukewarm coffee—while I try not to betray my impatience. He’s teased me enough for one day as it is.

“Either way, it happened exactly one year ago in April. And it only happened because I’d finished class early and returned home on foot instead of taking a taxi. Quite the walk.”

“You hate walks.”

“Yes, but I would have hated to bump into my aunt in the doorway even more, so I took my chances with the scenic route. It’s often the littlest choices that make the biggest difference, don’t you find? Seemingly irrelevant occurrences that put us in the right place at the right time—or, well, the opposite of right.”

“So you just ran across him on the street?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘ran across’. Our trajectories never crossed, per se. You’ve seen how I walk the streets: I zigzag between people and avoid eye contact at all costs. I didn’t pass him or spot him on the street; I heard him. That piping, infernal jingle going off somewhere in the crowd ahead. One tiny noise drowned in a medley of noises, but I heard it as loud and clear as if it rang in an empty room. It was all I could hear, needle-like sharp and with tinnitus-like persistence.”

I replay the melody in my head. Vanel’s pager rang shortly before we left for Paris, announcing the arrival of another encrypted message. What to Ciel sounded like a ‘piping, infernal jingle’ and a ‘creepy, squeaky tune’ to his aunt, I thought sounded like a merry little baroque minuet in the style of Bach or Händel. When linked to the wrong memory and coloured with the wrong emotion, even the merriest song or sunniest day can seem sinister. The body never forgets.

“I froze. I turned my head and there he stood, just a few paces farther, stopping to glance at the message. My hands went grasping up at my throat and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. It was like Oxford Street, only worse. You weren’t there to help me, and my heart beat twice as fast, and all I had to hold onto was a tiny voice in the back of my head. It kept telling me to calm down, to get it together or I’d miss my one-in-a-million chance for revenge. And it didn’t tame the panic, but the thought of him getting away again made me furious, fuming, flaming—” Ciel breaks off, groping for words. “Well, angry in ways that you could never comprehend. Again, life is unfair, but this wasn’t just unfair; this was blatantly, egregiously, inexcusably unfair. It was unfair that he could walk the streets with impunity and sleep through whole nights while I had to hear his filthy voice in my dreams. It was unfair that he could smile, all happy-go-lucky, after all the hideous things he’d done and would never stop doing.” A shadow flits through his visage and his eye pierces me with a new intensity. “Not unlike yourself, I suppose. You get away with everything too. You blend into the society, you change shape.” 

“Yes, that does sound very much like myself.” I endow him with a radiant smile. “And you went after him, I gather?”

Ciel nods. “He was on the way back to his office. And once I’d discovered where he worked, I began to stalk him. I found out where he lived, where he dined, where he did his groceries. I learned the names of his closest friends and the family he didn’t deserve to have. Truly, I must reiterate how much you two had in common: that illusion of normality and the camouflage weaved from success. Aleister Chamber, like yourself, was a fraud. A charming man with charming smiles and an army of skeletons in the closet.” 

Of course he’s going to compare us. He knows I hate being compared. 

“Ah, but I can already tell one major difference between me and him.”

“Oh? What’s that?” 

“You like me a lot more.”

Ciel blinks. I almost have him, he’s almost flustered.

“Well. You’re marginally more handsome, but I’d say the main difference lay rather in the psyche. Chamber was twisted in other ways than you.” He smiles, but it’s not the sheepish smile I aimed to elicit. “As for the difference in my affection… who’s to say you won’t end up like him in the future?”

“And how did he end up?”

“Poorly, of course.” Ciel stares me down. “I know you’re eager to arrive at the spicy details, but there’s no need to rush. Didn’t you say you had plenty of time to spare? I had to wait for it much longer, you know: three whole months, all because I tried to use Chamber to find the cult and kill as many birds with one stone as possible. I stuck a tracker inside the wheel well of his car and waited for it to lead me to one of their gatherings, but he was always too careful. I had no choice but to settle for one bird instead of the whole flock.” 

“Trust me, savouring it one piece at a time feels much more rewarding.”

“Perhaps so. I worried he might elude me if I got too greedy, so I made my move. It didn’t take much to come up with a plan; Chamber had handed it to me on a silver platter three years before.” Ciel checks his nails, a gesture of forced nonchalance. “He was very talkative that night, you see. He couldn’t shut his mouth for one minute, and I remember every word he said to me verbatim. Ramblings, mostly; piles of seemingly inconsequential rubbish. He said I had a pretty enough face but the rest of me was too skinny, too battered, and not exactly what he’d call his type. On the whole he preferred girls, just a little older, their wombs freshly ripened to bear the fruits of devilish seed—yes, I’m quoting. He said the blue of my left eye could be brighter, and the purple might have been a turn-on if not for the ugly red scabs. He wanted to see expression, but my eyes were like the eyes of a dead fish and they wouldn’t do. He liked his girls blonde, rosy-cheeked and sweet like sugar, darling little angels he could defile in the name of his dark prince—while I, frankly, had nothing left to defile.”

He pauses, but not to calm down; just to eat another chouquette. For all the weight of his words, Ciel remains unmoved and his tone unemotive, as though he were bored to death by his own trauma. 

“At any rate, the ramblings gave birth to my plan. He’d presented me the perfect recipe for a lure, and I used it. All I needed to do was put on a dress, a wig, and enough make-up to—”

“What kind of a dress?”

Ciel stops mid-speech, staggered, first gaping then glaring. His eye turns a frostbitten blue.

“What? I need the full picture.” 

His jaw only tightens. I swallow my pride in a great big gulp and add, “Please?”

“Cotton, light blue,” Ciel grinds out, not quite subdued. “With a chequered, box pleated skirt above the knee and a plain, body-tight top with no cleavage. I wore bright blue contacts to match and a long, blonde wig with twin ponytails curled at the ends. The shoes were black sandals on a two inch wedge heel, faux suede and jute, tied with a small ribbon around the ankle. Is that quite enough to paint you the full picture?”

“Almost there. What about the make-up?”

His cold voice drops another ten degrees. “Just lip gloss, pink blush, and lots of concealer for the scars. I couldn’t quite cover that little gash on my lower eyelid, so I brushed my fringe over it and hoped he wouldn’t notice.”

“And did you talk in a girly voice?”

His mouth gives a peeved twitch at the corner. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to live with an incomplete picture. Don’t you want to know something actually relevant? Like the murder weapon, for instance?”

“Hm. Yes, my imagination can fill in the blanks. Do continue.”

He sighs, as if relieved. “I stole my aunt’s pistol.”

“How did you know she had it?”

“Oh, she waved that thing around all the time. Mostly she threatened to blow my brains out with it if I didn’t start eating. You know, because customers wouldn’t pay for fucking a skeleton, so I forced the food down my throat and usually puked everything back out…. Ah, but I digress. She didn’t hide it very well. It had a detachable silencer and was just small enough to fit into my purse”—he falters, darting me a cross glance—“which was a round shoulder bag from white leather with a long chain strap and a silver buckle.”

“Thank you.”

“Whatever. Armed and disguised I made for Blackfriars and waited for Chamber to finish his shift. My name was Céleste, I’d just turned fourteen, and my family moved to London from Nantes just two months before. I’d gone out to explore the city on a beautiful summer afternoon, but I lost my way trying to find St Paul’s Cathedral. As soon as Chamber left his office, I came up to ask for directions with a fake French accent and watched him drool at his walking wet dream. He offered to personally escort me, of course. We did some sightseeing and had a pleasant little chat along the way. He even bought me ice-cream; just to watch me lick it, I’m sure, but I wasn’t really bothered because it was cherry with chocolate sprinkles and tasted incredible, like the ones I had yesterday in Montmartre except—”

“You digress.”

“Oh, too much detail for you? So you just want the pervy bits, not the full picture?”

“That would be optimal.”

“You’re disgusting,” Ciel says as a matter of fact. “Now, Chamber told me there was this pretty garden park in his neighbourhood that I absolutely had to see for myself, but first we needed to stop by his house so that he could change from his suit into something more comfortable. I thought I’d have to play a little hard to get—mention a fear of strangers and breaking curfews, show some resistance to avoid suspicion—but he was so delightfully dumb and horny that I didn’t even need to bother. I could have just as well asked him for a shag instead of directions, and it still wouldn’t have occurred to him that this might be a trap. So I ‘caved in’ and we walked to his car and drove to where he lived in Chiswick. He kept staring at my bare legs so much the entire drive that I thought we were going to die in a crash before I got the chance to murder him myself. And I thought he’d try to whack me on the head the moment we stepped through the door, but he offered me tea and asked if I’d prefer to wait in the parlour while he changed. Such a gentleman! At that point I might as well have dropped all pretence and followed him into the bedroom.

“I sat on the bed while he stripped, holding my open purse within reach. He took off his shirt, turned his back, and gave me that look…. You know, the one you gave me yourself that morning in the kitchen. But instead of whipping out the pistol and killing him right then and there, I allowed him to come closer. I let him sit next to me, put his hand under my skirt, and run it all the way up the inside of my thigh. I’m not sure which surprised him more, to be honest: the fact that Céleste had a cock, or the fact that she pressed a gun to his head.” 

Ciel stops to steady his breath, and I think he holds back a shiver. Oh, he’s getting off on this so much. The manic glint in his eye speaks louder than words. He didn’t agree to tell me just because I’d asked; he wanted to tell me. He wanted to relive the climax of his vengeful triumph and couldn’t share it with anyone but me.

His voice just slightly, almost imperceptibly, rises to a higher pitch in excitement. “I stood up and watched him crawl away on the bed. If there was ever a moment for a dramatic reveal, it was then. I could have taken off my wig, unzipped my dress to display the scars, and smeared my make-up to show where his friend had slit my throat. I could have watched his eyes widen in recognition as he stuttered, ‘You! We killed you!’—but no, it wasn’t quite like in the films. I needed the disguise on my way out, so I couldn’t afford to mess it up for the sake of mere showmanship. I had to tell him.”

For what comes next, Ciel can’t stop a wicked smile from possessing his lips. “And he remembered. His jaw dropped even without the theatrics. He did stutter, and did ask how it was possible for me to still live, and did even beg me to spare his life quite a bit, too. But he didn’t say a word about the cult and claimed never to have met Lau, so I fired into his stomach. A test shot, as it were, just to see him squirm. The second one missed and severed his jaw, but the third was a bullseye. Right in the head, drilled clean through the skull.

“It was over very fast, but I stood there for what seemed like a very long time. I watched his blood soak into the sheets and I watched his face. I wanted to make sure that the next time it came back to haunt me, I would see it as I saw it at that moment: pale, lifeless, with a lovely bullet hole between the eyes.”

Ciel falls silent. A ray of sunlight hits his cheek as he turns his head to the window.

I lean on my palm. “And that was it?”

“That was it. Far from a perfect crime, no? So much could have gone wrong, but it didn’t. So many accidents could have brought the plan to complete ruin, but they didn’t. I could have been the one to end up dead, but I came back alive. Everything fell into place, and I got my gift.”

“Did you like it?” I ask, though I know the answer.

“Did I like it? You know I have a sweet tooth, and revenge tastes just as sweet as they say. I liked the power of having him at my mercy and I liked the thought that he would never hurt anyone ever again. What was there not to like?” Ciel regards me keenly, knowingly. “But I don’t share your appetites, Sebastian. Don’t get me wrong; I liked not the act of killing in itself but who it was that I was killing. What I liked most was the simple fact that he was dead, by my hand, which was what he deserved. I wouldn’t have liked it any other way.”

He’s nothing like myself, of course. Here lies the whole beauty of his deed: in the transition. In the corruption of a once pure soul. How unblinkingly he pulled that trigger despite being nothing like myself! To kill lay not in his immediate nature and yet he killed with such remorseless, organic ease. With the unwavering poise of someone missing a conscience. He never wondered if he should do it, only how and when he should do it. There occurred to him no alternative path, no solace in anything but bloodshed. Concepts like ‘catharsis’ or ‘forgiveness’ had never even entered his mind. He didn’t want to be ‘good’ or try to let go; he chose to never move forwards and be forever bogged down by the pursuit of revenge. He wittingly attached the ball and chain to his dainty ankle, condemning himself for a lifetime in the prison of his past. 

One year later, he seems pleased with the ‘wrongfulness’ of his actions. At peace with his hatred, comfortable with the blood on his hands.

What now?

When it comes to Ciel, I always have too many questions at once. I never know which one will yield the most satisfying answer or unlock the most secrets. It’s like a crossroads forking into innumerable directions, all unknown, leading either to dead ends or more crossroads and still more dilemmas. I take one turn and always wonder what I might have discovered at the end of another; I ask one question and immediately wish I had asked a different one in its stead. So many candidates now, gathering at the threshold of my mind to be elected, all equally tempting and equally uncertain in their promises. I want to ask everything and know everything at once. ‘Did killing Chamber help exorcise him from your nightmares?’ ‘Do you regret soiling your hands at all?’ ‘When will you be satisfied, if ever?’

But one question is the loudest, and the loudest voices are usually the ones that get heard.

“And how exactly do you feel about my so-called ‘appetites’? You know they go far beyond killing the likes of Vanel and Chamber.”

Ciel’s hand curls in a fist against his cheek. He wasn’t prepared for the change of subject. Is he at a crossroads, too? Facing a multitude of answers? In the time it takes him to decide on just one, my business phone interrupts the silence with a quiet ring. I mute it; Isabelle will have to wait a while longer.

“Is it terribly hypocritical? To treat you differently, that is?”

“Just me? By now you’re far from a saint yourself.”

“Ha. You and I are not even close. I’m a poor abused child while you’re a full-fledged monster. Who would condemn me? I have something called mitigating circumstances, and justifiable reasons.”

“It’s hypocritical. But we all have our double standards, so here’s yours. Now, my question?”

“Fine,” Ciel says, “I suppose you make me curious. Humans have always felt an unhealthy pull towards the dangerous and the macabre, especially if wrapped in an attractive package. I fancy you the same way one might fancy horror novels or violent films.”

“Ah. But I don’t think horror enthusiasts would enjoy living through the plot of their favourite stories at all. See, everyone seeks the thrill but never the actual danger. Everyone wants the macabre so long as it’s on screen, on paper, away from their lives. Teenagers who walk into a ‘haunted’ house don’t actually want to fight ghosts; they want to fool around and return to tell the tale. People write and devour books about ruthless murderers for morbid entertainment, but they wouldn’t be particularly entertained to face one in real life.” My voice lowers and my lips draw into a villainous smile. “I happen to be very much real, you know.” 

Ciel drums his fingers on the armrest. “I think you can agree that the thrill often tops healthy reason.”

“And are you the kind to leech off thrills, like me? I don’t believe you are.”

“Maybe I’m the kind to walk into a haunted house without caring if I make it back out or not.”

“Hmm. We shall yet put your fearlessness to the test, I suppose.”

Ciel’s brows fly up. “Oh? That sounded like a threat.”

“Are you threatened?”

He throws me a pitying look. “If only you were in the position to threaten me to begin with. Please, stage one more suicide and people will begin to wonder. Touch one hair on my head and you’ll find yourself at the receiving end of my aunt’s crusade—which you don’t want happening, trust me.”

I chuckle. “Now, now. I was only teasing. I wouldn’t touch a hair on your head, ever. And not because your aunt would tear me to shreds.”

For the first time today—for the entire time he told his story—I see a trace of vulnerability flash beneath the veil of his indifference. Such a well-kept façade, now cracking open. Chipping under one tender word… how uncanny.

“Right. Because I’m your special snowflake, or something.”

“Yes. Or something.”

He scoffs, turning away. “Hmph. Snowflakes melt.” 

The words are barely a mumble. Ciel stands to his feet the moment they leave his mouth, but not before I manage to glimpse the blooming beginnings of a blush on his cheeks. He escapes one second too late.

My phone starts ringing again, and I let it. Ciel tells me where he’s going before he goes, but I don’t pay attention.

I sit still and think of the blush on his cheeks. Of his downwards gaze and the small cough with which he cleared his throat. He thought he could hide it from me, didn’t he? That look. The one I have seen so many times on so many faces. 

You can’t fool me, little one; I’d know it anywhere. And you can’t really run, either. Not when I have you so tightly in my grasp.

Chapter 21

Ciel thinks it’s not over. I don’t know where he’s been but I know what he’s been doing: concocting a strategy, tailoring his approach. Writing out scenarios to the sequel of our confrontation. 

Except I haven’t planned one. I’ve been thinking, for his sake, that we might rest from the past and return to the present. In a mild, mellifluous voice that melts the tension off his features, I speak around the past as though it didn’t exist. I make it a taboo, even the last few days, especially the mortifying defeat he suffered this morning. Oh, he must want it forgotten so badly, having let an emotion escape the prison of his self-control; having fled after it in frantic pursuit and forfeited the game, all of him on alert. He’s caught it now, of course—locked it back behind his walls and thrown it inside the darkest cell, where he shall guard it more closely than ever—but I want him to think that his fugitive blush had slipped by unnoticed. I know how much he loves victories, and I’m willing to hand this one over as a gift. I need him to feel secure. 

Didn’t he say that everything needed balance? Persecuting him over dinner would be in bad taste, and bad taste is the only sin of which I’m not guilty. Tonight I don’t poke, I don’t prod, I don’t pressure. He needs room to breathe, and I grant it.

We’re in the present, then: inside the warmly lit hall of Maison Allard, seated in a corner so intimate that no one can see Ciel sneaking sips of my Cabernet Sauvignon. There is a candle, and polished silverware on a spotless white cloth, and a window that spoils us with a dazzling view over the city. Our waiter—a swift-moving epitome of French excellence—strides nose-high with a tray until he reaches our table, bowing and wishing us bon appétit with a studied smile.

We should enjoy such a present, shouldn’t we? So enviably full of luxuries and aesthetic delights. It’s the coveted lifestyle of the rich, and I am not one to turn away from vain pleasures. I can commit to this present for as long as it lasts, but Ciel is unable to drop his guard and embrace spontaneous indulgences. Whenever he does catch himself trusting the flow of a moment, he is quick to recall that he shouldn’t. Even when I’m not digging through his memories, even when I immerse him in a discourse, even when everything invites him to sit back and unwind, he’s always glancing over his shoulder or looking anxiously ahead, beyond, into the uncharted trails of the future. It’s like his ego is split into percentages, and a small portion of him is always travelling in time.

In Paris, his thoughts keep going not only four years back, but hundreds. The city pulls him away from the present towards the wealth of history that has given it shape, towards the vast annals of disquiet and the passage of lives. Aren’t plagues, wars and revolutions a far more nourishing food for thought? The past here is always vivid, reflecting in the stained glass of Sainte Chapelle and reverberating in echoes around the Place de la Concorde. It lives in the stonework, in the cobbles that pave the alleys, in the centuries-old monuments. It runs along the Haussmann boulevards and stews underneath the city, down in the dark of the catacombs, in a bone-strewn labyrinth of claustrophobic tunnels. It can be found anywhere, if one stops to look.

And Ciel looks. He goes out of his way to seek it out. All afternoon he roamed the lanes of Père-Lachaise, sacrificing his present for a date with the dead. He didn’t even take a book, only strolled and lingered among the haunting beauty of gothic mausoleums, breathing the still air and avoiding tourists (he pronounces the last word with utmost disdain, as though he himself wasn’t a tourist but a ghost whose peace they were disturbing).

He visited Proust, stopped by Molière. He took his time with Chopin—pondering the Great Polish Emigration that had cast him out of homeland to be laid in Paris soil—then climbed to Wilde’s sphinx-shaped grave to pay the same tribute. He wanted to contemplate his decadent exile and its untimely end at Hôtel d’Alsace, but the grave killed the mood. It was ugly enough by itself but uglier still behind the glass barrier that protected it, of all things, from kisses; from the pink-red lipstick marks imprinted onto the stone by adoring visitors.

I didn’t know they’d been erased. Years of amorous pilgrimage, scrubbed off like offending graffiti. Has it been this long since I last set foot there? Oxford days, now that I think about it. I’m not one to dwell on the passage of time, but even I must admit that it’s an unstoppable force. Quietly, inexorably, a whole decade has whizzed past me in a great big leap.

A clichéd observation: life is fleeting. Cemeteries shove that truth in our faces, forcing to the surface what is otherwise pushed out of consciousness, but Ciel doesn’t seem to mind being surrounded with evidence of human mortality. It’s as though he takes comfort in knowing that his life is a tiny drop in a boundless ocean. Like this, he can measure the particle of his deceased joy against the staggering enormity of the past and marvel at how miniscule it is, how irrelevant on a cosmic scale. He can weigh his misery against all late miseries and realise that someday none of it will matter, effaced without trace by the implacable hand of time. Unlike Chopin or Wilde, the memory of him will not survive in hearts or chronicles; it will die, the way he thinks it deserves to, without ever affecting the future. All of his secrets and sufferings shall accompany him to the grave, whether it be an ugly stone slab or a magnificent mausoleum.

Ciel stayed at the cemetery until closing, letting the dead steal a whole day from his present. If he were to ever pick a motto, I’m sure he wouldn’t pick ‘carpe diem’. Through his reflective nature of being, he drifts away from reality; through the traumatic faults of his past, he neglects to cherish the present; through the pages of his books, he seeks to escape into the realm of abstract. He’s so rarely there, I’ve noticed, and that must be how he survived his years in Earl’s Court: by not being there. By living in a state of metaphysical anaesthesia.

I’ve worked hard to bring him down to earth. First by curiosity, then by hatred, and lastly by infatuation. He’s come a long way since his first weeks in Hampstead, still drifting but in lower altitudes, and I must never let him slip away from me again.

I listen as he speaks, trying to gauge where we stand. Tonight feels a lot more like the talks we shared on January evenings, and the way he looks at me across the table makes me think he’s believed all my morning lies. ‘I don’t know anything about Lau, I swear, and though my voracious appetites haven’t been known to make exceptions, do trust me that you’re not on the menu.’ And it’s a good sign that he’s let me talk him into a stroll, isn’t it? Even if with a scowl, with a roll of his blue eye. 

We go, then. There are so many places I could take him—places that come alive after nightfall, views that belong on the postcards—but he agrees to go no further than past Pont Neuf, grumbling about the wind and the too-narrow pavement.

We cross from the left bank of the Seine to the right, through the bridge that has served its purpose for four hundred years. Ahead of us marches a small band of Americans, stopping every dozen steps to snap a picture, and behind us trails a pair of teenagers conversing excitedly in a slang-filled French. A young couple stands snuggling by the statue of Henri IV; a few more amble about as in a love-struck stupor, gazing dreamily at the lights across the river. I don’t know which irritates Ciel more: the blatancy of their PDA, or the street merchant with his Eiffel Tower keychains that flash and blink like miniature Christmas trees—a tawdry nightmare worse even than the tourists it had been made for.

The full-sized tower itself is never far. It sticks its golden neck above the rooftops and shoots its beam through the sky like a giant lighthouse. Next to it sits the Dôme des Invalides, ever so dutifully keeping it company on the skyline, and below to our left shine the lights of Pont des Arts, yet another part of Paris that has transformed since my last visit.

It’s emptier than I remember, and a great deal lighter. Only last year it weighed tens of tons more, bending under the burden of undying love professed on padlocks and cuffed for-presumably-ever to the bridge’s bars—all part of a trendy, ‘romantic’ ritual that resulted over the years in a collapsed railing, a bulging growth of metallic ivy, and a mountain of keys thrown to the bottom of the Seine for a sentence of rusty sleep. Now the padlocks have been torn down and banned altogether; hundreds of thousands love confessions carted away and dumped like so much rubbish.

Good riddance, too. I appreciate the irony. What others might see as a crime against romance, I see as a mass funeral of forsaken promises. How many lovers have actually kept to their word? How much lighter would the bridge have been, I wonder, had only soulmates been able to seal their bond and toss the key? Light enough for them to have stayed locked, I’m sure.

Another clichéd observation, yet always relevant: nothing is eternal, and love least of all. I remember a poem by Apollinaire that compares it to the flowing, volatile waters of the Seine. Was it Pont de Mirabeau in the title? It would fit Pont des Arts better, I think, after the annihilation of so many immortal loves. Different bridge, same old story: ‘l’amour s’en va’.

I look down at Ciel and cannot guess the substance of his thoughts, nor even their location in time. Our shoulders rarely brush, but it’s always him who draws apart once they do: he rights his course and walks indifferently onwards, always keeping a few centimetres of distance between our bodies. As though he were afraid that people might guess what we are to each other if he came any closer.

Won’t he let me touch him tonight either?

He doesn’t sleep on the far end of the bed, at least. His back is still turned but it no longer feels like a fortress. A wall, perhaps, but without barbed wire. Surmountable. 

I told lies that morning, but I did also tell one truth. He is special; would he even be here otherwise? Would I be so patient with him, so considerate? Would I have wasted months on someone mundane?

No. I don’t settle for less than special. It’s all true, little one, and I hope you took that truth to heart. I hope it put down its roots in the bed of your mind and began to flourish, magnificently, in the fertile comfort of the night. Let it grow as you sleep, and bear fruit much sweeter than the mistrust you’ve fed me for days. Let this truth be the lullaby that brings the loveliest dreams and blankets your vigilance with illusions of safety. Let it blind your other eye, the blue one, the one that always looks out for danger, and may it take away your sixth sense so that all you ever dare to rely on is me.

It’s a flattering truth, to be special. It’s a truth you can take pride in. If it feels right, why fight it? You alone have earned it by getting where no one had got before you. Celebrate it like a victory and reap its rewards while you can, while the truth still stands true. Learn to seize the day and don’t neglect your present, for I am your present and I want you to be with me in the moment. Cherish it, make the most of it, but never take it for granted. Not all truths are set in stone, and mine tend to shift as rapidly as a current. Surely you keep in mind that nothing is eternal, and we do not have all the time in the world? Everything—like kisses on a tombstone and love locks on a bridge—shall one day become a thing of the past. 

 

***

 

My alarm rings half an hour earlier, making Ciel groan.

At some point during the night, I’ve rolled over to his side of the mattress. I awoke for one hazy minute and dared drape my arm over his waist before sinking back into sleep. Now I awaken to find it snuggled against his chest, even closer than I remember. Kept in place by a pair of small, warm hands.

Ciel doesn’t look surprised. He stretches, untangles himself from my hold, and rubs at his eyes. 

Is today the day he lets me touch him? As I head for the shower, turning that possibility in my mind, his voice drifts after me sleepily from the bedroom:  

“Run us a bath.”

And it’s us, not me. Two small letters that make the biggest difference.

I go and immediately turn on the tap. I make the water steaming hot, just the way he likes it. Just the way I hate it.

“Close your eyes,” he says before climbing into the tub, and I do as I’m told. His nightgown falls rustling to the floor, but I don’t even try to peek through my eyelids. He wants to pour more bubble bath into the water, so I let him pour until the foam is all but spilling out over the edges. Now he asks me to wash his hair—no, orders me to, for in spite of using the polite structure of a request he omits that little rise in pitch at the end, marking it with the flat intonation of a demand. He expects it to be carried out without complaint, and I’m not complaining.

The bathroom is quiet as I massage his scalp in slow, soothing circles. Only the hum of traffic reaches us from eight stories below, faint as the dawning light that filters in through the white-framed window. All the while I am all too aware of Ciel’s small purrs of content and the wet, warm press of his body against mine, but I hold myself back. Watching him sit between my legs with his back turned and his scars glaringly pink against the whiteness of the foam and the tub and his own porcelain skin, my mounting lust dampens as quickly as it flared.

“The least your aunt could have done was pay for scar removal,” I say, glaring, as if glaring could help erase them. “After all, she’d been looking for a shortcut to ease her guilt.”

“But the whole thing’s not even worth it,” Ciel says, leaning his arm on my knee. “For cosmetic improvement, at most, but never complete removal. And besides, she would have had to take me there herself. That would have involved looking at me and talking to me. Not to mention she had no money to spare at the time.”

I rinse his hair, reaching for the conditioner. “I do.”

“What, you want me to get rid of the ‘battle scars’ that one day will score me all the ladies?”

“Too many might scare them off, I’m afraid. See, I don’t have a single scar and—”

“—and you still manage to woo stewardesses and pretty French professors,” Ciel cuts in, not without malice. He doesn’t like how often I mention Isabelle. “Then you’ll just have to teach me, I suppose. How to become a proper lady-killer.”

I brush a flake of foam off his shoulder. “Pun intended?”

“Of course.”

I tut. “Your wit leaves something to be desired. At this rate you won’t get very far with the ladies.”

“I’m not sorry.”

I kiss the back of his neck, where end his scars, tasting the soapy bitterness of shampoo on my lips. 

He quivers. It can’t be just me who’s been on edge, can it?

“I know a discreet clinic back in London,” I say. “Worth at least a shot, isn’t it? I could get you an appointment for next week and come along, if you wanted.”

There is not one reason for him to agree, but he’s distracted. “Fine,” he concedes, uncaring, just to make me drop the subject. He leans into my touch and seeks more, but I never find out where this could have lead us. My phone rings muffled through the open door to the bedroom, making Ciel frown.

“Take your time,” I say, planting one more kiss on his nape before climbing out of the tub; partly because it could be urgent, partly because staying in the bath any longer would end with my smelling like a flower shop, which I didn’t want on the day of my presentation. Wrapped in a towel, I get to my other phone just in time for Grell to dial a second time.

“Hiya, Sebby!” he trills into the receiver.

“I’m away,” I cut in. “Business trip. Paris. Try me next time.”

“Ooh, in that case”—he clears his throat, assuming a ludicrous accent—“salut Séby, comment ça va?”

I sigh. “If you got robbed again, tough luck. I can’t send you anything right now.”

“Non, non! That’s not it! You don’t think I want you only for your money, now do you? But say, when are you coming back?”

“Why?”

“I’m bored and I miss you, that’s why! Can’t you give me something to do already? You paid me, remember?”

Right. I completely forgot about Grell. It would be easier to send him after the cult, but I settled for keeping him as an emergency plan B. The moment he starts probing around town and asking questions, the cult will know they’re being tailed. I don’t need indiscretion; I need the advantage of secret reconnaissance and the element of surprise. I hoped Bard would bring me at least one clue, but I haven’t heard from him since our expensive soirée over seafood and vodka. Thus far, he’s fallen short of all expectations and proven to be a much blunter tool than Grell.

“How’s Henry Barrymore?” I ask, opening the wardrobe. 

“Um, filling his pockets like mad from the dog fights? We’ve got everything we need on him and more. Which begs the question: how come the bloke’s still kicking? Why’s the vigilante slacking off, hmm? Poor doggies are being forced to rip each other to shreds as we— Well, maybe not as we speak, but a lot in general. Woof, woof. Have you no heart?”

“No.”

The tone of Grell’s voice takes a vehement turn. “Fine, screw the doggies, but what about me? All fun no work. Same shit day in, day out, and nothing to keep me distracted. I’m having all kinds of thoughts over here—like what happens if I shoot a little too much up my veins, or something. But since you have no heart I guess it doesn’t concern you, huh?”

It’s been a while. Whenever he gets like this I have no choice but to pepper him with soft-spoken nothings until he’s appeased. I have to assure him, time and again, how invaluable he’s proven to me over the years and how much I would care for him if I could. Pretty, empty words that keep him in line and leave my lips with so little effort, almost as if I were reading the lines of a TV script: saying things I didn’t mean, delivering emotions I didn’t feel. The art of persuasion at its finest.

It’s not until I put down the phone that I realise my own disappointment. I wouldn’t have minded if Grell brought news of trouble—a connection missed, witness found, evidence overlooked—enough for the police to begin suspecting there might be more to me than meets the eye. Wouldn’t that be thrilling, to be suspected?

Oh, it would. To have to improvise and convince everyone anew of my virtue. To no longer just flirt with danger, but ask it to dance and feel its breath on my cheek. To be pushed up against a wall and slink away at the last instant, just before it lays its claim.

How unfortunate that I have to put business before pleasure. I can dream of thrills, but duties always come first. I think of this lecture as a maintenance procedure for my reputation, a dull prerequisite for future excitements. I need this to go well, but then there’s no other way it could go.

And rather than rehearsing my speech, I find myself admiring the look of my Huntsman suit in the mirror.

Three-piece, as usual. Form-fitting but not tight, classic but not old-fashioned. Structured jacket, double-breasted waistcoat, slim straight trousers—all of it in a deep, dark chocolate hue in place of my timeless black, all cut from fine Merino wool with just enough cashmere to add a luxurious softness but not too much warmth. It’s a brand-new masterpiece of Savile Row tailoring, particularly fetching when paired with a foulard tie, elegant Derby shoes and a sleek, simple briefcase from Italian leather. Yes, quite the indulgence to my vanity.  

Ciel steps into the bedroom just as I finish fastening my cufflinks. Freshly out of the bath, he has thrown on a light, cobalt bathgown and seems in no hurry to dress.

“I thought you were going to the Mazarine Library?” I ask, straightening a sleeve that needs no straightening. 

“Not just yet. In a while.”

He ogles me with scrutiny so intense it has me asking:

“How do I look?”

Ciel snorts. “Please. You bloody well know how you look.”

He strolls over and smooths a hand on my lapel, chin tilted to meet my eyes. One pupil blown, the other unseeing. 

“Are you nervous?” His lips curve in a smirk. “Need a pep-talk, or a hug? A cup of herbal tea?”

“Maybe a kiss for good luck.”

“Ugh, how corny.” His hands pass inside my jacket and link around the small of my back, as in a slow dance. He stops to take in my cologne, the winter Clive Christian that I shall wear all spring and perhaps even through summer. He’s never had to say a word for me to know why it’s his favourite; why it soothed him out of panic in the crowd of Oxford Street.

It’s different from all the perfume he smelled on the strangers. Complex, sophisticated, seductive. Given a minute to settle on the skin, the rich strength of topmost spices blends smoothly into Mysore sandalwood and vanilla, revealing a creamy essence that most men would reject as too feminine.

Ciel takes deep, reverent inhales. I watch them expand his chest and undulate his shoulders. They fill his lungs slowly, silently, rolling through him in a sensuous rhythm. I watch the darkening spread of the hot-water flush on his cheeks, breathing the bubble bath sweetness that sticks to his skin like syrup and wafts around him like a candy cloud. His body, not quite pressed against mine but achingly close, radiates warmth through the thin satin of his gown. 

How gossamer seems this cloth against the layers of my suit. Just one light pull, and it would part. Just one brush of my hands, and it would slip off his shoulders and pool with a whisper at his dainty feet, baring him to the dawn and to my covetous eyes.

I bend down. Ciel inches up. His lips, only yesterday so severe, now succumb to mine with redeeming softness. Chastely, gently, he bestows me at last with a good luck kiss, but I don’t feel blessed enough with just one. I push my tongue deep and curl a hand around his throat, making him moan. He sways on his toes and grips my waist harder, no longer with the innocence of a slow dance but with the urgency of lust, the hunger for skin.

I don’t want to stop. A few creases on my suit wouldn’t hurt, and we’d be done before I could get too sweaty. I might lay him on that chaise longue by the window, where the light is brightest, and feast my eyes on all they were denied that first and only time I had him. I could untie the string of his gown, spread his pink knees, and tease him with my tongue and my fingers until he started to beg, until he got so wet and loose that I could sink in with one smooth thrust and then watch, not just imagine. I could kiss his flushed, fragrant skin, drink every moan straight from his mouth, and steal as many good luck charms as I wanted— 

But I’m pressed for time, aren’t I? Wouldn’t it be better to use his mouth? It might take some persuading, but persuasion is the one thing I do best. A caress or two, a few sultry whispers, a gentle push to the head as I undid my zipper…. Sooner than later, I’d have him sinking obediently right down to his knees. 

He wouldn’t even bruise them on the soft carpet. He would need only to open up, not bite, and look pretty. Would he get right down to it, or play coy? Turn away just before I pushed past his lips? He might try to tease me, give a few timid tugs and licks before closing his mouth ever so slowly over the tip, not even sucking. He would look up at me with wide, startled eyes as I forced myself deep enough to make him gag—a little teary too, I hope—whimpering and trying to hold onto my hips as I drove over and over into the heat of his mouth. I might not smell as sweet down there, or taste much better than the strangers, but I’m sure he would grow to like it. I could mutter words of praise, run my fingers through the damp hair I helped wash, and not pull out until he swallowed—

My gaze falls on the watch peering from under my cuff. I don’t even have five minutes.

“I must be going now,” I sigh, stroking him under the chin. “But I will be back for dinner.”

Ciel looks me up as I leave. “You’d better.” 

 

***

 

I allowed my alter ego to deliver the lecture in my stead. Dr Sebastian Michaelis rose splendidly to the task, I’m sure: his research had been meticulous and his confidence unsinkable. He winged the debate without so much as a stutter.

Seated in the first row by the stage, Isabelle tried but failed to point out a fault. She’d been hoping to take the whole speech apart and murder him with her unsparing critique, but Dr Michaelis was nothing if not immaculate.

Over coffee, she shares with me her reflections. She’s one of those people who order the blackest, strongest brew and never touch sugar—to which I relate. She drinks from her cup in between rushes of animated insight, crowning the end of each point with a lengthy sip, as though caffeine were fuel for her rhetoric and required constant refills to sustain her train of thought.

The more she speaks, the more I am struck by her vivacity of manner: by the way her large, jewellery-adorned hands move fluidly in a rich repertoire of gestures and her voice brings every word to life with almost theatrical modulation. Such stark contrast to Ciel’s reticent body language and dry, sober tones! Isabelle paints her pictures in much brighter colours.

Noticing me withdraw completely into silence and yield to her avid ranting, she throws me a merciful look and allows her busy hands to rest on the table.

“Wake up, Docteur, monologue’s over. Time for something out of the blue.”

“Oh? You’ve never cared to warn me before.”

She slumps into her seat, unwrapping the little chocolate she was served along with coffee. “Actually, I’ve been nothing but considerate so far. I’ve been putting up with you since Monday and warding off your fangirls, so I think I’ve earned my right to be a little nosy.”

I tilt my head. “Wait. Is this your way of asking if you can venture a personal question? Could it be that somewhere deep down you have tact? Respect for other people’s privacy?”

“Maybe, but don’t get used to it.” She snickers, rotating her empty cup on the saucer. “Where do you run off to every evening? I’ve been planning to buy you dinner, but you keep vanishing into thin air just before six.”

I am tempted to lie, even about so trivial a matter. I derive an inherent pleasure from having my lies believed, small and big ones alike. Other times, I am tempted to tell nothing but the naked, nauseating truth. Watch it work its insidious magic.

“You’re the one consorting with gossipers. I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m looking after my late patient’s nephew?”

“Yes, a little bird may have told me….”

“Well, he wanted to come along with me to Paris. All my evenings are reserved for him.”

She blinks. “But until evening, he’s on his own?”

“That’s right.”

“Whoa. Hasn’t he been through a lot? You leave a thirteen-year-old traumatised boy alone in a strange city for hours?”

There it is, that tender core. That confounding kindness. 

“Ah. He would scoff at you if he heard you say that. He’s mature for his age, and copes well enough alone. Trust me, I do keep his trauma in mind.”

Isabelle shakes her head. “You’re a brilliant therapist, Sebastian, but I’m not sure if you’re the best parent. If I were him—having watched my closest relatives die one by one—I would be scared to let anyone out of my sight.”

And could I take it any other way but as a challenge?

“Maybe you should join us for dinner and judge him for yourself.”

Her bracelets cascade down her wrist as she lifts up a hand. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s your family. I may be nosy but I’m not, like, intrusive—” 

“Don’t try to add yourself more subtlety than you have; it’s decided. And it’s your treat.”

She agrees.

 

***

 

I’m eager to see what she makes of him, but there is no way they can get along. The combination of Ciel’s secrecy with Isabelle’s penchant for snooping; his default dislike of people against her over-extrovertive temper; his ingrained pessimism in contrast to her joie de vivre. No, this can’t be love at first sight—or it can, but tragically unrequited.

Ciel greets the news with mute disdain. I’ve ruined both his good mood and my chances to pick up where we left off in the morning, but I can’t be too sorry. With my judgement put to doubt, I daresay I had no choice.

The moment Isabelle comes into sight, Ciel pulls back his sleeve and makes a show of checking his watch: tapping the dial with his index finger and giving it a textbook British tut. “So this is the fashionable French tardiness, I gather,” he says, watching her stride through the restaurant hall to our table.

I look up from the menu. Isabelle has changed from her work blazer into a clean black jumpsuit and low black pumps, never straying from her ‘less-is-more’ dress code that applies to everything but jewellery. Not that she needs dresses or extravagant designs to look stunning; there is an elegance to her simplicity that turns more heads than a showy cleavage. She has an air about her, like potent perfume, for which there is no other word but ‘class’.

I stand up for the ritual of cheek-kissing. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Ciel watching us half with resentment and half with horror. He fears being next, no doubt, but Isabelle is quick to catch onto his reluctance and introduces herself with only a smile. Whatever points she earns with it, however, fail to offset the fact that she arrived ten minutes late, without a word of sorry, and Ciel has been hungry for more than an hour.

At least our waiter wastes no time. He lists the day’s specials in such a hurry that I cannot tell where one dish ends and the other begins. Ciel responds in kind, spitting out a ready sequence of orders, voice blasé but livening audibly when he reaches dessert.

Isabelle hangs onto every word. “That was some flawless French! Are you bilingual?”

Not one muscle moves in Ciel’s face. “All I did was read some positions off the menu.”

“The answer’s yes,” I step in. “His parents spoke a lot of French around the house, and he visited his aunt here in Paris when he was nine.” 

We get our appetizers. The next question she asks is predictable, inevitable, unfortunate. Ciel chooses to answer it for himself, putting down his glass of Badoit with that piercing, one-eyed look that takes some getting used to.

“I never listened to my mother when she told me to take the teaspoon out of my cup. One day, I accidentally stabbed my eye with it as I was drinking Earl Grey.”

“Oh.” Isabelle looks to me for support. No one who meets Ciel can tell at once if he’s joking. “Um. Funny.”

“Funny? I wasn’t laughing when—”

“Ciel,” I admonish him and turn to Isabelle, tone apologetic, “He lost it in a car accident.”

“And he doesn’t like to talk about it,” Ciel concludes, impaling one of his shrimps on the fork. Oh, I’ve never seen him so petulant. 

Isabelle apologises, undeterred. She tries a different approach, then another. Changes her strategy once, twice, even thrice. There is an admirable persistence to her efforts, but the match has been fixed for her loss since the start. No, Ciel is not even playing—he refuses to humour someone he considers not only a stranger, but a beginner. His mouth remains sealed, his walls unbreachable, his gloom unabating.

Isabelle puts up the white flag, pushed towards retreat with monosyllables and negligent shrugs. It falls to me now, the mediator, to fill up the awkward silence. And the moment we start speaking, we go to a place that Ciel cannot follow—even if he so desired.

It’s not often that he lacks the knowledge to speak up on a given matter. Just this once, as we discuss the congress and the newest experimental drugs and the changes we would make in the ICD, Ciel gets to feel like a witless child excluded from the intricacies of grown-up conversation. He knows next to nothing about my field of work, save for the out-of-context snippets on antisocial personality disorder which he ransacked from my library in search of clues. He knows only what I told him, and what he’s seen for himself.

Finally, over dessert, Isabelle broaches the subject. She has taken to sharing with me all her progress, and I have proven myself to be a most helpful adviser. Ciel, who appeared to have stopped listening to us halfway through the main course, jolts from his feigned inertia and surprises her with a question:

“You’re writing a paper on ASPD?”

“Um.” She shoots me a quick glance. “Focusing on the far end of the spectrum, to be more accurate. On the most extreme cases.”

“Psychopaths, then,” he says, and only I seem to detect the subtle drop of scorn he injects into the word. “Have you met one?”

“I work based on real-life subjects and personal experience. But I don’t think that’s—”

“What are they like?”

She traces a finger around the foot of her glass, never idle. “They’re a lot of things, but two in particular: unworthy of trust, and unworthy of occupying the thoughts of a fine young man such as yourself.”

“So you would know one, if you saw one?” Ciel presses on, ignoring her comment.

“Well… yes, I like to think so. I have a solid understanding of their general nature.”

I clear my throat. “Isabelle is just being modest, for once in her life. As of now, I daresay she’s one of the top experts on the subject worldwide.” 

Ciel pins his gaze to my smiling face. 

“Dear me. And Sebastian is being courteous, for once in his life, instead of trying to disprove me every step of the way.”

“Debate, not disprove. There is a difference.”

“See what I mean?” she laughs, taking a sip of wine. Ciel turns to finish his crème caramel without another word, and just this once I can read his thoughts as easily as if they were printed on paper. He’s first to leave the table, pushing back his chair as soon as Isabelle settles the bill and takes the last sip of her dry red.

Outside there is noise and wind and traffic; there are lights and people and peals of laughter from the cafés across the street. There is the mesmeric pulse of Paris nightlife, but Ciel wants nothing to do with it. He nods goodbye to Isabelle, dodges every pedestrian, and leaves to wait for me in the taxi.

“So?” I ask, stepping aside to let through a scooter.

“So? It was marvellous. I very much enjoy talking to brick walls. Oh, and I just couldn’t stop staring at his lashes. Unusually long for a boy, don’t you think?”

With Isabelle, it’s refreshingly easy to tell when she’s joking.

“I’m joking,” she still makes clear.

“I know. You have a habit of masking your failures with humour.”

She crosses her arms. “I wasn’t aware I was being tested, but sure. Let’s call it a failure. He’s mature for his age, like you said—but isn’t that sad?” She glances wistfully at the taxi. “Children don’t grow up so fast unless they’re forced to.” 

Her mouth is pursed, frown solemn. She looks like a visitor at an animal shelter, wishing she could take every single cat and dog home. Her saviour complex is a burden and her empathy a sickness, inverse to mine. I’ve always suspected her interest in psychopathy stemmed from the fact it couldn’t be cured.

The wind tugs at her curls, blowing it through the hoops of her earrings. “But don’t think you’ve proved your point here, or something. I wasn’t wrong; it’s not good to leave him alone. He needs to be around other people.” 

“He needs his space.”

“No one is self-sufficient. He doesn’t have to be a social butterfly, but you can’t convince me that it’s healthy for him to shut everyone out. As his parent, you should encourage him to go out into the world. And as his therapist”—she pauses to watch my reaction, confirming her guess—“you should send him off to cognitive-behavioural, in a group. I know you know that, and I’m positive you would have done so long ago already. If he weren’t family, that is.”

“So now you’re going to lecture me about work ethic?”

“No, just giving you a friendly reminder. It’s different when emotions come into the equation; we fail to see certain things in an objective light.”

Oh, Isabelle. But I don’t have that problem.

“Now here’s the pot calling a kettle black, Professeur,” I rejoin with a playful smile. “Between the two of us, aren’t you the one constantly fencing with countertransference? None of your patients are family, and yet you treat them all like they’re your darling little children.”

Isabelle bursts with laughter; head thrown back, curls bouncing.

“Merde, that’s my weakness. Is it that obvious?” She swipes at the corner of her eye. “Look, this is why I only treat a few patients at a time. So that I have time enough to care for my darling children.” She puffs up her cheeks and blows out a sigh. “I’m not sure I could handle someone like your Ciel, though. So cold, so closed-off.”

No, you probably couldn’t. Not after everything that’s happened.

“But you seem like a good match for him, all things considered. So long as you work on bringing him out of his shell and don’t encourage his hermit mentality, of course. And he likes you very much, I’ve noticed.”

I smile. Thank you, Isabelle; that’s all I wanted to hear. Watching him reject you has only made me feel more special. 

“Does he? I’ve been getting mixed signals from him lately.”

She nods. “He shows it so subtly, but I can tell.” Her eyes cut to me with sudden slyness. “Unlike you, Docteur. On you, it shows plain as day.”

Oh. 

What? 

My brows draw together. “Shows how, precisely?”

Isabelle considers me in a moment of silence. Sizes me up from the tips of my Oxfords to the ends of my wind-blown hair. “So you can be dense sometimes too, huh? Good to know. It’s adorable, especially with that cool act you like to put on. But I think I’m going to keep my observations a secret; it’s not often that I get to hold something over the great Dr Michaelis.”

Tsk. Way off the mark, Isabelle. I wasn’t trying to exhibit any signs of affection. If it’s plain as day, how come you failed to notice in what ways I like him, precisely?

The taxi honks, no doubt on Ciel’s request.

“Oof. That was my cue, I should think,” says Isabelle, trying to sound cheerful. “I must admit that I’m a little heartbroken over here. Not a fan of myself, was he? I’m not used to being anything but adored.”

“Oh, don’t take it personally. Like you said, he likes me. He was just jealous of the attention I was giving you instead of him.”

“Aw.” Her features ease into a lenient smile. “You must be such good friends.”

“I suppose.”

“It’s a relief to know he’s in good hands, at least. Apologise to him for hogging the spotlight and do something about those morbid interests of his, will you?” she says before we kiss goodbye, her cheeks cold to the touch, and stands watching as we pull away from the kerb.

She still hasn’t noticed, has she? I’m her ‘far side of the spectrum’. My hands are anything but good, and Ciel would fare much better if she were the one getting with him into the taxi and I the one being left behind on the pavement. 

It makes a good prompt for a guessing game, in fact. What if she were his therapist, what if she knew all that I know? She never would have freed him from the shackles of his past, but she might have lengthened the chains enough to allow a future. She wouldn’t have saved him from his hatred, but she might have taught him how to contain it—the way she contains her own rampant emotions and the way I contain my urges more often than not. For him she would have lost all control, broken her hands trying to fix the unfixable, shared with him every sleepless night and cried for him all the tears he never shed. She would have worn herself out with compassion only to find it unwanted; she would have given up her heart and soul only for it to be rejected.

But she never would have stopped trying. And maybe, on her hundredth try, she would have slipped through the cracks in his walls and reached some small buried part of him that still yearned for human affection. It took me a while, too. Perhaps her depth of feeling enabled shortcuts and angles that I couldn’t even imagine.

Perhaps she would have connected with him, but never in the same ways as I. Instead of the sweet, bloody revenge he so desires, she might have delivered him at most to disappointing justice, to a fate filled with still more hardship and ‘virtuous’ mettle against vengeful temptation. The ‘right thing to do’, most people would call it. The ‘against-all-odds’.

Would it have been possible for Ciel to make that choice?

Never on his own, no. Not without guidance. But I do think he could have thrived in the ‘good’ hands of someone like Isabelle; I do believe that somewhere, among all the crossroads, way way back at the beginning, there laid a small sideways path that could have led him to something resembling salvation.

It’s a shame, then, that all of the ‘what ifs’ belong in the past. He’s tossed aside every lifeline and forsaken every opportunity for help. Now even Isabelle is shrinking away into the distance, waving one last time as we disappear around the corner.

She’s all that could have been, but I’m all he’ll ever have.

Driving through the streets of Paris, alive and alight with yellow, Ciel and I each look out a different window and think entirely different thoughts.

“Why could I see it, but not her?” he wonders out loud, voice glum, head turned. “Not anyone?” 

Chapter 22

Black ties, chamber music, crème de la crème and extravagant waste of food. The congress must end with pomp and circumstance, no less.

“I feel like having too much champagne and embarrassing myself before the psychiatric lobby,” says Isabelle as we arrive hand in hand at the party, looking about in appraisal. 

“Haven’t you already done the latter during your presentation?”

She nudges me with her elbow. “I need a partner for the former.”

“You’re just curious to see what I’m like when drunk.”

She clicks her tongue and pushes a glass of champagne into my hand. “Precisely.” 

I take a sip, looking up at the frescoed ceiling. Everything is gilded: the columns, the chandeliers, the swirling ornaments on panelled walls. In size as in opulence, the hotel ballroom dazzles with all the splendour of a royal palace, missing only an entourage of courtiers and puffed-up nobles.

It’s a different kind of crowd. Doctors and professors swarm the great hall instead, some of them accessorised with primped plus-ones of either gender: smiling and nodding along to conversations they cannot keep up with, trying their best to make up in charm for what they lack in expertise.

What else is there to do? I drink, and I mingle. When the main organiser gives a speech, I dutifully join the applause. I shake hand after hand, pose for photos and trade pleasantries with the sponsors (instantly identifiable by their pot bellies and distinct air of importance). My lips are hardly ever without a smile, but this time everyone is wearing masks and everyone is on their best behaviour. It’s like a masquerade of false decorum with a variety of hidden attractions. All night I can amuse myself with studying the careful mannerisms and picking up the Freudian slips; with sieving out valuable data from the morass of small-talk; with observing the shows of dominance and placing my bets in duels of wits.

I feel at parties as a child does at a playground. I learned that about myself eighteen years ago, when Mrs Greenhill took me to her cousin’s anniversary banquet somewhere in Gloucestershire. I was only a couple of months older than Ciel at the time, though I’d already grown so tall it would have been impossible to tell we were the same age. From the moment we arrived, the Greenhills’ friends and family began to fawn endlessly over the fine gentleman I was growing up to become. They praised and listed my qualities like I were a product—so dapper, so intelligent, so well-behaved—while the Greenhills would nod along to every word. “We couldn’t be any prouder,” they boasted with phony smiles, patting me on the shoulder or on the back to complete the pantomime.

But we both knew I was only a substitute. A slapdash emergency solution. The one who should have come in my place had died not too long before and her name still hung unspoken. I never knew what kind of a daughter she had been, but I do know what kind of parents she had been raised by—the kind with the tendency to project every ideal and ambition onto their offspring. The kind to mould them into a reflection of all they had achieved and an instrument for all they had failed to achieve. A milder form of ‘Tiger parenting’, as it were, combined with the indulgent favouritism of an only child, all coming from a place of misguided yet unconditional love. 

I, however, was not the biological child they would have accepted despite all flaws and failures. I wasn’t supposed to be problematic, demand too much attention, or have too many needs. I was supposed to be nothing more and nothing less than a dapper, intelligent, well-behaved figure of a son. Our relationship had the callousness of a business contract, wherein I provided my services as their exemplar child and they obliged to pay me with inheritance.

Of course, as is often the case with business transactions, one of the parties fell victim to a scam. I conned them out of a lifetime of savings and defiled their legacy as soon as it fell into my hands. At least they died with a peaceful conscience; had they adopted anyone else but me, they would have lived to see their plan fall into pieces. After the initial joy of a new family and trading poverty for affluence, any other child would have rebelled or lapsed into depression. Few would have agreed to play their polite puppet, for few could have withstood being as lonely or as unloved.

But I couldn’t have cared less. I suited me fine. And after the banqueters had enthused over my fake seemliness, I didn’t mind being quietly forgotten—the same way a media scandal winds up forgotten when replaced by another. I became unseen, unheard, and uncalled for. Superfluous like an extra set of cutlery. While the rest of the children dipped under tables, chased each other laughing through the mansion and pestered their parents, I used my invisibility to commit petty crimes. I broke into one of the private bathrooms, spiked a random drink with Xanax and watched who would collapse; I fed chocolate cake to the hosts’ dog and stuck a needle into someone’s egg with caviar; I swiped a little girl’s asthma inhaler and sent it tumbling out of the window onto the trimmed garden grass below. 

Silly pastimes, all of them, and yet I was entertained. My appetites have evolved dramatically ever since, claiming in their wake more lives than a poisoned dog, but one thing has not and will not change. Eighteen years later, even without the innocuous guise of a child, I remain invisible. I get away with my schemes just the same. My camouflage fooled everyone even at its most primitive, let alone after I’ve developed it into the controlled, synthetic perfection that it is today.

How much more would I have to drink for both layers to fall apart? 

Not much, I reckon. Not after replacing champagne with cognac. The party is in full swing now, and I don’t intend to abstain. More voices, more laughter, more social blunders. Time flows and liquor flows alongside it.

Presently, with an almost empty glass, I am stuck entertaining the president of the Austrian Psychiatry Association: a stout woman with a double degree and a younger, entirely decorative husband at her elbow (who keeps interrupting her sentences and undressing me indiscreetly with his eyes). In the background, the ensemble is performing Haydn’s Emperor quartet—the opening movement, I believe—while my phone keeps on buzzing stubbornly inside of my pocket for what has to be the fourth time. 

It stops, immediately recommencing. I wedge a swift excuse into our discussion on Gestalt and make my way onto the terrace, where smokers stand catering to their foul habit in small groups of two and three. It’s quieter out here, and colder. Swept with wind but warmed with drink, I pick up the phone to the disgruntled sound of Ciel’s voice:

“You said you would be back at midnight.”

I glance at my watch. Forty minutes past. “I didn’t realise I had a curfew. I’m supposed to be your guardian, not the other way around.”

“Then come guard me. How much longer?”

“Why, are you scared to sleep alone?” A pause here, for effect. “Or maybe you’re scared that I won’t sleep alone?”

Ciel’s only comeback is a scoff: too loud, too derisive, confirming instead of denying.

And then, “Wait. You sound a bit off. Have you been drinking?”

“I have.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking.” Ciel’s voice—hiss-like, condemning—slithers sharply through the receiver. 

“Don’t patronise me, little one. We make our own ‘shoulds’, remember? Sweet dreams.”

He tries to have the last word, but I am insolent enough to hang up.

He doesn’t redial.

Is this what a ‘honeymoon phase’ is supposed to look like? This ecstatic period couples go through after first getting together? I think not. It should be all sex and sweet nothings, not cold shoulders and squabbles. Humans tend to treat new possessions with the utmost care, and the possession of a new lover is no exception. After all, the first logical move after acquiring an object of lust is to sate that lust to the fullest.

If relationships had seasons, the first few weeks would be summer. All that led up to it would symbolise spring—the courtship, blooming affections, the first butterflies in the stomach—while everything that came after would fall into the steady decay of autumn and inevitable winter. Autumns can sometimes be beautiful, like an extension of summer, but most would pass in a stretch of unending gloom: sentiments withering like leaves, memories buried under a mantle of mud, desire cooled off by the frigid rains of routine. The heat would either drop by small degrees or tumble at once through a rapid shift in the atmosphere, and then the whole cycle could either repeat or stagnate or cease altogether.

Ciel and I ought to be just beginning our summer. After such inclement spring and fluctuating currents, the heatwaves should be keeping us awake through most nights. Instead we seem to have our own microclimate, without predictability or seasonal progression.

Perhaps he knows that summers of love tend to be as brief as they are sweet; if the sun shines all day every day, it gets tiresome. Unwanted. He must have figured I’d change seasons ahead of their time, lapsing sooner rather than later into autumnal tedium. It’s a good move for him, to skip the summer—but how maddening nonetheless. I know he longed for it no less than I.

Push, and pull. I fell for the oldest trick in the book of seduction. I let him lead me on for the entire week, waiting obediently for permission. How about I give him a taste of his own medicine? It’s time to seed doubt and infect him with jealousy until he’s pacing around the room like a worried housewife. 

And it’s time for another drink.

I slip through the terrace door and return to the bright-lit ballroom. Where last time I withdrew and pushed away my glass of vodka, this time I don’t hesitate to get a refill. I do feel drunk—my head is pulsing and my senses are itching—but I don’t look drunk. No sway to my step, no stutter to my words, no impropriety to my demeanour.

Maybe it’s because I’m used to bottling everything up inside me. Or maybe my brain is so abnormal that even alcohol affects it in different ways.

Isabelle, in turn, looks affected in all the usual ways: giddy, bright-eyed, a little unsteady. Thrown into separate whirlwinds of socialisation, we had no choice but to catch each other’s eyes every now and again across the crowded room. We had to peer between backs, above shoulders, over the tops of other people’s heads. She’s not difficult to spot; I need only to watch out for the fanciful glint of her rings and bracelets as they shift in emphasis to her brisk narration. She stands out naturally in every setting, even in her modest gown from amber silk. Not a patch of lace on it, no embroidery, not much in terms of a cleavage. Only her collarbone is exposed, and the lean muscles of her arms and shoulders, olive skin shimmering with scented oil.

More than once now I have been asked, with an all too suggestive curve of the lips, if the two of us came together or merely arrived together as colleagues. “What a shame,” I would hear upon answering the latter. “So well-matched, and both single.”

We are well-matched. She’s my type, and I’m hers. I have always preferred older women, and she’s always had standards that not many could meet. Were it not for present circumstances, I would have long since made a move, and—

Ah. What am I on about? There aren’t any special circumstances. There’s nothing to stop me from doing what I want to do. It wouldn’t be the first or last secret that I kept from Ciel, so why would it hold me back?

It’s settled. I start across the room, gait still steady, ignoring those who try to stop me for a word. And then, just as I am about to reach Isabelle and make my move, I spot a familiar figure idling by the wall and watching the ensemble by its lonesome self.

Good old Will.

So far he has succeeded in keeping himself out of my immediate vicinity, but not this time. This time he missed the moment I emerged from the terrace and failed to duck safely out of my sight. He lost me, but I found him. 

He seems his usual self: all work no play, prim and proper to the point of pretension, stiff as a telephone pole. On a good day he looks uptight; on a bad day he looks as if his soul has been sucked out into a void. Not much of a party boy, either, never drinking and hardly smiling, blending into the crowd instead of mingling amongst it. If he didn’t know some of the board members, he surely wouldn’t have shown.

He sees me approach, but no place to retreat. His serious features wrinkle up in hostility as he braces for the confrontation.

“Why, look at us both,” I open with a wide smile. “Same Alma Mater, same class, years later in the same place.... I mean that literally, of course. Physically. In figurative terms of success and intellect, we’re whole worlds apart.”

He doesn’t even blink. “You don’t have to be so harsh on yourself, Michaelis. I’m sure you’ll get somewhere given enough hard work.”

I laugh, mouth closed. “Speaking of work… how went your presentation? I’m sorry I couldn’t find the time to attend, but I do remember seeing you on Thursday. How did you like me?”

“Big fan. As always.”

“Indeed, as always. I’m sure you want to write a critique for one of the journals, but you can’t seem to come up with any good counter-arguments just yet—can you? I mean, you were so eerily quiet during the discussion.”

William pushes up his spectacles, a habit that hasn’t changed any more than the man himself. “Why is it that every time you insist that we talk and force me to stoop to your level? There are plenty of volunteers around to indulge your narcissism, freak. Go pester them instead.”

I tilt my head. “But you’re special to me, Will. After all, you’re the only one who could ever see past my bluff.”

It’s only for a few seconds, but I let my mask drop. A wolfish grin contorts my mouth and bares my teeth. And whatever William sees in my eyes, it drains all the blood from his face.

“Yes, congratulations: you were right about me all along! If I’m to give you credit for anything, it’s for being perceptive. Remember what you told me that one day after psychopharmacology? That first and last time we sat next to each other in class?”

He answers mechanically, as though it were a quiz. “That no amount of meds could set you right.”

“Yes, and that I couldn’t deceive you. See, back then it gave me chills. Exhilarating, I thought—a challenge. But then we graduated, parted ways, and left each other be. Such a disappointing lack of agency on your part. You knew, and yet you chose not to act. I’d say that some of the blood is on your hands as well.” 

“Blood,” says William, a half-question. Like he didn’t know the meaning of the word.

“Oh my. Did you think I was one of the non-violent ones?”

A group of our colleagues walks by, laughing, oblivious of the exchange. Will’s throat bobs in a swallow. If he weren’t sweating, he’d look like a statue. 

“Let’s get you better informed, then. You’ve always loved numbers, haven’t you? Charts, data.... In that case, from a purely statistical standpoint, last year marked a definite height of productivity in my career. The official toll included five vigilante killings with a 3,8% of London’s annual homicide rate; the unofficial toll included three missing person cases, one alleged suicide, and two more victims outside of England. Illustrated in a graph, my activity would form a slow upward trend stretched over sixteen years, which I hope creates a clear enough picture of what you failed to stop from happening. I’ll leave the grand total to your imagination.”

William’s mouth is set in a tight line, our gazes levelled. It’s a shame he’s not shorter, for I would very much like to leer down at him at this moment.

“You’re welcome to tell everyone, of course, but who will believe you? Allow me to present a ready answer: absolutely not a single soul. Given our mutual history, you will seem like a petty liar grappling for dirty tricks to undermine my position. No one knows you, Will; who could tell what truly lies behind that stony exterior? Who could vouch for your integrity, hmm? Because half of this crowd would readily vouch for mine. I mean, even Professor Rousselot is eating out of my hand. Your testimony will be dismissed as a bunch of spurious claims and envy-spawned delusions.”

“Why?” he forces out, face white as a sheet.

“Why what?”

“Why tell me.”

“Silly, silly Will. Can’t properly psychoanalyse anything, can you? I’ve had one glass too many, in case you’ve missed it. But mostly I’d like to see you do what you should have done all those years back in Oxford: try to stop me. I do so enjoy spectating your failures.”

I never find out if this manages to elicit a more interesting reaction than silent terror. We are interrupted by the untimely arrival of Isabelle, who pats me on the back and quips in a half-sober voice:

“Hey! Mission accomplished. I accidentally spilled a drink on Mrs Gelzer’s brand-new Givenchy dress and was laughed at for mispronouncing ‘hemiasomatognosia’. Why don’t we—” She cuts off upon seeing Will’s face. “Gosh, is everything all right? Are you unwell, Mr Spears?”

I dry my glass of cognac. “Poor old Will simply cannot hold his liquor.”

“Yes, I am a complete lightweight,” he says without tearing his eyes from mine. His instincts must be screaming at him to look away, but looking away would equal submission.

“Aw, don’t worry! I’m done for the evening too. One more glass and I might get more on people’s clothes than just champagne. You staying, Sebastian?”

I’m going.

As we head for the cloakroom, William tries and fails to hide the tremble in his hands.

 

***

 

We take the same taxi. The clock shows three past one, the streets stand strangely empty, and Isabelle has a million things to tell me at once. I watch her in the semi-darkness: the faded colour of her lipstick, the splashes of light that hit her cheek, the little mole on her slim ankle as she swings her foot back and forth to some imagined tune. Not a single word registers in my consciousness, filtering in then out with the rest of the background noise. Whatever story she’s trying to tell, however, seems to warrant a most vivid gesticulation.

Ciel makes one more attempt at contact, but I reject the call. “Don’t wait for me,” I type and press send. He doesn’t respond, but I’m sure he’ll stay up all night if he has to.

Our taxi slows down and pulls up in front of a tall building from grey stone. It’s not until the driver repeats the address that Isabelle realises it’s time to get off, and that we won’t be seeing each other for at least a year.

She clutches at her purse, tongue flicking briefly over her lips. Doesn’t liquor make her bolder? On one hand she’s anxious to ask, on the other she hates the thought of parting with me on purely platonic terms. As far as chances go, this is her last. And if she doesn’t offer, I will. She deserves a proper goodbye.

“So… remember that pen you lent me the other day? Fancy British brand, Conway something? You probably want it back. And we can have a goodbye drink or two while we’re at it—I mean, if you want to.”

She pays the fare and I follow her through the heavy front door. Once in the lift, she presses number eight and doesn’t say anything all the way to the top. This is the first silence we’ve ever shared; whenever one threatened to fall, she never failed to fill it with a ready supply of words. This time, however, she’s not in the mood for talking.

I step in. Her flat is modern, spacious, uncluttered. She practises the same minimalism in décor that she does in personal style, quality over quantity. The only thing of which she has too much are books.

She throws me a funny look in the doorway, as if wondering why we weren’t making out and shedding each other’s clothes like in the films. Her gaze drops down.

“What’s with the gloves? It’s warm.”

“What about that drink?”

“Uh. Wine or something stronger?”

“Stronger.”

I take a seat on her sofa, buzzing with anticipation. She takes the time to change into a loose, crimson nightdress and comes back into the living room with a bottle of whisky and only one glass. She places my borrowed pen on the coffee table and sits herself awkwardly beside me, as though ill at ease in her own home.

She pours my goodbye drink, but I push the glass to her side of the table.

“Oh no, I’ve had enough. I’m not feeling so great,” she says with firm resolution, sliding the glass back towards me. 

I pick it up and slam it in front of her with a loud bang, spilling most of the whisky on her carpet.

“Drink. Or I’ll force it down your throat.”

She’s like a paused film frame: frozen still. My mask peels off for the second time tonight, and she doesn’t seem to recognise the man behind it.

“It’s better if you drink, believe me. Consider it anaesthesia, and I’m never that generous.”

The breath she’s been holding leaves her in a long, shaky exhale. A thousand thoughts must be galloping through her mind, and most of them must be thoughts of escape. From the way her eyes sweep over the room, I can tell she’s calculating her chances.

I’m bigger, stronger, closer to the exit. I may have drunk more, but I carry myself better. She has no chance of a secret 112 call, not when her phone is in her purse and her purse is by the doorway. Screaming would earn her a gag and no help; attempting to smash my head with the whisky bottle would not only make a mess, but make me angry.

Having realised all this, she shrinks into the sofa. Next come thoughts of ‘why’, and they don’t take her long; we’ve always understood each other with uncanny ease. Her agile mind, even blunted, connects the dots in a mere moment’s flight. Only now it’s too little, too late. 

“I-I’m not your type. I haven’t done anything wrong, I don’t even—”

“The vigilante is just a dead experiment. I kill whomever I want. Now drink.”

Her hands—those groomed, expressive hands that seem to live a life of their own—tremble violently as she brings the glass to her lips.

“More.”

She pours more, the entire glass, this time downing it with certain impatience. Anger, even. 

“Good. Now wait for it to kick in.”

Our second silence is long and barren. Isabelle leans her head back and stares at the ceiling, hazel eyes glassy, growing used to the idea that she’s going to die. I can hear the change in her breath as the alcohol spreads through her system and poisons her blood. I bask in the moment, counting the minutes as life slips slowly through her fingers.

At some point, she laughs. A mad, gurgling sound in the back of her throat. 

“I mean—I kind of knew you were hiding something. I knew you were too good to be true.”

I chuckle. “You haven’t had much luck with men, have you?”

“This isn’t bad luck, this is…” She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand, as if tracing an arch over a star-pricked sky. “This is a targeted attack of some higher fucking force. How I did I not see it coming? It was my job to see it coming.”

“Truly, not even a hunch? Not even after Ciel gave you a hint?”

Her mouth hangs open.

“Oh,” she utters, voice breaking. “Oh no. No, that poor thing.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Don’t tell me!” She stretches out a hand, shielding herself from an invisible blow. “Don’t. Spare some of my faith in humanity, please.” 

I don’t tell her. It would take me the entire night, anyway. She sways forth, winding both hands into her locks. “Oh no no no. I’m getting wild assumptions.”

I don’t even have to order her to drink. She grabs the whole bottle and chugs from it in long, great gulps: throat bobbing, eyes wrenched shut.

“I haven’t hurt him. Not me.”

“Not yet, you mean.” She releases her mouth from the bottle with a pop. It’s almost empty. Whisky trickles down her chin and she wipes it with her wrist, smearing the remains of her lipstick.

I cross my arms. It somehow rubs me the wrong way, the ‘not yet’.

“Everything’s a matter of time, of course. I hadn’t planned to hurt you, either; not even while I was getting ready for the party, not until we left. See, it’s nothing personal. In fact, I really like you. Want to guess why?”

She shrugs, suppressing a burp. “Empaths and narcissists are naturally drawn to one another.”

“Precisely! We’re polar opposites. There’s me, faking emotions; there’s you, trying to conceal them. There’s me, studying those who feel too much; there’s you, studying those who feel too little. We had an interesting dynamic, you and I, but this is just what I’m like when drunk. Sorry.”

Whatever cogs in her brain are still functioning begin to turn. They labour and stutter, but turn.

“It’s not too late to stop this, you know. You’re sobering up, and we’re talking. You can’t—” She clears her dry throat, scrambling for eloquence, switching halfway to French. “You can’t help wanting the things that you want and yet you don’t let them overcome you. That’s—good. That’s really good. You wait before you act, and you think of repercussions, and I know that you can control yourself better than most. You could seek help on your own terms and live in the open, but if you go on like this you’ll get caught and I don’t want that. You deserve better, you deserve a chance.”

I huff. “You think you can manipulate me?”

“No!” she urges, and it sounds genuine. “I really think that. It’s how I feel.”

Isn’t her altruism unnerving? I understand apathy and egotism, but pure selfless good is confusing. 

“I’m literally about to murder you, Isabelle. Why are you still being nice to me?”

“You can’t help it,” she repeats, shaking her head until it makes her dizzy. She has to steady herself on the armrest. “You can’t help it. You were born like this, and I don’t give up on anyone ever. I’ve been trying out treatments, f-for the paper. There are things that can be done.”

My mouth splits into a grin. “Oh, this I have to hear. How would you treat me?”

She searches her memory, blinking and blinking. Spelling out carefully so as not to stutter.

“I-I’ve had results with anticonvulsants. Phenytoin, and carbamazepine—”

“—which can reduce impulsive violence, but never premeditated. Only spontaneous combustions of rage. Whom did it work on, hmm? That moron from your paper who knifed an old lady because she took his spot in a queue at Carrefour? Please, don’t lump the likes of him into the same league as me.”

“Clozapine,” she blurts, pleased that she remembered the name. She lifts a finger, holding the thought. “Yes, Clozapine has shown the most promise. In six out of seven test subjects it—”

“Yes, yes, I’ve read the results of your study. Secondary psychopathy only, same as above. Next.”

“M-Maybe SSRIs, with how they affect the amygdala—”

“Oh no, forget it. I’ve tried taking Sertraline for a month, just out of curiosity, and it only made me worse.”

She’s run out of arguments. Her eyes rove in all directions, as though she had cheat sheets plastered around the room and searched for the one containing the answers. 

I sigh. “Is that all you’ve got? Your only solution would be to dose me with meds until I’m all dumb and docile? No cure, no change. No long-term improvement, only neutralisation. What, you don’t even want to try to talk me into feeling empathy? You haven’t invented any procedures to rewire my nervous system, or developed any magical emotion pills? Green for joy, blue for sadness, pink for love?”

She shakes her head solemnly, missing the sarcasm. 

“No, of course not. You’ve failed to make the smallest difference. If that’s all your research’s been good for, Professor, then you might as well wrap me up in a straitjacket and call it a day. Same effect for a lot less money, don’t you think? It won’t save me, but it will save others from me. Or maybe you’d like to make it a bit more permanent? How about a lobotomy, like in the good old days? Stick an ice-pick into my eye, twirl to the right angle, give it a few taps and see if it helps me start caring? No? Well then you could always dump me into an ice bath or fry my problematic brain with ECT: turn up the voltage again and again until I finally see the error of my actions1. If you can’t cure me, you could at least turn me into a harmless vegetable. A drooling cretin who couldn’t hurt even a fly.”

And she actually looks sorry. She actually pities me.

Our third silence descends, brief yet poignant. My shoulders slump and my voice drops to a half-whisper. Numb, defeated.

“So this is it, then. If you don’t have the answers, nobody will. I can’t miss something I’ve never had, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t understand what I’m lacking. There are experiences worth living, emotions worth feeling instead of studying them in other people. There’s a better way to be, and I thought you might have known how to get there.”

Her breath hitches and her eyes go wide. She extends a hand towards my shoulder, slowly and gingerly, as if trying to pet a wild animal—

And then I burst with insolent laughter straight into her hopeful face.

“I can’t believe you fell for that, even drunk!” I curl my gloved hand into a fist and dab at the corners of my eyes. “I never learnt to fully cry on command, but I can make myself look a little teary. Not bad, is it? Works like a charm!”

She stares at her rejected hand, sulking. “I fell for it cause you’re not like them. Not like the ones I’ve been studying, not exactly. You have different—vibes, I guess. Different aura. Even now, when you’re not masking.”  

“Of course I’m not like them. I’m better.”

“Yes, but in a good way. Right?” She tries to convince herself as much as me. “There’s something good there.”

“Oh, this goes without saying. By all accounts, I’m an upstanding member of the society: I pay my taxes, recycle my rubbish, and smile at my neighbours. I’ve helped more patients than you and give to charity at least once a year. How’s that for good?”

Isabelle bites petulantly at her lip. All her scientific reasoning has collapsed into the logic of a slow, stubborn child refusing to believe that Santa is all a hoax, or that her goldfish has gone to heaven and will never come back.

“No, you don’t get it. I don’t mean there’s only good about you—like, inside you too.”

Oh, I haven’t laughed this hard in years. Maybe ever. And she just stares at me dumbly while I do so, her brain too fuddled to lead a substantive conversation. All her cogs have sputtered and ground to a halt.

“There must be something,” she insists. “You know, like that small bit of yang in every yin? Like—the way you looked at that boy. At Ciel. That was good, wasn’t it? I-I know it was. I could sense it, and I sense things that others can’t. It was genuine, it was good. I felt it.”

“Ciel?” I put a hand to my chin, as if actually considering her point. “I fucked him. Does that count as good? Because it definitely felt like it to me.”

Whether it’s the imagery or that last dose of whisky, Isabelle puts a hand over her mouth and throws up. Her throat ripples as she tries to force it back down, but she swallows only half. The rest trickles through her fingers and drips onto the leather of her sofa.

I can’t have any more fun with her in this state, can I? She can barely sit straight or keep her eyes open. And she’s started rambling now, too. Slurring. Her words string together into bulks of nonsense and stumble into one another like domino tiles. Something about patients and students and what they were all going to do without her.

“Julie,” I think she says. “Everyone always leaves her and now I’m gonna leave her too. And Max—”

It’s time. I throw her arm around my shoulders, heave her up from the sofa, and push her face away just in time for the contents of her stomach to land on the carpet instead of my finest tuxedo. Just how much did she eat at the party? I can’t blame her; the hors d’œuvres were first-rate, truth told. She tries to yank out some of my hair as we shuffle across the room, but the motion comes out so clumsy and sluggish that I ignore it. Her body is already as limp as a fresh corpse, unable to take one step on its own.

She gets sick again outside. Vomit pours out of her mouth and nostrils in one great flood, staining her red satin nightshirt and splattering all over the balcony tiles. The wind carries over the acid stink of half-digested food and plasters Isabelle’s hair to her clammy mouth.

I tut. “This railing looks tricky. Unsafe. Not nearly high enough, too. You stumbled outside for a gulp of fresh air, tripped on your own vomit”—I make sure she steps in the puddle, dragging her under the armpits—“and then you crashed into the bars, so horribly drunk, and tipped just a little too far over the edge. A tragedy.”

“No one’ll believe this about me,” she croaks out, half-lucid. “You’re gonna get caught cause it’s all bullshit. And then you’ll be no better than the rest of ’em morons, you’ll be worse. Locked up in solitary confinement, maximum security. All alone.” 

“Finally you’ve worked up some spite.”

She sniffles. “And no one’ll come visit you, just a bunch of shrinks coming to gloat and to write papers. They’ll rummage around in your sick brain and prod at you like a lab animal cause you sure as hell aren’t human, you’re—”

I grab a fistful of her thick curls and slam her into the railing. She slumps over it like a ragdoll, bent in half, hanging suspended over the thirty-meter fall.

“We’ll just have to see what happens, won’t we? Or I will, at least. As for you”—I motion at the view from her balcony—“this is the last thing you’ll ever get to see in your life.”

And it’s not a bad view at all. A small but private panorama of Parisian lights. The shimmering orange of the street below looks peaceful, unassuming, as though the fall wouldn’t actually hurt one bit. All the windows in the opposite building are either dark or curtained, and the half-moon hovering dimly on the cloud-speckled sky is our only spectator.

But there are no stars in sight, sadly. Light pollution has erased them and left but an endless stretch of blank black overhead. Wouldn’t it be nicer if she could see the stars one last time, even if blurring before her eyes?

“You know what, Isabelle? My apartment in the sixteenth has a little balcony, just like yours. You can see the Eiffel Tower from it if you lean out just far enough and stretch out your neck, like this.” I twist her head to the left. “Can you see it?”

“God, no,” she groans. “I hate that fucking thing.”

And that’s the last thing she says before I push her down. The iron bars vibrate in unison as she tumbles soundlessly to her death.

There is nothing like it. That blood-stirring, spine-tingling rush of euphoria. That bright, glittering aureole that frames my vision. It’s incommunicable. It’s poetry. I lack nothing, and there is no better way to be.

I watch her fall, leaning out from the railing. Through the subdued hum of night traffic, I hear a crunch as she hits the pavement—or I only imagine that I do, for the sound comes close to my ear with almost unnatural clarity. Wet, abrupt, satisfyingly brutal. I lick my lips, squinting to see the pool of blood spreading around the pale body. I wish I was down there in the light, admiring and storing away each detail, like a painter preparing to recapture the moment on canvas.

Did she fall straight on her head? Has her brain oozed out onto the cobbles? Are her eyes closed or open?

My answer is a scream. Short but shrill, belonging to a late pedestrian who got lucky enough to see her up close. I envy him, but it has to be enough. I have to go. 

No, not go—run. Duck inside the apartment and dash out onto the staircase. Tumble down all the dozens of steps because the lift is too risky, then burst through the back entrance onto the adjacent street. And don’t I have the most infernal luck? No one sees me again. The taxi stand is just around the corner.

The tiredness doesn’t hit me until I’m inside the cab. I almost pass out twice in the backseat, then once more as I stumble out onto the kerb. I don’t think I’ve ever been this exhausted—this weak, this human. 

But it was worth it.

It’s nineteen past two when I enter our flat. Ciel’s dozed off on the sofa, legs curled up to his stomach and his face buried in a stack of pillows. He was probably planning to lie down for just a few minutes, just to rest, fully intent on giving me a piece of his mind the moment I walked through the door. I flip off the lights, as if he might see me.

Should I carry him to bed? No, it might wake him. And I can barely hold my own weight, besides. Wasn’t there a blanket somewhere? In the other bedroom? I’d better check.

Quietly, now—mind the door handle and the creaking of hinges. Is it in the dresser? Yes, right there. Soft and woollen and probably green.

I double back to the sitting room and drape the blanket over Ciel’s shoulders. Has he always looked this serene while asleep? I can’t resist; I lean closer. The pale, dawn-like dark of the room obscures almost nothing. I look and look, though my eyelids fall and fall.

How long has he been out? I touch my fingertips to his warm neck and count the beats. 47, give or take. Slow like his breathing. No REM, no dreams, not the slightest flutter of eyelids.

Early stage 3, I think. Only just entering deep sleep. I wish I could plug him to an EEG and watch the whole cycle like a silent movie: the rise and fall of his brainwaves with every spindle and spike in the pattern. I wish it could display his dreams to me like a projector, or at least code their meaning in the alphabet of frequencies and amplitudes, so that he could keep no secrets from me even in slumber. So that I could learn his mind intimately from within, until I know its depths better than he does himself—in consciousness and unconsciousness alike.

My eyelids give in and I fall forward, stopping just short of Ciel’s face. His breath warms my cheek; my hair grazes his jaw. He shifts beneath the blanket and sighs, restlessly, as though already worrying about what happens once he wakes up.

I press the lightest kiss to his forehead, drag my feet to the bedroom, and collapse into the sheets.

Chapter 23

I take a shower, get dressed, brew coffee. A day like any other, except I should have started it a few hours earlier.

And my head is pounding.

I find Ciel out on the balcony with a book, wearing that warm, oversized jumper he wore all winter around the house. He turns as I enter the living room and watches me swallow painkillers with silent deprecation, exuding about him a tangible air of calm before the storm, like a parent preparing a lecture for their disobedient child. For now our exchange ends at ‘good morning’, but I’m sure he’s nursing a well-rehearsed reserve of insults just waiting to be unleashed at the opportune moment.

I join him outside, greeted by the warmest weather and bluest sky we’ve seen all week. The Eiffel Tower peeks out from behind the townhouses on the left, evoking the memory of Isabelle’s last words and making me smile. I don’t remember everything from last night, but I don’t have to; it makes the aftermath so excitingly hard to predict. How bad of a mess have I made? Only now, having finished my morning routine and snuffed out my headache, do I proceed to unlock my phone and behold the avalanche of notifications.

E-mails, text messages, application alerts. A long string of missed calls from colleagues and unknown French numbers. Before I can ring anyone back, however, I am interrupted by a series of knocks from deep within the apartment. Sharp and rapid, as though the person on the other side would not be kept waiting.

Ciel’s head snaps up from his book, but my heart does not even flutter. Not a single beat skipped as I get up and open.

The policeman at our door has singularly disgruntled features and puffy, drooping eyes – not the kind one sports after a night of bad sleep but the kind one earns through various and systematic hardships of existence. He looks fed up: with life in general and his job in particular, counting out the minutes to his lunch break and wishing someone else had been sent in his stead.

“You should learn to pick up your phone, sir,” he says with a quick flash of credentials, either knowing I can speak French or not caring whether I can or not. 

“I’m sorry, I’ve had a long night. What’s this about?”

“That long night of yours, in fact. The congress party? Which you attended with one Isabelle Rousselot?” he asks like it happened ten months ago, not just ten hours. “We found out what we could from your colleagues, but we can’t make real progress without your statement. It’s important that we close this affair before you fly back to London.”

Disoriented blinking. The hungover, give-me-a-break look of someone unprepared to deal with reality. 

“Did… something happen? At the party?”

As bearer of bad news, the policeman does his best to summon a semblance of gravity upon his worn features. He straightens his hunched posture, waits until I’m braced for impending shock, and says, “Last night at two o’clock sharp, Isabelle Rousselot fell to her death from the balcony of her eighth floor apartment. She had a lethal dose of alcohol in her bloodstream and died instantly upon impact.”

Nothing, at first. Temporary torpor. Four seconds of blank staring as my brain struggles to process the news. And it’s terrible news, of course, but I’m someone who’s used to handling the worst. My dose of shock must be carefully measured: just one tremble of lip, just two shakes of the head as I finally piece things together. No jumping brows, no theatrically widened eyes. I hold onto my breath and then punch it out of me in a sharp exhale, pursing my lips into a rigid line. Words fail me. 

“Now, you were seen getting together into the same taxi just after one o’clock. Perhaps you could come to the station and relay to us last night’s events”—he sees the look on my face and holds up a hand—“purely for the record and purely as a witness, of course. Standard procedure. What happened seems rather straightforward from what we’ve seen on site, but we did get an anonymous notice this morning how you might have been—well, further involved in the accident, and it’s simply our job to follow up.”

Further involved? No, you received a notice that I was downright responsible. From Will, I’m sure. How very thoughtful.

You shouldn’t have told me this, Mr Policeman, but I understand why you did. I look so trustworthy that you just couldn’t help yourself, could you?

I blow out a wretched sigh, run a hand through my hair, and look around to get my bearings. “No, no, I understand. Of course I’ll come. Let me just—”

“You’re going out?”

The policeman blinks with bemusement at the sight of Ciel, who had been hiding around a corner and only just emerged from behind my back.

“Just for a bit,” I say. “There’s one thing I need to—” 

“But it’s our last day!” Ciel cries out in protest. “You never have time in London, and you promised we would go to Grévin! You even bought tickets last night, remember??”

The policeman catches on, scratching at his cheek. “Last night?” 

“After he returned home drunk,” says Ciel with a sullen pout. “I was sleepy and angry and I said he could make it up to me only if he got us tickets. I’ve always wanted to go to a wax museum!” 

“Right. And what time was that, do you think?”

Ciel gives a faint shrug. “I dunno exactly. Late. After one.”

The policeman turns back to me. “So you booked tickets online. On this laptop?” He points to where my notebook lies closed on the coffee table.

I put a hand to my neck. “To be honest, I don’t remember much after I got home. I was… tired. But you’re welcome to have a look, if that helps clear anything up.”

He glances at his watch, motions at me to proceed, and peers over my shoulder as I unlock the computer with a print scan and a password. Sure enough, my browser history shows the official museum website with a timestamp of one thirty two. Logging onto my private inbox, I discover an automatic confirmation of purchase generated only two minutes later. Even I had no idea that Ciel knew my credit card details.

“One thirty two....” The policeman does the math in his head. “With the night traffic... more or less. Maybe more. You came straight back?”

I wrench out another sigh. The lift had a camera, I’m almost sure. And the taxi driver would remember that we got off together. 

Oh, I’ve left so many loose ends. Glorious.

“I did stop by Isabelle’s to make sure she got there safely. I went up to collect the pen I’d lent her a few days back, but I didn’t even step inside.”

“A pen?” The man’s voice lifts marginally in suspicion. “We found a black fountain pen on the coffee table. Some British brand, I think. Could it be yours?”

Oh. Did I actually leave it behind? Curious; I was sure I’d slipped it into the pocket of my tuxedo.

Shame. That pen was one of my favourites.

“It… could be mine, yes. You see, Isabelle didn’t actually return it.” Now I’m embarrassed: twisting my lips, averting my eyes. “I asked her about it when we went up to her flat, but she insisted that I give it to her as a sort of... keepsake, I suppose. A parting present.”

Whatever the policeman had to say, he ends up biting his tongue and scribbles something down in his notepad. “Right, I see. Just one more thing: did Miss Rousselot have drinking problems? I mean, that you knew of? Or that you suspected?”

My face takes on a pensive air. “Not exactly, but she did go through quite the tough week. She mentioned troubles with two of her patients and claimed to have botched her presentation. She is—was a hopeless perfectionist, you see. She said she needed a few drinks to unwind after all that stress she’d been under, and then...”

“And then?”

My tone turns reluctant, as if I were forced into sharing something I’d sworn to keep secret. “I worried for her, at the party. One drink after another. It didn’t look like regular stress-relief at all.”

“I’ve heard you weren’t exactly going easy yourself. Sir.”

“Fair enough, but I had it under control; Isabelle didn’t. I had to practically force her to go home after she’d spilled champagne on one of the guests. And then later, upstairs, she kept insisting that we have another drink before I leave Paris.”

“And you rejected her.”

“Well—‘reject’ is a strong word. I politely refused and suggested that she go straight to sleep.”

“Which she didn’t, and then replaced you with your pen. Drank a good couple of rounds with it, actually.”

Oh my, how dare he? Gossiping on duty and making fun of a poor, lovesick woman? So recently and tragically deceased?

I frown. “A couple of rounds?...”

“Almost a whole bottle of whisky at once, in fact. I’m surprised she even made it out on the balcony.”

“Well I can’t wrap my head around it. That’s just—”

“—so much unlike her?” He shrugs. “I hear that all the time. No one’s ever the type to do anything, it seems. But sometimes you just can’t tell what goes on in another person’s head.”

“True.”

“All right, then.” He hides the notepad in his pocket, throwing a quick look around the apartment. “That will be enough for now, but please drop by the station tomorrow morning before your flight. We might have some further questions about the case.” He turns to leave, none too discreet in his hurry. “Have a good trip to the museum. And, um, sorry for your loss.”

I nod and see him out, still wearing my best imitation of sadness. On the opposite end of the room, Ciel is likewise holding up his ‘normal teenager’ front.

And then we’re alone again, immediately transformed, shedding our masks the way one sheds an overcoat in the doorway. Ciel crosses his arms and leans against the wall, glowering at me belligerently above the sofa. Time for his lecture.

“Don’t wait for me. How dramatic. I mean, I knew you were going to do something stupid once you sent that message, I just didn’t know how stupid exactly. What, pick up a whore around Pigalle and stab her spontaneously in an alley? Surely you’d have enough reason not to try anything more than that?” Ciel shakes his head, conveying what disapproval he couldn’t through words. “You’re lucky I bothered with an alibi for your pathetic, drunken arse. Was that some sort of test? Or does it simply excite you, monster, to teeter on the edge?” 

I grin with impudent delight. “Oh, it certainly does. But you, little one, excite me so much more.”

Ciel flushes angrily. Whatever insults he may still have in store, I’m not interested in hearing them out. I want nothing but to ravish him right here, right now, and the best part is that nothing can stop me. I’m allowed to. Sometimes, with all the games we play, it’s easy to forget that he’s already mine. 

I start drawing closer; Ciel starts backing blindly away. He opens his mouth to make another point, but his back hits the wall and he’s pinned into place. I do like him a little stubborn, squirming in vain to break free from my clutches. I lean down to kiss him, landing not on his mouth but the side of his cheek, the hard ridge of his jaw, where I linger awhile before moving down to the taut, twisting length of his neck. He resists only for the sake of resistance, pushing at me with as much force as conviction: absolutely none. I can feel the bob of his throat as he swallows under the hot graze of my breath, and the frisson that shoots through him as I lick along his earlobe, and the wild thumping of his heart as my hands slide underneath the folds of his jumper. Profanities tumble half-coherently from his lips, both English and French but none of them pretty, none of them working. His touch-starved body leans into mine as though he’s about to swoon, knees buckling at the exact same moment I sweep him off the floor into the cradle of my arms. And once there, with a last muttered curse, he gives all of it up and dives in to kiss me. A hungry, hot-blooded kiss that tastes of café au lait with exactly three spoonfuls of sugar. 

We stumble, intertwined, past the doorstep into the bedroom. Ciel’s fingers work through the buttons on my shirt, ripping the last one open before I drop him on the pillow and tug off his trousers. He offers his hips to me so readily, so willingly, letting me crowd him against the headboard and hover above like he were prey.

He must be so hot in that woollen jumper: thick, knitted, coarse from use. It covers him almost entirely, draping over his splayed thighs and slipping halfway down his shoulder. How uncomfortable it must feel, rubbing against his hard nipples and suffocating his sweat-sticky skin. 

I unbutton my fly and pull down the zipper. Ciel swallows, entranced, shifting his legs fitfully across the sheets. Watching me as I peel off my underwear and take out my pulsing cock.

Isn’t this so much better than doing it in the dark? I can see every minute twitch of his muscles, every little pearl of sweat that beads in the hollow of his throat. And such a lovely, lewd flush has crimsoned his cheeks; such neediness brims in his half-lidded eyes. If I could hold him down and ram inside without foreplay, I would—but I shouldn’t. He’s not ready for me as he was that first time. I’m supposed to be gentle and patient despite all the denying and waiting he’s had me endure.

I don’t think I can do that. It feels like I might spill as soon as I push inside, like I might not last even a minute.

Wouldn’t that be a waste?

I wrap a fist around the head of my cock and squeeze, wringing out droplets of pre-cum. I stroke down and tug once, then twice, until I can’t stop. I’m already too close to the brink. Ciel can only keep watching as I tense up and spurt all over his cherished jumper, over the sheets we’ve kept so clean for the whole bloody week. 

He blinks up at me with large, clouded eyes, face shaping into a look of confused betrayal. As if I’d promised him dessert and then swiped the full platter from under his nose. 

“Have you— already—”

I lean down and rub my lips on his cheek. “Mhm. You don’t mind, do you? I’m afraid I’m not as patient as you, mon petit… but now we can take all the time in the world. I know how much you enjoy dragging things out.”

Ciel groans. And then groans again, louder, in a fit of childish annoyance. What he needs is fast and rough and right now, but he won’t get it.

I pull the jumper over his head, freeing him from its heated confines. The friction builds static, making his hair stand adorably in every direction. He’s naked now, stripped bare, and that small simple fact throws me into a disproportionate state of wonder. 

I may have had him, but I have never been truly allowed to look. A part of him was always concealed from me by one obstacle or another: by too-thick darkness, lengthy nightshirts, silken quilts, or linty white mounts of foam. Now that nothing stands in my way, I can memorise every detail and trace every secret contour, patient enough to just look without taking.

And there is so much to drink in at once. All that white softness bathed in oversaturated noon light; the rosy nipples and delicate outlining of ribs; the play of shadows upon the smooth, curving plane of his stomach. Beautiful, yes—and then lower. The small, crescent arch of his hipbones. Two soft thighs pressed coyly together, fidgeting under my wanton gaze, and between them a curved pink cock lying flush against his belly.

“Are you done?” Ciel asks, folding one leg over the other. Trying to hide.

And of course I’m not done. Done looking, perhaps, but now I lean down to trace the same path with my lips. He’s so hot to the touch, all tense and shuddering with uneven puffs of air, so desperate for the release I intend to deny him for longer than he’ll be able to bear it.   

“You could try begging me,” I say, knowing well that he won’t. I want simply to torture him with the perspective, to dangle that insolent notion in front of his already damaged pride. Make him picture it, consider it, and balk at the scandal.

I listen to the beat of his heart (so powerful, so close to my ear), waiting for the rain of curses or outraged cries. But Ciel plants his hands gently on either side of my head, and mutters:

“Please.”

My throat clamps down. I stay with my lips pressed to his breastbone, eyes closed as if in prayer. 

I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t think he’d beg anyone for anything ever again in his life. Not genuinely, not like he means it. I was sure that ‘please’ had been crossed out from his vocabulary, banned from usage and replaced with a range of more biting words. But now his ‘please’ rolls through my mind, as fresh and real as the first time he spoke it, a titillating echo that compels me to give up and do every single thing that he begs me to do. No word has ever undone me so completely.

What is this? Does he not want to play games anymore? Are the rules different in bed and he’s willing to submit without a fight? Or is it all on purpose, is he trying to make me snap? 

“Sebastian, please,” Ciel whines, snaking his legs around my hips, and that’s all it takes for him to cripple my composure. The heat in my loins is back as quickly as though it never left.

I suck in a deeper breath, bracing myself for another ‘please’. It arrives hushed, hopeful—a little sulky as I break his embrace and kiss my way down his quivering chest. 

Then another, sharper, as I tease the tip of his leaking cock. And one more as I take all of him into my mouth, breathless and broken, dissolving at once into long moans of relief.

He lets the word go after that, thinking he’ll no longer need it. His back arches and his guard drops as he revels mindlessly in that first taste of pleasure. I pull away then, without warning, and the lost syllable finds its way instantly back on his tongue, bursting out of him with feverish urgency:

“No no no please don’t stop!”

So I go down on him again, and pull away again, cutting off his release just as I sense the first spasms rippling throughout his heated body.

Ciel keens, scratching furiously down my shoulders. His next ‘please’ is both a curse and a command, a petulant sob of an entitled brat who can’t believe he’s being denied. What else can he do?

I put my lips around him for the third time. Just as I feel him coming again, just as I begin to pull away, he snatches at my hair and forces me back where he wants it most. He pushes at my head and digs his heels into my spine, thrusting up so he’s all the way at the back of my throat.

And I can’t allow such bratty behaviour, can I? I graze him with my teeth and he has no choice but to stop, whimpering pleas and apologies into his crumpled pillow, into the back of his hand.

He’s so beautiful in his torment: dizzy with desire, tremulous with thirst. It doesn’t look like he has strength enough to keep acting out, not anymore. Even his eyes have lost their spark of defiance, begging me just as sweetly as his mouth. All of him at my mercy.

I reach for the bottle of lube, left unused in the bedside drawer, and lift his right leg under the knee. Such a pretty sight he makes, closing his thighs in shame and then spreading them wide in need. I slick up a finger and probe him gingerly, gently, testing the tightness. It slides in almost without resistance, a slow breach from the tip and up to the knuckle.

Did he do it carefully last time, like this? Or did he rush through it and just let the stretch burn, hurting himself for my pleasure? Wriggling with impatience in his bed before crawling so eagerly into mine?

Second finger. A kitten-like mewl, a buckle of hips. He couldn’t reach so deep on his own, could he? Couldn’t curl his delicate, inexperienced fingers as well as I, or draw such lovely little sounds from his mouth. Not even close. 

I press my lips to the bend of his knee, watching the wet slide of my fingers. Ciel is not looking—or he is, but not down there. At me. Sometimes a gaze can be felt, sensed, and his gaze carries with it an almost physical pressure. Roving, lustful, ever-pleading. I lift my own gaze to meet it, and move my hand faster.

How am I still holding on? That roaring pulse of blood in my ears is maddening, not unlike the buzz of intoxication that held sway over me the entire night. I listen to Ciel’s pitched cries, to his desperate mantra of ‘please please please’ as I drive my fingers into the snug heat of his body, and each ‘please’ drives me that one step closer to losing my mind. By now it feels like I’m begging myself, bargaining vehemently with my own stubbornness, arguing that enough is enough and I should have long since given him what we both want so badly.

“Yes yes please,” Ciel chants as I rub myself against him, slipping the tip inside. The last ‘please’ dies drowned in a flood of moans as I bottom out and start fucking him too hard, too soon, because that’s the only way I seem to know how to do it. He just has that effect on me, and I can’t help it. 

I lift his hips off the bed, forcing his spine into a painful arch. His knees are trembling, arms flailing and pushing at the headboard to steady himself against the brutal rhythm of my thrusts. I try to tighten my grip and hold him still, but his skin is too slippery and my hands end up skidding all the way up to his waist, circling it almost whole like a girdle.

He’s so thin. So tiny, and his scars feel rough under the pads of my fingers. I want to twist him around, mark my way down his back and watch him take my cock as I watched him take my fingers; I want to slip out when he’s about to come and tease him to the point of tears, until he can’t even beg, but it feels too good to stop and I must save the games for later. There can be no more stalling, no more drawing it out.

Ciel is the first to come apart. I don’t stop shoving into him as he writhes in the throes of his strung-out orgasm. I relish in the spectacle of it, performed just for me without the curtain of darkness, and my own pleasure peaks after his in a frantic instant. It’s nothing like the quick relief of my own hand; it’s pure, bone-deep bliss that sweeps over me from head toe and traps my breath high within my chest.

Finally. Utter satiation. I push in languidly a few more times, rubbing slow circles into Ciel’s hip. My eyelids droop down and I don’t fight them, giving myself over to the slow spread of fatigue, and…

And my vision spins, blurs, until suddenly I’m the one my back and Ciel the one on top. He pins down my shoulders, straddling my hips with his sweaty thighs. It feels as if he’s got more strength left in his body than I do in mine, as if I couldn’t wrestle him off if I wanted.

I blink up at him slowly, hazily. His chest is heaving, slick with sperm, skin flushed like it couldn’t bear another touch. But his eyes are still wild with lust, with mischief, gleaming down at me like he has sin on his mind.

There is no trace of satiation in them. Once wasn’t enough.

“What’s wrong? We’re not done, are we?” Ciel asks, tracing a finger under my jaw. “Come on, Sebastian; you’re the one who wanted to have everything at once. You’re the one who’s been breathing down my neck every night and feeling me up whenever you got the chance. Always so greedy, always so impatient….” He brushes his lips over my cheek in mimicry, ending with a light peck just next to my ear. “You always want to take so much, and now you suddenly can’t give? Tsk. Such disappointing stamina. I was sure you’d want to make up for the entire week.” 

He licks my neck—a hot, lingering drag up the side—then tightens abruptly around my softening cock, forcing a sharp hiss past my teeth. 

I’m oversensitive. Overwrought. His breath burns my skin like steam and the wet clench of his walls is unbearable. 

“Well? Can you get it up again, old man? Or maybe you’ll please let me come in your mouth, after all?” Ciel licks his lips and swipes his thumb over mine.

I can’t go three times in a row. It’s impossible. 

But then I can’t tell him that I can’t.

“I need… a minute.”

Ciel tuts, shaking his head. “I don’t want it in a minute, I want it now.”

And then his lips are on mine, soft and at once rough, possessive, devouring my already scarce breath. He can’t take no for an answer, can he? More so even than I. His tongue curls deep and his hands trail down my sides. It’s not our earlier scuffle of limbs or blind fumbling in the dark; his touches are precise, deliberate, intrusive. Like he’s the one with experience, and I’m the one who’s still learning.

And slowly, impossibly, my blood starts rushing down again.

Ciel moans and rolls his hips. Back then forth, rocking in circles until I’m half-hard. A trickle of cum leaks out of him as he moves in my lap, seeping down the inside of his thigh and smearing over my pelvis. So full already, yet still craving more.

He lifts off my cock, leans back, and drops heavily down.
 
It hurts. But then he does it again, and again, until I can no longer tell what I’m supposed to be feeling. A bizarre hybrid of pleasure and pain; an overstimulating mix of opposite sensations. I don’t know where one ends and the other begins, or which of the two is stronger: the forced, torturous pleasure or the deliriously addictive pain, prickling all over my body like a swarm of electric sparks. I don’t like the sounds that I’m making—low, visceral, oddly subdued—and I don’t like the word that tries to force its way to the tip of my tongue: please. A word I should often hear spoken, but shouldn’t ever have to speak myself.

It wouldn’t work, anyway. My cock throbs painfully in time with Ciel’s movements, harsh and demanding. I can’t endure it, and yet I can’t stop grinding up. The look on his face is that of pure pleasure: rosebud lips wet and panting, eyes opened just enough to peer into mine, and I want to watch him suffer at least a fraction of what he’s making me suffer with every fall of his hips. I wedge my thumbs between his undermost ribs and push, hard, as if to dislodge the bone. I see a twitch of pain and push harder, and crueler, and sharper, until he whimpers for me to stop.

I don’t stop. He tries to swat me away, pinch and then pry off my thumbs, but I’m not letting go and he starts hurting me back. His fingernails assault my knuckles, wrists, scratching out a trail of angry red welts up the entire length of my arms. Burrowing at the inside of my elbows as though he wanted to scratch out my veins. Would he make me bleed now, if he could?

Neither of us is relenting. Ciel only rides me faster, half-sobbing and half-moaning, so consumed in the struggle that his climax takes him by violent surprise. His face draws up in bliss and hurt and confusion—like he doesn’t understand what’s happening, like he didn’t expect or didn’t want this to feel so good. He’s clenching, convulsing, fucking himself down and down on my cock until he can’t get any higher. The way he looks down at me as he peaks is almost scandalised, accusing, as if it were my fault that he’s this way and I should be held accountable. He claws into me one final time, leaving one final scratch before his body slumps tiredly forwards, supported only by the crushing grip of my hands. Frazzled, but finally sated.

And he could climb off me now, couldn’t he? Just leave me in that agonising state of too-much-but-not-enough, roused and stranded between wanting more but wanting it to be over. He could do all that, laughing all the while in my face, but he doesn’t. 

“A-Are you close yet?” he chokes out. Thighs shaking, hips stuttering. And I don’t know if I’m close, I’m just aching everywhere at once. My hands release his waist and drop down to his cheeks, spreading him wider as I keep pumping erratically in and out. I have to be close, this has to end.

Ciel is almost crying now, almost fainting, and it’s that thin film of tears in his eyes that pushes me once more over the edge. The orgasm is wrenched out of me without build-up: a few short spurts and dry throbbing, a rapid explosion of heat that spreads like wildfire but goes out in a matter of seconds, a burning second of bliss.

But it’s over. Ciel slips off my sore cock and topples lifelessly against my chest. Now we’re only breathing: focusing on inhale and exhale like it’s some strange new skill or a toilsome challenge. I didn’t even realise how badly I needed oxygen; only a few seconds ago, breathing seemed like the most insignificant trifle. It’s a relief now, but no greater than the ravaging ache of overstimulation fading finally from my exhausted body. The scratches still sting, but my heart slows down beat by beat and my vision loses its fuzzy filter. The furniture regains shape, as if I’ve put on a pair of glasses, and the window once more shows a view.

And then Ciel starts fidgeting, quick to recover, upsetting the stillness of the room. He busies himself with counting the love marks on my skin, tracing his finger from one to another like he’s connecting dots on a map. And really, he’s left so many that I will have to wear a turtleneck, like him, and borrow his concealer for the one he’s planted right on the angle of my jaw.

Five more minutes. Ciel pulls himself up on one elbow and brings a hand to my hair, smoothing it out as he studies the vacant lines of my face.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he speaks up in the softest voice. “Don’t get caught.”

I don’t answer at once. My mind needs a moment to catch up with the meaning. It’s still busy replaying all the different melodies of the word ‘please’, still imagining the bruises that my thumbs will have left on his ribs. I just need to wait one day for them to bloom. 

“Why not? Didn’t it bother you that I always get away with everything? Weren’t you wondering why no one can see my true nature?”

Ciel huffs. “I didn’t mean it like that. Not like I want that to change.”

“But you were right. See, fooling the world with my tailored disguise isn’t half as fun as it used to be ten years ago.”

“‘The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived’,” Ciel recites. “A Latin saying. If the world can’t handle the truth, it’s better to keep on lying.”

“But I don’t care what the world wants, or what it can or can’t handle. Where’s the fun if the whole world is fooled and no one ever suspects me?”

A moment of silence. Contemplative, but mostly disapproving.

“Is that why you’re so taken with me? Because I wasn’t fooled?”

“Hm,” I huff. “Not quite. William could see it too, and I was certainly never taken with him.”

“William?” Ciel frowns. “Your Oxford sweetheart?”

“The one and only.” I stretch my arms. “Which reminds me… I spoke to him yesterday at the party, right after you phoned me. I ended up telling him everything, I’m afraid. He must be the one who notified the police.”

Ciel bolts upright, gaping at me with wide eyes. “Everything??”

“The general picture.”

“Why?”

“You know why. It’s who I am.”

“No, it’s what you are!” he exclaims, slamming his hands on either side of my head. “An insatiable, irredeemable beast that—” 

The words die on his lips with the flame of his anger, extinguished by the cold calm of my eyes. He hovers above me, suddenly listless, as if unsure how he’d even got there.

“Why am I angry? You can do whatever the hell you want.”

“Perhaps. But it wasn’t what you wanted me to do.”

He drops back on the sheets with a resigned huff.

“You say I know, but I don’t. Not really. You’re a beast, yes, but not a senseless one. How does it make sense to risk everything for a drunken kill? To chance getting caught like a common, brainless thug after getting so far? It’s just”—he breathes a small but bitter laugh—“so much unlike you.”

“It’s my whole meaning. If I can’t do what thrills me just so I can continue to live free… does it not make a paradox? Why live free at all, then? It would feel like being caged up anyway.”

“But isn’t it still better to do it safely instead of never again at all? If you get caught—”

“I know what happens, of course. Just like you knew what would happen if you got caught killing Chamber, but you went along with it anyway. Retribution was all that mattered.”

He sighs, conceding. I turn to the side and cup his cheek, still tinged a fading red.

“Don’t worry, my pretty little snowflake. Things have a way of working out in my favour.”

“Clearly.” He narrows his eyes. “Just remember that nothing lasts forever, especially if you keep treading a fine line. For now it might be all ups and no downs, but the higher you go, the bigger will be your fall.” He bites at his pouty lip and adds, on a second thought, with all the regret I lack myself, “Not unlike poor Mademoiselle Rousselot, I suppose. A spectacular, thirty-meter plunge. Splat.”

“At least I will be my own undoing. Live by the sword, die by the sword.” I smile, stroking my thumb over his cheek. “Or did you mean to imply that I have something else to live for now?...”

He flushes and darts from the bed as if burned. “No, fuck you. Die by the sword for all I care.”

And then he’s gone. Bare, scarred, he skips over to the bathroom and slams the door shut. I hear him run the shower, either sweltering hot or bone-chilling cold. No in-betweens.

There was that look again, wasn’t it? And he’d lied for me so prettily, too. 

Hmm.

I don’t move, comparing the ceiling with the one in my bedroom. It’s somehow all I can think of, that washed beige paint and carved mouldings. So puny compared to the thoughts Ciel must be wrestling with in the shower.

Minutes drag idly by. I don’t count them, but I do count the blemishes on the ceiling. And is that a tiny crack in the left corner? Yes, potentially.

The shower turns off and gives way to silence. 

“Ciel?” I call out. “You said it’s our last day here. And we haven’t gone out much together at all, have we? Even though Trocadéro’s only a few minutes away.”

Definitely a crack. Or just a scraping? Ciel re-emerges from the bathroom before I can decide, pale skin taut and covered in goosebumps. Bone-chilling cold, then.

“Aww,” he drawls, and it’s the most malicious ‘aww’ I’ve ever heard. “Did you want to go on a romantic walk? Kiss and hold hands under the Eiffel Tower?” 

“Not unless you still want me to get arrested.”

“Pff. It doesn’t matter what I want. You’ll get yourself arrested one way or the other, except the sentence for sexual abuse of a minor is shorter than the one for murder.” 

“My, someone’s touchy today.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Just shut up and get in the shower. If you can still move, that is.”

Chapter 24

Any good journalist would pounce on the occasion. ‘A therapist who helped others but failed to help herself’…. Does it not carry fertile potential for drama? Instead of shelving it as a dull, drunken accident, I would spin it into a tale of silent suffering and secret addiction. I would dedicate the first few paragraphs to Isabelle’s successful, richly achieved life—her social presence, university post, immaculate reputation—then contrast it with the struggles that churned beneath the surface to no one else’s knowledge. I would garnish it with commentary from her friends and students, collecting confessions of ignorance and sheer shock. I would make them admit how blinded they all were by Isabelle’s buoyant gestures, golden bracelets, and white-teethed smiles.

Because sometimes you can’t tell what goes on in another person’s head, it seems. 

Next week’s funeral is sure to attract a crowd, but I don’t plan to fly in from London just to pay fake respects. After all, to the late Miss Rousselot, I was no one. Just some new colleague who hardly spoke to her at the party. The best I can do is send her relatives a card with heartfelt commiserations: ‘I am deeply sorry for this sudden loss’, or ‘The world is worse off without her’. 

The latter seems true. Her mission was to do good and now she can pursue it no longer. I have deprived the world of all her future merits, but I can’t say that I’m anywhere near sorry. I don’t bother myself with the state of the world unless it directly involves me.

And I’m not the only one with tunnel vision here, am I? I need only to turn my head and there he is, never far. My little partner in crime, my hateful darling. How can he care about the state of the world, having vouched for a cold-blooded murderer instead of getting justice for an innocent woman? Such charm there is to his selfishness, such beauty to his hypocrisy.

He doesn’t bring it up again. Perhaps he managed to wash off the remorse in his bone-chilling shower, or chose to bury the matter under a mantle of silence. It may eat at him for a day or two, but I know he would have made the same choice over and over. He can’t afford to feel bad about doing bad things, not anymore. The voice of his conscience will only keep growing fainter, and fainter, until it’s little more than a weary echo on the bottom of a well.

The first thing I do after we leave our flat is take Ciel to the nearest patisserie. I can’t have him pouting on our last day, can I? As a reward, apology, and consolation, I let him pick out whatever he likes and however much of it he likes. For all that he’s changed over the last four years, his father’s old trick continues to work like a charm. His morale lifts alongside his blood sugar levels, directly proportional, just enough to boost him for a last stroll through Paris.

I lead the way, no goal in mind. We end up paying a visit to the Marmottan Monet—infinitely more stimulating to one’s imagination than dull wax images that tell no stories—then lose track of time in an antique bookshop we pass on the way back, leafing interminably through old editions of famous French classics. By the time we make a lap around the Trocadéro gardens and reach Pont d’Iéna, the afternoon sky has smattered with the late pinks and purples of sunset.

Ciel stops halfway across the bridge and blinks through the dimming sun: chin thrust high, one hip to the railing.

“There it is,” he says. “In all its clunky glory.”

“Isabelle hated that thing.”

“Figures. Many Parisians do, don’t they? When I first saw it five years ago, I couldn’t fathom how anyone could find it romantic. But now? I think I get it.”
 
“Really?” I squint and crank my head, trying to spot some secret quality that might have escaped my appreciation. 

“Mhm. Looking at it now, I always think of all the people who have jumped from it to their death. What a splendid last view they must have had.”

“Ah.” 

“But of course they had to install those pesky grids, didn’t they?” 

“Yes, I’m afraid they had to. Some people enjoy life and don’t wish to watch others violently end theirs, especially on a romantic vacation. Or a family trip. Or a beautiful Sunday stroll.”

Ciel snorts. “Right. Because it’s imperative to avoid ruining other people’s dates while planning your own demise. Better keep the society happily oblivious, no? Better do it politely out of sight and slice your wrists, overdose painkillers, or hang yourself on a ceiling fan.… But how can all that compare to swan-diving off the Eiffel Tower? Not romantic at all.” He kicks his foot against the parapet and leans out, peering into the Seine. “And here? Is it even six meters from here? I’ve always imagined myself jumping off some tall, old bridge—you know? Soaring down into inky black water and breaking my bones as I hit the surface. Just letting myself get swallowed up by the Thames, or the Seine, or the Danube, and taken away by the current—”

“—until you’re fished out as a bloated, livid, stinking cadaver?”

Ciel chuckles and throws me a sideways glance. “Shouldn’t you romanticise death in all shapes and forms?”

I give it a thought. Death, to me, is beautiful. And in every way, so is Ciel. But the two, together, combined? There is a clash here, as in a dissonant chord. I try but cannot imagine him as a bloated, livid, stinking cadaver; nor with his brain smeared on the pavement after a thirty-meter fall; nor lying lifeless in a blood-soaked bath with his veins slashed up to his elbows.

No, he’s better all warm and alive by my side. I want to see that healthy blush cold puts on his cheeks and feel the strong, lusty beat of his heart as I felt it this morning beneath my hands. I want his breath steaming against the window of my car and tickling my skin; I want his lips to always taste like too much sugar. I want to watch him blossom into late youth, mark every new inch of height, witness all the emerging changes: in the timbre of his voice, in the sharpening of his features, in the philosophy of his being. I want to watch him grow, evolve, become—and it’s the strangest whim I’ve ever had, to nurture instead of destroying.

Ciel answers my silence with silence. The strings of his eye-patch sway in the wind as he gazes meditatively into the horizon, face hidden inside the palms of his hands. A boat drifts languidly below the bridge; a flock of birds cuts through the smattering of violet-tinged clouds overhead. Even the air seems cleaner as I take a lungful.

“What lovely weather,” comes a woman’s voice behind our backs, spoken in German to the older man at her side. She’s beaming, as if lovely weather was the best thing that has happened in her entire life.

But Ciel doesn’t care. Even the cars that roll by and the people around him are nothing but background noise. He’s looking only ahead, only at the river, scanning the cold depth that lies beneath the glittering sunlight and gentle ripples of breeze upon its surface.

Such a beautiful evening, and all he can think about is dying.

“It wouldn’t suit you, you know. To go like that,” I say, copying his position by the parapet. “You have survived one ordeal after another, faced off against terrible odds, and pulled yourself together without a single helping hand. All those struggles, all that willpower, just to surrender? I thought you might hold on out of sheer stubbornness, at least. Proudly rebel against the absurdities of life, as advised by Camus.”

Ciel smacks his lips. “And what if I don’t feel like rebelling? You call it surrender, and I’ll call it a privilege. You take Camus’ side, and I’ll take Schopenhauer’s. Wouldn’t it be fair for me to at least choose the way I die? I didn’t get much of a say in everything else, after all.” His finger traces circles on the coarse stone railing. “And I am more spiteful than I am stubborn. So what if I’ve been miraculously spared? It doesn’t mean I have to thank the universe for its mercy, or value life more just because I nearly lost it.”

“My, how nihilistic. What have you been reading?”

Ciel snorts. “I didn’t need a book in order to arrive at that conclusion.” His left eye cuts to me through the veil of his fringe. “Must be nice, I suppose. Knowing precisely what you live for.”

A young couple stops next to us to take a picture, pulling their heads together and grinning widely into the front camera. I lower my voice.

“You haven’t been exactly lacking in purpose, either.”

“Your purpose is infinite; mine is already halfway completed. Not too long ago, I didn’t have a single clue to set me on the right path. I could only cling to the fantastic idea of revenge awaiting me somewhere in the uncertain future. But now? It’s almost within my reach. It’s achievable.” 

A soft ‘excuse me’ calls for my attention, uttered by the young woman taking pictures by the Seine. She holds out her phone and opens her mouth, but I shake my head no before she can even form the question. It would be a crime, a sacrilege, to interrupt Ciel while he’s in the mood for confessions. It’s rare, like a flower that blooms only one night a year. I must tend to him with every particle of my attention.

“It’s supposed to feel empty, somehow. Unrewarding,” Ciel continues, glaring down into the oblivious river. “That seems to be the general consensus in films and novels, at least. That it’s never worth it, like in The Count of Monte Cristo. Because if it’s the only thing that matters, everything will matter even less once it’s over. And it doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped wanting it as much, or that I ever considered giving it up, but what am I going to do afterwards? I can’t think of a single thing I want to accomplish except kill them once and for all. It feels like the only reason I’m still here, like the only reason I survived in the first place. Is there even a point to an ‘afterwards’? All I can see is a tall, old bridge.” 

Our elbows touch on the parapet. Ciel flinches a little, as if he forgot I was even listening.

“Speaking of bridges… there is a saying.”

“Hah. About crossing them once you come to them?”

I nod. “It’s how you tackle problems, head-on, as they appear before you. Meanwhile you haven’t even glimpsed that bridge or got off your old one. You’ve no idea how long it might take until you get there, and yet you’re already worrying about what’s on the other side. How can you predict that? You may not imagine what’s across the gap from where you’re standing, but your perspective is bound to change with every step you take closer. Maybe it will come to you at some point along the way, or maybe not until the very last moment before reaching the end, but you will eventually see where the bridge is meant to lead you. And maybe it won’t be a precipice, but a path.” 

Ciel looks down at his knuckles. Fiddles with the button on his sleeve.

“So you’re saying, Doctor, that it’s too early for an existential crisis?”

“It’s early. And brought on by what? The Eiffel Tower, the bridge? Our return to London?”

Ciel sighs. “Okay, fine. I have been reading something. One of your textbooks, in fact. So that I avoid looking stupid when you go off about personality disorders or the ICD or whatever.”

Of course he has. He needs to know everything about everything; such hunger for knowledge for someone who claims to have one reason to live. How contradictory, how human.

“I finished it just this morning. A bore, overall, but there was one passage in particular that caught my eye: Horney’s theory of self-realisation. According to her, everyone is supposed to have something called their ‘true self’—a natural height of potential they can reach by growing up in a favourable environment, the same way an acorn will grow into an oak if provided with the conditions to thrive. And it got me thinking: what was my ‘true self’? What would I be doing right now, had I been allowed to grow unimpeded? What goal would I have ended up chasing instead of revenge? From an acorn, an oak…. I just can’t seem to figure out what I was meant to become. I suppose my branches were trimmed too soon.”

“Hm. More like your trunk was struck by a bolt of lightning.”

Ciel shoots me a sour glance. “What, and burnt into a hollowed-out carcass?”

“No. That’s not always what happens.” I link my hands on the parapet and look to the side, towards the group of teenagers lounging on the steps by the water. “The tree can burst into flames, and the bark may explode like shrapnel, and then diseases and insects may come finish it off while it’s weakened. But sometimes all that is left is a crack, a scar, where the lightning had struck; a broken branch instead of a burnt-out core. The wood may suffer damage on the inside and never return to its former greatness, but the tree itself need not die. It can bear leaves all the same, and live for many years after. It really depends on the tree.”

I manage to tear Ciel’s eyes from the river and lock them with mine. Whenever he looks at me this way—long, piercing—it’s usually with enmity or cold calculation. But this look has warmth, softness. A grain of nostalgia.

And then Ciel blinks, sobered by the racket of a tourist boat passing underneath the bridge. The air fills with riotous cries of children, multi-language chatter, and the nasal voice of a Korean lector droning mechanically from the boat’s speakers. 

Ciel waits until they’re farther before speaking up again.

“You’re good at this. Really. I’m curious as to how many people you’ve saved in comparison to how many you’ve sentenced to die. But you wouldn’t keep track of it, would you?”

“Only the latter. And it’s curious that you should use a word like ‘save’, not ‘help’.” I glance at him, but the connection is gone. “Psychiatrists aren’t messiahs. Rediscovering the will to live rarely comes in the form of a miraculous epiphany, if that’s what you’re imagining. Rather than a life-changing revelation, what prevails is usually the quietest thing of all: habit. Not everyone follows a ready plan or strives towards a clear-set purpose; most never discover their ‘true self’ or realise their innate potentials. The mystic ‘meaning of life’ is an answer everyone must find for themselves, and some never find it. But that’s all right; they keep on going. Day after day they wake up and exist, enjoying their small pleasures and mourning their small tragedies, hardly ever stopping to give their purpose a deeper thought. What else can one do but live? There’s nothing else out there.”

“Habit,” Ciel mouths. “Maybe that’s it. But what would I be doing in ten years from now, out of habit? Just going through the cycle like everybody else? School, college, university, work.... I could put my brains into actual use, I suppose. Make something of a difference in the world, however arrogant that sounds. Or else I might start smoking and drinking too much wine and become just a waste of space on Earth, how about that? Maybe I could tap into my inner creativity and start writing sad novels full of purple-prose gibberish… or poems, in French, like I’m trying to be Baudelaire or Verlaine, except blank verse only because rhymes sound too cheerful. No one would pay a single penny to read any of it, of course, but it wouldn’t matter because I’d be filthy rich off my dead family’s inheritance. Everyone would resent me for being one of those lucky bastards who didn’t have to work a day in their life. Or maybe I would gamble it all away, Dalles style, though unlike her I’ve always excelled at games, and—” 

Ciel pauses, blinking, surprised at his own fabrications.

“Ah. I got carried away there for a second. There is no real use fantasising about the future, is there? It’s bold of me to entertain the thought of having one in the first place. Now that I think about it, you can deprive me of my remaining years at any given moment.”

“I’m beginning to suspect it would save you a great deal of trouble.”

And I meant it as a joke, but Ciel takes it seriously. “Perhaps that’s what I see in you. I won’t have to decide—you will. Always with that enviable certitude and never with the faintest shade of regret. There is some ironic sort of freedom in such absolute incarceration of will; an all-too-tempting promise of peace in choosing the most cowardly of solutions. Would it really be so bad to shed all the dilemmas and allow someone else to dictate my lot until the end? Perhaps I never wanted control after all. Perhaps it would be easier to throw myself at your mercy. And I bet you like the sound of that, too.”

How could I not? It’s what I’ve wanted since the start. But isn’t that day still far down the road? Even despite everything he’s confessed today, even despite the feelings he’s grown for me and will only continue on growing, I don’t think he’s about to surrender his lot to me anytime soon. I’m sure he knows it better himself.

“Are you saying you would rather be like me, then?”

“... yes,” Ciel tries, but doesn’t seem to like the taste of it in his mouth. He combs his mind for a better answer, for anything that would ring more true. “No. I don’t know! I don’t know what I want. I want a lot of things that contradict one another and make no sense. I want to feel but I don’t want to feel; I don’t want to be like you but then I stay awake at night remembering how good it had felt to take a life, replaying it in my head and imagining all the different ways I could have done it. I want blood but I want peace, I want to grow old and I want to jump off a fucking bridge. One moment I want to do everything just to spite you, the next moment I want to let you do with me as you please. I want nothing and everything and I just don’t know. I’m human, okay?”

I hold in my breath. So that’s what it feels like. 

“Yes, you are,” I say, leaning to press a chaste, fatherly kiss to the top of his head. “And from that, I can never save you.”

Ciel hesitates, but only a second. In one small step he burrows himself in my arms, still reaching only as far as he reached this winter, sighing into the fold of my coat. And even then, with his head resting safely upon my chest, his eyes are drawn to the river.

Notes:

Okay, so we're all done with Paris now! I hope you enjoyed this part of the story -- the next one (and the last one), as I'm sure you guessed, is going to revolve mainly around the cult.

Alsooo, please forgive me for that killer wait! I have a lot on my mind these days, and I'm afraid that updates are going to be super slow right until the end ;_; Thanks for reading until this moment & see you back in London ♡

Chapter 25

Notes:

Did somebody order a filler/timeskip chapter? No? Well here’s one anyway! Enjoy~

“You’re being reckless,” I said, tone even, as we sped towards Hampstead from the airport. It’s been three months since we had that fight, but I keep thinking of it almost every day. “Don’t push your luck, little one.”

Ciel laughed. “Look who’s talking.”

“There’s a difference between plausible risk and senseless bravado. Even I would never attempt to single-handedly take down a Chinese gang and a Satanic cult at the same time.” 

“I never said ‘at the same time’. Lau comes first, and the cult is for dessert.”

I sighed. I hadn’t been in the mood for his stubbornness. 

“Confidence alone guarantees no success. And believe me, I’m not antagonising you because I seek to deny you revenge; I’m doing it because I’m worried that you might deny it to yourself. One mistake and it can all be over.”

“I’m aware. I don’t disagree that it’s risky; I disagree that it’s impossible.”

“Think it through, then. Vanel gave me a lead on his third accomplice; if you wait a few months, I could follow it up and deliver him to you on a silver platter. No risks, all reward. Straight to the tastiest bit without having to bother about footwork.”

Ciel stared out the window, thumbing around the webbing of his seatbelt. “You don’t seem to get it, do you? This is my revenge and I intend to execute everything myself: both the footwork and the crowning event alike. I’m grateful for your concern and everything you’ve done so far, but this is no longer any of your business. I don’t need your blessing, support, or acceptance. And I’m not interested in pinning down the last cultist, either. Your lead is useless to me.”

My hands slipped and clenched on the steering wheel. “Not interested? In taking revenge on the very person who wronged you?”

“Yes, you heard right: I don’t care what happens to him in the least. If he goes down with the rest of the cult, that’s fine. If he manages to make it out? That’s fine too. The only one I really want is the one who called the shots and gave the order.”

I shook my head. “You’re not making sense.”

“Aren’t I? The third cultist was different from Vanel and Chamber. I don’t think he realised what he’d signed up for until it was too late.” Ciel fiddled with the window switch, up and down. “That night was supposed to be his initiation. He couldn’t get it up, wouldn’t take off his mask, and I’m sure I heard him retch and swallow his own puke a few times. He trembled like a leaf when they burnt me—oh, and the nefarious laughter he attempted for the benefit of his colleagues sounded terribly unconvincing. He didn’t enjoy torturing me, so I’m not going to enjoy killing him either. It’s that simple.”

I stayed silent. Ciel’s voice lost its edge of defiance, trying to placate my mounting wrath. “But don’t take this the wrong way, Sebastian. It felt good, watching you step up and do my justice. It would be easier to lie back and follow your lead, but I’m not looking for the easy way out. I want to pay them all back from my own pocket.” He looked over from his seat, seeking at least a glance, but I kept my eyes trained on the road. “For what it’s worth, I’ll be as careful as possible. You’ll be the first one to know if I get into trouble. But otherwise this matter is closed and my mind can’t be changed. I trust you to respect that decision.”

What choice did I have? I accepted it without respecting. It stung, of course, to have him expel me from his vengeful designs in a single ride home. He renounced my aid to make a futile statement of independence, or to conceal his strategies and surprise me with the results. Keep my interest alive.

One way or the other, I’ll have my I-told-you-so later. I’m not underestimating him, but he can’t possibly handle it alone. The moment things start going south, he’ll come crawling right back and beg me to save him.

Which I will, of course. Efficiently as ever. Until then, however, I have no way of monitoring his actions. All I can do is infer. Does he make trips to Chinatown on those afternoons he’s not home? Does he expect fate to bestow him another consolation gift, another chance meeting? 

I too get the occasional urge to pay Lau’s teashop a visit. I could get past the burly bouncer without a password, inhale the heady melange of scents, and play my games as I play theirs. But they wouldn’t welcome me with open arms, would they? Instead of an invitation for a round of poker, I was more likely to get a bullet between the eyes from Lau’s charming bodyguard/mistress. 

I’m aware that Ciel will eventually find them. And I’m aware he’ll eventually learn about my lies, but I must cross that bridge when I come to it. Just this once, I must wait for events to unfold instead of controlling them every step of the way. I must not dwell, and attend to my own pending designs—neglected during our sojourn in Paris and left at an awkward standstill. Entrusted to Bard, of all people, who had two jobs only and could do neither of them right.

“I’m onto something,” he answered my call with a mouthful of cigarette, frazzled and distracted, “just need more time.” 

And I had neither time nor patience. My hands felt emptier than ever. I investigated what spare clues I had on the cult, racked my brains over the secret code, scoured Satanic websites in attempt to make contact. I researched every smallest crumb of information I could find on Vanel and Chamber, all of it leading towards dead ends.

Grell could come into use, but Grell has gone on a strike. Inconsolable after my retirement as vigilante, he has neither phoned nor intruded nor asked me for money. Bad timing, granted, but I don’t let it concern me. Knowing him and his wayward nature, sooner or later he will shrug it all off and waltz right back into my service. Not on any particular occasion and not for any particular reason — he just will. Overnight, all of a sudden, he’ll show up on my doorstep wearing the same red coat and the same putrid grin as the last time I saw him. He has rebelled before.

The rest of London doesn’t miss me half as much, I’m afraid. The upcoming election has toppled me from the list of trending topics as my experiment, untended, has begun to die a natural death. Not towards complete extinction, of course; a few (clumsy) copycat killings have made the news, my Wikipedia page has received a new update (acceptably detailed), and true crime fanatics keep breeding bad theories and playing detective. Perhaps the future will bear a few books or documentary films—last stabs at profit off my morbid scandal—and I will be able to enjoy those with a glass of cognac to get a few laughs.

The vigilante must remain an unfinished chapter. I wouldn’t call it a waste of time, by any means; it did entertain me at the time, and it did lead me to a chain of speculations. I’d always kept my exploits illicit, mindful to avoid alerting the masses—my pool of prey—that there might be a serial murderer anywhere at large. I staged accidents, framed innocent people, selected victims from a wide radius and disposed of the bodies in the safest available manner. And though it happened in the form of an experimental fabrication, I established my presence in London for the first time in fifteen years. I gained shape, if distorted, and took on a name, if one without imagination. It left me weighing the concept of legacy, turning it over in my mind like a philosophical question. Like a prospect.

Some men are remembered for great achievements; some men are remembered for great calamities. I pictured myself in my twilight years, hair white but still sleek, choosing to confess all of my crimes to ensure that I am remembered as nothing less than London’s greatest calamity—no, the world’s. Top ten, not lower. By that time I surely will have challenged Dr Shipman’s laudable record of over two hundred deaths. As my final act, the grand reveal, I would launch the globe into chaos and reap all that I had sown, cementing the bloody imprint of my existence. I would spend hours in the police interrogation room and relate in a steady, clinical tone how I had skinned and strangled and decapitated and stabbed. How I had tortured, mercilessly, to feel alive. How I had smiled through screams and brimmed all the while with a sick, dark glee. From beginning to end, I would spare no lurid detail; every word of it would be recorded for future generations, replayed hundreds of times to hundreds of ears, retold and analysed and never erased from memory or record—forever turning stomachs and fuelling nightmares, raising hair on countless napes. 

It’s a beautiful creation waiting to be brought into immortal life, and there is no other legacy I deem more fitting than the chronicles of my Todestrieb. Every life I have taken occupies a special place in my memory, always as fresh and vivid as if it happened the day before. I think of them as cherished trophies, each unique, exhibited proudly inside a grand glass case in the foyer of my mind. Every so often I stop by to dust off the shelves, to reminisce, or to take a step back and admire them as a whole. Together they would compose my true magnum opus. 

Memory is ephemeral, but legacy is meant to live on forever. Instead of fading into the prompt nothingness of decease, my name would persist for long years as the peak example of human evil. Non omnis moriar.

Curious that I had never entertained such thoughts in the past. Preoccupied with the mortality of others, I’d never stopped to consider my own; having been the end of so many, I’d never imagined meeting mine. Ciel got me reflecting passingly on the future—that insubstantial realm of the morrow he’d daydreamed on Pont d’Iéna—but it made even less sense for me than it had for him. How could someone like me ever skip forward in time? I had been designed to live from whim to whim instead of a fixed destination, not even likely to last anywhere close to my twilight years. It resembled planning a journey without a map, or predicting the weather inside a windowless room, so I thought of it no further. We spoke of it no further. 

But we do still speak of the present and the past. On those rare occasions Ciel finds himself in the mood, we take our evening tea into my office and sit down for therapy—though I am only calling it therapy because he’s seated on my therapy sofa while I try to steal from him the last of his secrets. There is no treatment, only scrutiny. All about the psyche, but not therapeia. I don’t take notes, prescribe pills, or keep track of the time. The only rule I make him follow is to speak: about everything and anything at the forefront of his mind, no matter how trivial. Just speak, and we’ll work it out from there. Even unfiltered brain spam hides valuable clues, even the most mundane conversation can be steered and tweaked until it gains meaning.

It turned into another game of ours: a tug-of-war. Ciel distracts me with a barrage of topics while I try to shepherd him towards the only one that matters. I weasel in tactless questions, scouring for triggers, every sentence a small push into the treacherous minefields of his past. And once he skirts the edges I make sure he can’t turn back, eager to see how he fares in making his way to the other side. Whether he trips, tiptoes, or storms right across. Whether he loses balance or betrays a silver of weakness.

He never does. And it’s not until late hours of the night, once the tea has all gone and Ciel struggles to speak between yawns, that we adjourn the game and retire upstairs.

He’s winning. Even without legitimate therapy, he’s getting better. My bedroom is now ‘ours’ and the only nightmares that visit his sleep are puny horrors that don’t even wake him; no more screams, broken lamps, or emergency cups of honeyed milk. He clocks in eight hours each day and his skin glows with health, with illusive joy, showing no trace of the puffed little shadows that stamped his eyes on December mornings. And though the changes seem subtle, I’m not the only one who took notice.

Mey-Rin did, and sang praises of my therapeutic prowess. Mrs Midford did, and tried her best to treat me nicely, turning her grudge into grudging respect. 

“Thank you,” she told me as she arrived to take Ciel on a horse riding trip for the weekend. The words barely squeezed past her throat, but she meant them. “I didn’t see much of him back when he lived with Angelina, but he does seem to be doing better under your care. At this rate I might still get to see him smile with both corners of his mouth instead of just one.”

“I’ll make that my priority,” I said, answering her own shy curl of the lips. She appeared to think of Ciel’s smile as a lost relic she could track down, unearth, and place back where it belonged. I knew better.

He’ll never smile the way he used to, but he did learn to frown less and let down his guard, granting me glimpses of the childishness he’d stuffed under layers of scorn. I see it in the littlest of details, in the smallest of gestures. It’s in the way his legs swing by the kitchen island as he watches me cook, immersed in a world of silent wonder, as if chopping carrots or filleting chicken was a fascinating spectacle that called for a front-row seat. It’s in the way he clings to my arm in his sleep and the way he stretches, kitten-like, before asking me to lie with him for a few more minutes. I saw it in the way he splattered whipped cream over his shirt and licked it straight off instead of using a tissue, or that time he made me coffee and risked a taste only to sputter into the sink with grotesque disgust and wash down the bitterness with cold milk straight from the bottle—which dribbled down his chin, which he wiped with a sleeve.

Is there a side of him that I haven’t seen yet? Just last autumn, as we first met, I didn’t think he could have more than two; I viewed him as a puzzle, yes, but hadn’t braced myself for the complexity. I thought I could easily solve the maze of his mind only to become lost in its twists and turns. Puzzles tend to bore once completed, just like secrets tend to lose their allure with disclosure, but I enjoy him in that disclosure no less than I enjoyed him as an enigma. His judgment remains as unpredictable as his moves in chess, his psyche as beautifully warped as ever, and his body—that fresh, delicate charm of budding youth—continues to swarm my waking dreams.

We’ve settled into a routine, then. Through April all the way into July, our days passed without circumstance: calm, humid, filled with sex. I used to hate summer, mild though it was in London—too much sun doesn’t agree with someone who wears too much black—but I had to revoke my aversion the moment I saw how good Ciel looks in shorts. He’s a distraction now, more than he is a puzzle, especially when I’m stuck in the middle of a session and he’s just upstairs, available, willing to be pleased. I have to look old Mr Clarke in the eye while remembering the feel of Ciel’s skin beneath my fingers, or the soft texture of his tongue on my cock, or the sweet moans he’d let spill into my ear just the night before. I have to sit through Mrs Diaz’s petty anxieties when Ciel’s sprawled all lax and pretty on a lounge chair in my garden, feet out in the sun, sipping iced tea through a straw as he flips to the next page of his book. There are days when he comes back from a walk all warm and sleepy, ears red from sunburn, and I can’t even swipe that small crust of ice cream from his chin because Mey-Rin is just behind, chattering happy nonsense about picnics when the house is already clean and she should be gone.  

It’s an addiction, full-blown and two-sided. I need pleasure the way I need caffeine; Ciel needs relief the way he needs sugar. Half the time he’s the one who crawls into my lap, seizes my lips in a greedy kiss, and paws at my clothes – in my study between patients, in the evening while I do my research, in the middle of a stifling night. I was the one who had awakened his teenage libido, and I am the one who must keep it well-sated. A most delightful chore.

He confessed to me once, quite drunkenly—as we lounged on the terrace and I’d let him have too much Merlot—that his own need both puzzled and overwhelmed him. From what he understood about lust, he’d been sure it would never ensnare him the way it did others; that he’d remain forever clean of its vile influence, like a paragon of sobriety in a world filled with addicts. He didn’t like the mere idea of it—not from experience, and not even from novels. Whenever authors set out gushing about the forces of Eros, he would always roll his eyes and think: how foolish. How pathetic. The glamorised exaltations served only to boost his disgust. Literature spoke of desire as something to be desired itself, as a requirement for living a fully-fleshed life. Pages upon pages have been wasted on trying to describe what it feels like to want, and Ciel flipped through them patiently without skipping a word. They spoke of the unquenchable hunger to touch and the obstacle of having only two hands; of the codependent desire to become one and the frustration of remaining separate; of the manic drive to crawl under your lover’s skin and be with them always, closer than humanly possible, away from the rest of the world.

He would have preferred to never understand any of it. Wasn’t that such a messed-up thing to be feeling?

“I hate it,” he told me with a sweet slur. “I hate how the girls in my class gossip about you behind my back. I hate that look on their faces when you come pick me up from school. I hate that Mey-Rin still thinks she has a chance, that everyone thinks you’re up for the taking and that you would be good for them.”

It was music to my ears, to hear that Ciel’s obsession had caught up with mine. We feed off of each other, both giving and taking, like in a symbiotic pact. And it could be perfect, our little summer of passion, but I don’t thrive without conflict. I looked, and looked, until I found one by accident. 

I used to think Ciel put his past behind in the bedroom, but a few weeks into our June idyll I proved myself wrong. All it took was a hand at his throat, not even squeezed properly; a whispered endearment as he bounced in my lap, seconds away from making me come.

Good boy.
 
The reaction was as instant as a snap of the fingers. His body tensed, but not with the tension of an impending orgasm; it stiffened like a block of ice and his sweat ran cold beneath the press of my hands. He hadn’t moved, his chest against mine, yet a mile-long distance seemed to be put between us by just those two words. His features pinched tight and his voice dripped revulsion.
 
“Never ever call me that again,” he said. “Or else.”

And how could I have resisted? I’m weak, sometimes: to whims and to Ciel. I chose ‘or else’.

Naughty boy, I whispered into his ear. And this time, I squeezed.

The slap snagged the lobe of my ear and jerked my head to the side. Half-swung but sharp, connecting at just the right angle. Painfully crisp with fury.

In hindsight, I should have seen it coming: an obvious penalty for an obvious taunt. At the time, however, the blow had stunned me.

My head turned slowly back on its axis, back to face Ciel and his still-raised palm. I could have looked surprised, or even angry. It occurred to me I had never let anyone hit me like that before, like I had unquestionably deserved it. Like I were some stinking lout who had smacked a girl’s rump in a pub and got smacked in return. Punished for a wrong, swift and condemning, like the strike of a gavel. 

As we stared at each other in the stillness that followed, I found something brittle alongside the flaring wrath of his one eye. Something unsure, like a fear.

For one suspended moment, he thought I was going to hit him back.

“I’m sorry,” I said instead, though we both knew that I wasn’t. He pried himself off my lap and stormed his way to the bathroom, leaving me to finish myself off with my hand. I wasn’t even mad; I’d finally found my long-sought trigger. He was ripe with them, in the bedroom, and I’d never had to look far. I began to explore them as I explored his body.

Sweetheart. Honey. Sugar. Darling. Each made him wince and grind his little teeth, smack his moaning lips shut. If his hands were free, he clenched them. He would stop the kisses he’d been suckling into my skin, or harden the touch he’d been teasing along my sides. Just a lag, just a stutter, before he brushed it off and kept going. He tried not to care, to pretend I hadn’t done it on purpose. 

Kitten. Baby doll. Angel. His cock would soften against my stomach or inside my hand, but it didn’t take much to coax it back into full hardness. I sensed the struggle of pride against need, and witnessed the shameful victory of the latter. He got his release and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

Little cock slut. Pretty whore. Each blow stung more than the last, because practice made perfect. One time he left a bruise, purple and mould-like in pattern, and said that it served me right. He slapped me with all he had, no longer fearing payback, wanting only to muster enough force to make me stop. And when force failed to whip me into shape, he started to riot: shying away from me altogether, putting his pride before need. Too late, though. 

One July afternoon, once I’d collected enough words that made him snarl and snap, I threw him onto the bed and talked to him dirty. I held him down, both wrists in one hand, and smothered him with obscenities: in English, in German, in every language I know he’d been hurt in. In Russian, though I had to look up some of the words; in Italian, which I rehearsed once a week with Mrs Diaz, and in my best imitation of Irish, parroted after a patient from Dublin. I only wish I knew Chinese—every last dialect of it, from Sichuan to Shanghai, so I could have sung it out for him in all its elaborate tonalities. A torturous stream of musical filth, woven with lewd insults and lewder praises.

He thrashed, at first. Wrung his limbs and tried to bite, then scream, then flee into his mind. But my weight kept him pinned firmly down to reality. I brainwashed him with my voice, bullied him with words until the words lost their meaning and left only form, only sound—a cluster of syllables without power to hurt him. 

Half an hour later, Ciel’s body stopped writhing. Muscles uncoiled and gave out; resigned, then relaxed. One hour later, I was licking his come off my fingers. 

It wasn’t until he’d come down from the weightlessness of his orgasm—until I climbed off and sat on the chair beside our bed—that he realised what I’d done and decided that he should act betrayed, violated, wronged beyond apology. He turned to the side and seethed silently into the fluff of his pillow, telling me both ‘get out’ and ‘don’t you dare move’, ‘shut up’ and ‘fix it’ at one and the same time. I spotted a theatrical tremble on his shoulders, a small hand curled too tight on the sheltering sprawl of our quilt. He wanted to feel dirty, but he’d been cleansed. 

“I hate you,” he had to say, muffled, after the silence had failed as a punishment. Because I hadn’t grovelled or begged for forgiveness the way he wanted.

“Why?” I asked. “That was part of your therapy. The method of desensitising and prolonged exposure. Haven’t you seen it in one of my books?” 

“It’s meant to be done consensually. In safe, controlled conditions. To establish control, not to crush it all over again.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” I laughed, without malice, and watched him bristle. “Is anything about me ever ‘safe’ or ‘controlled’? Do I look like I give one damn about ‘consent’? But most of all—do you feel crushed, or don’t you?”

From the outside, through our window, came the late trill of a robin. I laid a hand on his shoulder, but he flinched away. I laid it again.

“I didn’t treat you like a regular patient because you’re not a regular patient. Instead of coddling you with slow reenactments meant for the feeble of mind, I opted for the method of brutal exposure. Unpleasant but effective; hurtful but over in a flash, like the prick of a needle. I didn’t want you fretting over such a trivial thing as words, so I helped you get over them. You’re welcome.”

“Shut up,” he spat. “Don’t try to excuse yourself with benevolence, of all things. Just admit that you wanted to torment me all along.”

I moved my hand to his hair, and he let me. It wasn’t the torment, but the final submission that I enjoyed the most. 

“Didn’t it all work out in the end, though? You were so brave, little one. Such a good boy for me.”

The nickname made him shudder, but not in repulsion. Not this time.

So I did it again: flipped him onto his stomach, crushed his face into the pillow and didn’t ask for consent. The bed shook as I took my pleasure; the wood squeaked as Ciel clawed at the headboard for purchase. 

I always do it harder from behind, and it has everything to do with the scars on his back. I’d paid for laser removal and traced the progress of it week after week, but it had done him no miracles. Even now, two weeks after his last session, the scars remain: smoothed-out and softened, but always too visible. Always taunting me right in the face.

At least Ciel did as I asked. He’d done it all for my sake, like a favour, and I found the thought pleasing. I swept my gaze over that unsalvageable skin, over that stain-like scar between his shoulders, and spread my palm right down the middle. His back looked like it hurt, reddened from treatment and so fragile it might break if I pushed any harder. I counted the knobbles of his arched spine and rubbed circles into his tailbone, into the dimples above his cheeks. I saw how white were his knuckles, heard his strained cries… and something in me snapped, like a violin string mid-play. As though I were gliding and suddenly crashed to the ground. 

I stopped my harsh thrusts and turned him around, putting a finger against his lips to hush the protests welling up in his throat. A salty trail of a tear leaked down the flush of his cheek—pretty enough, I thought, but worthless. That tear didn’t count. Even I could shed a tear like that, if a speck got in my eye or someone squeezed it out of me with brute force. That tear had been nothing but bodily function, like sweat.

But it had still fallen because of me. I retraced it with my thumb, pressed our foreheads together, and didn’t say a word; only kissed him deeply and gently, smoothed my hand down his hair and held him close. I pushed slow and deep until he came shuddering in my arms, without a sound, pressing his moist lips to the crook of my neck. 

Something told me there wasn’t much left of him that I had to conquer. But instead of celebrating it right then and there, all I did was stroke his hair until he fell asleep. An odd, odd whim.

Chapter 26

I flip through my vinyl records in search of anything to suit me. Mahler, Liszt, Rachmaninoff.... One by one I toss them aside, spoiling the entire order they were arranged in.

Yes, I may have lately been on edge. Fourth month without a kill and fourth month without cult news. Ciel noticed it around the same time as I; apparently, there had been something ‘off’ about the way I ate.

“Take care of it,” he told me at dinner, cutting into his filet mignon. “I don’t want you to murder me in my sleep, by accident or otherwise. It would make for a tragically anticlimactic end.” 

I couldn’t have agreed more. I’d rather not reach my breaking point with Ciel in the line of fire. Thankfully, I’m only hours away from receiving a cure for my tensions; I hold high expectations of progress from Bard’s overdue visit. I even called off my evening sessions and installed myself in the parlour instead of the office, so that Ciel cannot sneak up to eavesdrop without my seeing him first. Presently he’s over at the library, scavenging for next week’s reading material while I can’t decide what to play on my turntable. 

Not Satie, not Schubert, and definitely not Vivaldi. At last, having uprooted half my cabinet, I come upon a collection of famous opera arias that Irene Diaz had given me as a gift. Staring at her image on the cover—with her neatly pinned curls and deceitfully angelic smile—I remember the time I took Ciel to her Magic Flute concert at the Opera House in December. It was the only time I went to see her of my own volition, and the only time I didn’t cringe when she opened her mouth. 

I put on the record and adjust the tonearm. Irene has a rich, wistful voice that delivers smoothly in every pitch; the kind that sends chills down the spine and pulls on the heartstrings, if one happens to have them. I happen not to, but music works neurological miracles even on a brain as abnormal as mine. I suppose it could best be compared to a massage.

I sit listening, waiting. My unpunctual guest arrives as Irene sings Bellini’s Casta Diva, shuffling around my doorstep with a cigarette stuck between his teeth. Same old Bard, except with some new level of weariness lining his features, a bone-deep fatigue that reminds me of the French policeman who had come to investigate Isabelle’s untimely demise. It must run in the profession.

He steps inside and looks around the hall, as if seeing it for the very first time. He told me once that visiting my house felt like visiting a spa: aesthetically and spiritually pleasing, a respite from the squalor of his neighbourhood and the ugliness of his work. All the greenery and rich, airy spaces; the scent of neroli that Mey-Rin leaves behind with each cleaning; the soothing sounds of classical music seeping through the rooms by night and day.

This time none of it is enough. This time he frowns his way through the sparkling corridor and glares at the verdant landscapes that line its walls. It’s not until he enters the parlour and spots the bottle of Macallan on the coffee table that his weariness sheds like an old skin. He pops a fresh cigarette between his grinning lips, good as new.

I cut behind the sofa to change the record—not wanting romantic arias to be the background to our conversation—but Bard halts me just as I reach for the cover.

“Wait,” he says, “that’s Irene Diaz, innit?”

I raise my brows. “You know her?”

“Oi, I have a sensitive soul! She’s our national pride. And, uh, nice soprano. Best I’ve heard.”

My brows stay raised.

“Alright, she’s a babe. That may or may not be the reason I know her. Plus, she’s getting a divorce and it’s kinda all over gossip sites and whatnot. Call it a guilty pleasure.”

Ah, yes. Mrs Diaz’s divorce. It’s not like I’ve been hearing about it for the past five hundred sessions.

“I could introduce you, but I don’t think you’re her type.”

“You mean an uncultured peasant who can’t tell Puccini from Rossini or whatever? Don’t worry, I know that opera divas are miles out of my league. I mean, even your maid decided I was below her dignity.” 

I chuckle; the match had at least been worth a try. It could have saved me a lot of whining. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault. I’m the reason behind Mey-Rin’s lofty standards.”

“Prick,” Bard scoffs. His gaze strays once more to the Macallan. “But you’re a rich prick with good whisky, so I’ll let it slide.”
 
He sinks into the armchair, folds his hands, and watches me pour. Neat, as always: no water, no ice. He swirls it reverently because that’s his ritual, that’s his law. A drink shall be found wanting if it’s not swirled at least once.

“Look”—Bard dries the glass with a smack of wet lips—“it’s been a while and I’d love to chat, but we should probably cut to the chase.”

“There’s no hurry. If there’s anything you want to get off your chest, do it. I know you’ve been hard at work.”

Tell me, tell me now.

“Ha. That’s awfully mindful of you, doctor, but I’d rather get this over with ASAP.” He sends me a wrinkly smile, all crow’s feet and rumpled forehead. “I’ll say this, for starters: I’m knackered. It’s a big bloody mess you’ve got me mixed up in, did you know that? I’m on the trail of a nation-wide scandal, risking my hide without a penny to show for it, all by my lonesome cause no way in hell that someone would ever believe me. Kind of like those detectives in American movies, aren’t I?” He fakes the accent, and it suits him even better than his Cockney. “I got myself a neat cork board, pinned everything down in chronological order, connected clues with colourful threads.... You know, just for kicks. To make this whole thing a little less morbid.”

I blow air through my nose. “Come to think of it, you are the archetypal American detective. Gruff voice, cigarette diet with a side of whisky, middle-aged and continuously single....”

“Oi, sod off! You don’t have to keep rubbing that in.” He tries to take an angry sip, muttering how I’m the one to talk, but the glass is empty. I push the whole bottle within his reach to serve at his convenience. 

“Don’t suppose you’d have pictures of that cork board of yours, would you?”

“Nah, forget it. Classified stuff you’re not allowed to see, mostly.”

Fine, then. I’ll just break into your shithole of a flat when you’re at work.

“Look, it’s not like you care about technicalities anyway. You just want them caught so your patient can rest easy, right? So here’s something real for you: I think I found two actual members.” He sees me shift forwards and cracks a wry smile. “Except one is dead and the other missing, so that’s a bit of a bugger.”

I lean back into my seat. If that’s all he has—nothing I don’t already know—then I won’t be able to stop myself from wringing his neck. Or stabbing him with the corkscrew I keep under the coffee table. Or smashing the whisky bottle against his head, even though it’s half full. I’d waste decades of ripening just like he wasted months of my time.

“Let’s start with the dead one.”

“Alright. Aleister Chamber, thirty four, found dead on his bed last year in July. Three gunshot wounds, head and stomach, no signs of a break-in. Evidence contained a carnival mask, black robes, and a pager full of spooky symbols that we couldn’t make heads or tails of. All in all, it got brushed off as a weird hobby irrelevant to the investigation at large. We had bigger problems—you know, like the fat gigabytes of underage porn clogging up his portable drive. All girls from twelve to fifteen, mostly blonde, some of them missing. We had shitloads of suspects, but zero proof. Case unsolved.”

Why, little one, it would seem you have committed the perfect crime after all. I can’t say it doesn’t fill me with an odd sort of pride.

“So now for bloke number two. Marco Ferrara, thirty nine, reported missing in March this year. He ran drug deals through his antique shop in Whitechapel, so no one cared about this robes-and-mask business again. Or that he owned a notebook with the same symbols from Chamber’s device.”

“Did they know each other?”

“Sure seems like it, cause I found Ferrara’s number saved up in Chamber’s phone. Not a coincidence then, eh? And two makes a pattern, which means we can draw up a profile.” Bard changes his accent again, this time in what I presume to be an imitation of myself: an overly pretentious British. “Let us see. Affluent, middle-aged, unmarried, leading a deceptively respectable life....” He looks me up and down. “Whoa, Sebastian. Should I be worried?”

I lean on my hand. He looks so proud of his little joke, so I let him have it.

“Alright, this is serious.” He bends forward in emphasis. “They’ve got one more thing in common: the same bloke was seen in the neighbourhood around the time of both incidents. A high-profile bloke, I might add. He was noted in both reports, questioned both times, and released without charges. So guess who?” He makes a short stop in case I actually want to guess. “Arthur Wordsmith.”

I run the name through the archive of my mind and come up blank.

“Is that supposed to ring a bell?”

“Uhh, worldwide bestselling author? Thrillers, horrors, whodunits? Our national pride?” 

I shrug. It’s at this point in the narrative, when the key words have already been spoken, that I might as well stop listening to the rest. But Bard seems to be only just getting started.

“You seriously ain’t heard of him?”

“Can’t say that I have, no.”

“Figures. That stuff’s for uncultured peasants looking to wind down with cheap thrills, such as myself. The joke’s on you, though, cause you’re missing out on a whole lot of irony right now. Care to guess what’s his top novel about?”

I sigh. “A Satanic cult?”

“Bingo. Hiding in plain sight!” Bard laughs and throws his arms wide, as if impressed. “Anyhow, I dug up his address in Richmond and paid him a visit. He was acting real dodgy, I tell you: said he never knew any Chamber or Ferrara and didn’t even offer me a cuppa before slamming the door in my face. His records are squeaky clean, sure, and the reports say he was snooping around crime scenes to find inspiration for his next novel, but a week later I caught him loitering around Ferrara’s shop and looking all sweaty. Could be Ferrara was only his dealer, but there’s something about Wordsmith that rubs me the wrong way, you know? He sure as hell fits into the profile. I’ll bet he freaked out cause his cult mates got hit and he didn’t wanna be next in line. I’ve been watching his house for two months and he almost never freaking leaves it, so I couldn’t break in even if I wanted… but then I got a better idea.”

He makes an effective pause, assuming a doubly-serious stance.

“Right now he’s on a tour to promote his new book, but he’ll be back in two weeks. After that he’s attending some charity concert at the Festival Hall, and that’s where you come in.” He points at me with his cigarette. “Bump into him there, charm him, befriend him. Break him, get him to talk, find all the dirt on him you can. That’s what you do best, right? Probe around in people’s heads? Get them to trust you and spill their secrets?”

I rub my lips in contemplation, pretending to calculate his plan. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Have you spoken to your superiors? Can you get a search warrant?”

“Of fucking course I can’t! And you know it too. Unless your patient talks, I don’t got enough proof to open an investigation. I can shove all my cork board shenanigans right up my arse.”

“It’s police work. He’s likely a dangerous criminal, and I’m just a civilian.”

“Oh so you’re wimping out, is that it? Suddenly you don’t wanna catch the bastards who hurt your precious patient?”

I clench my hand on the armrest to show him I’m just as moved. “Look, you don’t understand. If he is indeed one of the men who hurt him... I don’t know what I might do. How I might react.” Our eyes meet across the table. “It’s a huge risk to involve me in this so directly. Not when I’m emotionally compromised and losing enough sleep as it is.”

“Oh are you? Bloody tell me about it! You pulled me into this, remember? This shit gave me nightmares and paranoia. I feel like everyone’s secretly worshipping Satan all of a sudden, snatching up kids or sacrificing goats in their basement, and—”

We hear footsteps from the corridor at the exact same time. Bard bites at his lip and holds my gaze, as if to tell me this isn’t over. Ciel knocks his knuckles against the open door and frowns at our stilted silence.

I rub the bridge of my nose. “Yes, dinner, I know. Bard, could you—”

“Sure, I’ll stay,” he grumbles into his whisky. “Need a proper meal once in a while.” 

My lips mould into a twitching smile. I wanted him gone.

“Excellent. I’ll be just twenty minutes; you sit here and enjoy your drink. Ciel, come help—”

“Would you care for some company?” he cuts me off in the same manner, turning to our guest. Oh, the little devil.

I’m certain Bard would prefer to listen to Irene and brood over the trials of detective life with Macallan in hand, but I’m wrong. “Thanks kid, why not,” he says instead, and I have no choice but to leave the two of them alone.

Half an hour later, my eyes follow them studiously as they join me at the dining room to eat. Given how sly Ciel is and how daft Bard can be even sober, I fully excepted the latter to blurt everything the second I left the parlour. I seem to have underestimated his Metropolitan integrity, however; judging by the poorly-concealed look of defeat on Ciel’s face, the little devil hadn’t managed to make our guest talk. All he can do is glower at me cross-eyed above his dinner.

Bard refuses to lay off the whisky (which makes for a ghastly match with salmon tartare), but it doesn’t seem to loosen his tongue. Even by the end of the bottle, all he recounts are embarrassing anecdotes from work and the first experiences he’d had at Ciel’s age with ‘the ladies’. Come dessert he’s so drunk that I have to help him upstairs to the guest bedroom and tuck him in like a giant toddler. 

As I turn to leave, he tugs at my sleeve and blinks up fuzzily through his sticky lashes. 

“Hey, hey. ‘Bastian. Be sure to look out for your boy, alright?” 

“Don’t worry,” I say, turning off the light. “He’s the apple of my eye.”

Chapter 27

For the last days of August, Ciel went away. The Midfords abducted him for a vacation in Cannes, which he complained about from the day it was announced to the day he departed. 

I helped him pack up in the morning—or packed everything myself, rather, as he lazed on the mattress and bewailed his fate like an utter brat. Like he were being sent off to a labour camp, not a luxurious resort on the French Riviera. 

“Good work,” he told me once I had finished, a slow smirk spreading across his lips. He sat on the edge and spread his thighs, hiked up his knees. Patted the space in between them. “I just need one last thing before I go.”

And it’s never been my habit to go down on my knees, but for him I make exceptions: frequent ones, willing ones. I can just take the whole of him in without choking, a comfortable slide to the base. He still keeps on trying to make me gag every time, but I don’t mind. I like it when his restless little fingers have their way with my hair, gliding smoothly before they curl and then push, always down and always hard.

“Will you miss me?” I asked, licking the last of him from my lips.

“Hm. I’ll miss this, for sure,” he said, hooking his thumb on my teeth, watching me suck it inside. The doorbell rang just as Ciel pressed down on my tongue.

We greeted them together: me with the taste of his cum in my mouth, him still tender and aching from the night before. He climbed stiffly into their Mercedes and didn’t wave even once. Mrs Midford nodded at me from behind the wheel and I nodded back, thinking: you absolute bitch.

They stole Ciel for ten full days. I’d told him to phone me if his nightmares returned, but either they didn’t return or he didn’t want to phone me. Not even to check in, like a child would with their parent, just to let them know they were alive. ‘Hello, we’re there, I’m okay, the weather’s nice, I’ll be careful and see you soon’. Not even that, and I missed him. I haven’t missed a lot of things in my life—the fountain pen I’d left at Isabelle’s, maybe, or the coffee mug I’d been using for five years before it shattered on the tiles—but without Ciel my dinners tasted bland, and my bed felt unpleasantly vacant.

He returned to me on a Sunday, late in the afternoon, with none of the souvenirs that people normally bring back from vacation: a tan, a smile, an air of repose. As soon as the door closed and the Midfords drove out the gate, he inched up on his toes and wrapped both arms around my neck. “Take me upstairs,” he said, though he didn’t have to.

We lie now tangled under a mess of damp sheets, resting. Through the window come rushes of cold wind that billow the curtains and dry the sweat on our skins. Ciel’s head rests on my chest, one leg between mine, fingers skimming my waist as if bored.

“So how was Cannes?” I speak into his hair. Even small talk seems attractive after holidays of silence.

His breath comes in a heavy sigh against my breast. “Vibrant. Lively. Brilliantly sunny for ten days straight.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yes, rather awful. A never-ending quest for finding shadow and a quiet place to read. My hands were always sticky with sunscreen and we’ve gone on far too many walks. Not to mention the battles I’ve had to fight just in order to keep my shirt at the beach; I told lies of allergies, but I don’t think anyone believed me.”

My thumb finds the large scar between his shoulder-blades: reduced to a vague lump yet ever-spoiling the smooth perfection of his skin.

“And the people. Always laughing, dancing, having fun. Such tiresome joy, and for what? One measly week off from work? So they can get a hideous sunburn and squander money on baubles and colourful cocktails?”

My hand stops its advance down his back. “Not sure if you’re being pretentious, begrudging, or just ironic.”

“Ha. You still can’t tell.”

I consider my options. “Number two, I should think. Hating people for their fortunes, fetishising your own sadness.” 

Ciel snorts out a laugh.

“No? Number one, in that case. You look down on others for engaging in pointless frivolity instead of broadening their horizons. You partake in higher, intellectual forms of entertainment while all they do is bask in the sun like lizards.”

“Bzzt.” Ciel pokes a finger into my side. “Wrong answer. Better luck next time.”

“Ah. A joke, then. But why wouldn’t you hate it?”

Ciel hums, shifting his head on my chest. Goosebumps cover his skin, as if French summer has spoiled him with sun and English summer could no longer keep him warm.

“Why would I hate it? I don’t resent the fortunate as the unfortunate so often do. No, let people have their cocktails and beach parties and summer loves; they have a full right to their blessings even if I can no longer enjoy any of mine. I’ll stew in my own filth and make it my business alone, thank you.”

“Interesting.” I resume my feathery caresses over his back. “Your aunt did the opposite: she wanted everyone to suffer along. She forced her misery unto others, and you were closest at hand.” 

“Hah. Misery does love company, doesn’t it? Well, not mine. I wouldn’t want people to look at me with pity and be ashamed of their own happiness, like a child guilt-tripped into eating dinner because their mum said African children were starving. The distribution of fortune can never be equal, or justified, or rightful; only petty fools begrudge others their luck in life. It’s pointless to hate those who preserved their blessings when I can hate those who ripped mine away.”

His fingers slide down my torso and reach for my hand, feeling over the palm as if trying to divine my future. Perhaps he likes to imagine what those hands have done—all the sophisticated cruelties, all the blood they have spilled—and wonders how they can stay so spotless. How they never betray me, the way a labourer’s hands betray his trade with calluses.

Ciel gives my fingers a light squeeze. “I’d ask what you’ve been doing all this time, but I’m rather enjoying my obliviousness for the moment. I’ve just got back; you can lie to me tomorrow.”

I breathe a soft laugh. These past ten days, I’ve been waiting: for Ciel to return from France, for Wordsmith to return from his tour. I’ve been working: more than I had to, more than it could be healthy, as much as it took to keep idleness at bay. I’ve been preserving my social life, for whatever it may be worth: catching up with friends in places both high and low, having dinners with people who felt to me no different than cardboard cut-outs. And I haven’t killed.

It feels like I’ve done nothing at all. If I don’t push my whims forward, I feel stagnant.

Ciel doesn’t press for an answer. Tired from travel and the intensity of our reunion, he dozes off just as I’m about to lift off the bed to make dinner. He’s like a cat that has curled in my lap—trustful, peaceful, hand still tucked into mine—and I don’t dare make a move lest he wakes and darts off. There are so many things I could be doing yet I am content with lying inert in bed while the sun is not even down. I abandon myself to idleness and find that it doesn’t disagree with me as much as I thought, as much as it logically should.

But then I discover that my lips, pressed to the crown of Ciel’s head, have curved into a smile.

A faint but undeniable, inexplicable smile. The instant I become aware of it, I stop. My mouth drops and my brows pinch together.

It seems trivial, yet is anything but. It doesn’t make any immediate sense. Each and every one of my smiles is conscious and deliberate: a sympathetic smile for a patient, a dashing smile for a woman, a courteous smile for a colleague. Even when I kill, I am all too aware of every single muscle engaged in shaping my features into a fiendish smile. 

And yet this little smile had somehow managed to worm its way upon my lips and catch me off guard. How long had it been there? Why had it been there? I don’t smile without reason. I don’t slip out of control just like that, just because.

And then it strikes me—aberrant, absurd as anything. A vagary, anomaly, grotesquely out of place. It feels injected into my system, like a vaccine; or mutated and spread like the cells of a cancer; or embedded into my flesh like a foreign body, first a puny splinter then a whole brutish stake, spreading its infection as it sank deeper and deeper.

I’ve been trying to apply logic to my emerging emotions only to find out I might be led by the most illogical one of all.

Yes, by now I need to start considering the possibility that I may have fallen in love.

I fix my eyes on the ceiling and begin to wrap my mind around the insanity of this idea. I approach it with caution, like a timid child facing a strange new experience, fumbling for footing in the unknown. Except I am neither a child nor am I malleable like a child; a child learns the world while my world had long since been constructed. I am a completed puzzle, and now that a new piece has been found, where does it fit? Is it purely a weakness? Caring for someone other than myself, catering to needs not exclusively my own.… I cannot abide.

For the first time in my life, I feel the urge to peek inside my brain. I want to pinpoint that little love-tumour and figure out how it had come into being. I want to see how I work, if I make any sense. 

If it really is love, then it must be a new breed. It cannot be the pure, selfless love celebrated as the most beautiful connection between human beings. It’s not the noble, romantic love from songs and fairytales and poems, not the love eulogised for centuries with stirring lyricisms on the pages of novels. ‘Love conquers all’, but not my love; my love is pathological, revolting, obsessive. Borne of the most vile sentiments and leading to almost certain ruin. It won’t garner any blessings, help me see light, or save my soul. It’s the kind of love the world would want nothing to do with, the kind to be shied away from and disowned like a bastard child. Lovers would curse me for giving love a bad name and demand that I call it something different. But isn’t love a hypernym, like sickness? Does it not come in many forms? Even my form, no matter how twisted, should find a place within its broad bracket. Somewhere among the Philias, Storges, Agapes and Eroses... my special sort of Mania. Some hideous hybrid the Greeks had never fathomed. 

Perhaps it’s for the best that I leave this alone. It could always be something else, couldn’t it? Just some ineffable feeling that made me smile. Maybe a profound but transient infatuation I mistake for love simply because I cannot compare it to anything else, or because I cannot predict where it will lead me and what it might grow into with time. All I know is that right here, right now, it consumes me. 

Ciel wakes sometime after dusk, pulling himself up with a groan. He gazes at me sleepily, confusedly, as if trying to figure out why I still haven’t gone away. And I might never get used to the idea of ‘love’, but it feels real when I gaze back. 

“Sebastian?”

“Yes?”

“I missed you.”

“And I you, my little snowflake.”

Chapter 28

The gate points at me with two cameras.

I hate cameras. Time and again they have foiled my perfect designs and threatened discovery. They’re like a fast-spreading disease, a global pandemic, eroding whole cities from the inside out. London, for one, has been suffering from a particularly severe case of mass surveillance. The streets aren’t what they used to be when I first began to prowl them; they’re getting safer, and I don’t like that one bit. 

I ring the entryphone with my knuckle and look up at the townhouse, barricaded from neighbours with a row of high thujas in need of trimming. A costly little place, to be sure, perfectly private, bought with investment returns and royalties from Wordsmith’s bestselling thrillers. Lights are out on both stories, every window curtained or shuttered, no signs of life within sight.

I ring again. The hour looks late; inappropriate for a visit, especially from a stranger. It’s only afternoon, though, dark as an evening, sky leaden with stormy clouds that haven’t burst all day, as if stalling. 

From the entryphone comes a faint static, but no voice. 

“Hello, Mr Wordsmith? It’s about Earl’s Court.”

A rapt hitch in breathing betrays a listener on the other side. So it is him: the third one, the cowardly one. My hunch was right. I expect a long interval of silence before I’m let in, but the gate opens with a quiet buzz in a matter of seconds.

I walk up the steps and enter into a neglected hallway. What a waste of masterwork; the eclectic design would dazzle without the dust and with the right lighting, or any lighting at all. Anything that wasn’t a sorry portable lamp perched askew on a sideboard.

Wordsmith backs away from the door, ogling me distrustfully from a distance. He looks even worse in person than he does in the pictures from his tour: pallid, slovenly, sick with anxiety. A scrawny hermit in a bathrobe, a writer stereotype on jittery legs. If the pouches below his eyes are the outcome of insomnia and addiction to caffeine or alcohol or both, he gets a full score.

Although I suspect it might have more to do with being the prisoner of a cult, not an author. Writer’s block is probably the least of his worries.

“I know who you are,” he says in a thin voice. “Michaelis, yes. I’ve looked you up. You’re with the boy. Living together, treating him probably. Is that how you know?”

My brows knit together. “I—I’m sorry. Yes, that’s all true. I’m just surprised you know that Ciel survived.”

He shakes his head, deaf to my words. “Of course this comes back to haunt me. First the murder or murders, then that Cockney detective nosing about, and now—”

“I’m not here to haunt you. I’m only here to talk.”

A wan smile crosses his lips. “Talk? W-Well. Isn’t that rather reckless of you, Dr Michaelis? You come here and admit to knowing things you shouldn’t know, things that could get you killed, and you say you just want to talk. Face to face, with a practising Satanist, alone in his home?”

“With a wavering Satanist, from what I understand.” 

His hands wrap around his waist, seeming to tremble with intention as they claw into the stained, camel fluff of his bathrobe—only to drop resignedly at his sides, limp with impotence, powerless like the man himself.

“No. With an utterly faithless Satanist who is paying the price for his terrible judgment.”

I smile at him softly, as if he did something brave.

“Who can still turn his life around, I’m sure. It seems I’ve come to the right place.”

His eyes stay downward and dejected, so I crane my head to seek them out. Our gazes lock, this time properly, and Wordsmith seems to like what he sees. He’s sucked into the quicksand of my false comfort, almost at ease, when suddenly some small pop of a sound makes him jolt into high alert.

He whips his head left then right, back then forth, as if expecting one of his fellow cultists to jump out of the closet and stab him to death for treason. ‘Hypervigilance’, I write in my imaginary notebook. 

“Just furniture,” he tells me, or tells himself. “There’s old things here, and new things too. Moisture, temperature—it affects them, no? They make those random sounds.”

“They do, Mr Wordsmith.”

“Right. And we should talk, you said? Well, we can talk in the kitchen. Through here, please.”

He grabs his absurd little lamp and guides me out the dim hallway. Watching him hobble through the run-down beauty of his home, I take a moment to refine the plot of my strategy. Recognising me has only made Wordsmith an easier target, emotionally battered and prone to gobble up utter rubbish—especially the rubbish of a credible, sympathetic figure who would offer a helping hand without condemning him for his actions. And who better than a widely respected psychiatrist? All those diplomas can’t lie.

We pass into the kitchen, a sad picture of Moroccan elegance cluttered with take-out boxes and heaps of greased dishes. Wordsmith puts on the kettle, but it doesn’t occur to him to offer me tea; I take a seat by his grimy table and watch him jerk from one cabinet to another. He dumps three generous scoops of instant coffee into a large mug and fills half of it with water, half with bourbon – a sure recipe for tachycardia. He gets a full score and extra points for style.

“Are you with the police?” he blurts suddenly, whirling. “I mean, it would make sense if you were. You’ve worked for the police before. And it’s the right thing to do anyway, helping them catch us.” He laughs. “It’s all coming together now, isn’t it? Or falling apart, rather, after all those years. I knew it, I knew it was just a matter of time. I just don’t understand: why doesn’t he know? That we’re being tracked, hunted? He’s always ten steps ahead, but not this time?”

I try to cut in, but he keeps rambling.

“And how did you even find out it was me? Is Brother Malphas not dead, did they get him? Did he tell on me, on everyone? The boy talked b-but I didn’t take off my mask or give my name, so—”

“Mr Wordsmith, please slow down and take a seat,” I say, stern but serene, a tone meant for the most troubled of patients. “You’re not under arrest now and you won’t be under arrest tomorrow. You have plenty of time and everything is under control. Just listen to how quiet it is; we’re the only ones here, and I’m here because I’m on your side. You can lose nothing from this, only gain. I will answer all of your questions, and even if you don’t like some of the answers, I can promise that by the end of it you’ll come out feeling a lot better. Just please, breathe.”

He sucks in a slow lungful of air and sits down with his poisonous concoction. Did I ever need a strategy? I enjoy picking on the weak, but I never say no to a challenge.

“I did come on the behalf of Metropolitan, but I’m not officially aiding in the investigation. The police stubbornly want to do things their way and I’ve had to be... pushy, I suppose, in offering my perspective.” I pause, feigning a righteous frustration. “I don’t know much, I’m afraid. They’re working through Ciel’s testimony and building a case on Chamber and Ferrara. Everything is, as you said, just a matter of time.”

I pause again to see if his jangled nerves snap, but all he does is grip his mug. I don’t think he could get any paler. 

“There is no evidence on you, Mr Wordsmith. Not yet. The police found a few sets of fingerprints on the bedframe in Earl’s Court, but it’s too early to tell if any of them are yours. If Ciel hadn’t recognised your voice from a TV interview, I wouldn’t even know of your involvement.” My eyes pierce him with a voltage of candour, hypnotising him with elegant ease. “He said that he remembered you well. That he got the impression you didn’t want to hurt him, or be there at all. That you were a good person.”

Wordsmith chokes back a sob.

“And I see the same he did: that you’re different. I wouldn’t have come here if I thought you were like the rest of them. Maybe I took a gamble, but I wouldn’t rest easy if I didn’t try.”

I produce a notebook from the inside of my jacket and slide it slowly to his side of the table.

“I worked out a deal with the police: full immunity if you can decipher this code and testify against the other members of the cult. It might take months before the investigation is finished, even longer before the right people are put behind bars, and I hate the thought of standing idly by until that happens. Don’t you? It doesn’t have to be a matter of time; all of it can end now, by your choice, in a way you control.” 

His lip trembles, but I don’t let him speak.

“I know what you’re thinking. The world will know your secret, and that scares you. There will be publicity, there will be scandal—that’s unavoidable. Your image will suffer, but not as severely as when you’re paraded in a row alongside the others. Like this, you can be the one who brings them down instead of the one brought down with them. You have the power to end this before they hurt anyone else again. Before they make you hurt anyone else again.”

He takes the pen. It hovers above the page, turns in his hand, seems to waver.

But his head is shaking. “I don’t deserve immunity. I should receive the same punishment as the rest. I’ve done it all, I’m no different.”

“I don’t believe that. I believe you too are a victim: of psychological manipulation. I think you were coerced and threatened into compliance. Everyone makes bad decisions, and yours has led to the worst possible consequences. You can’t undo it or fix the damage, but you don’t need to be punished for it more than you already have. And it’s not too late to make things right, or have a future.”

“Can I...” He swallows, scrunches his nose. Trying not to cry at this pitiful scrap of kindness. “Can I tell you? How I got into this, how it all started? I-I think I need someone to understand.”

There it is. There he goes, exactly like Angelina Dalles, thinking I can explain away his cruelties.

“Of course. That’s why I’m here.”

The pen trembles between his fingers. He touches it down, but not to translate the first symbol—he fucking doodles on the margin. A crisscrossing bundle of nervous lines.

“I’ve thought about it so many times, Doctor. I swear I have. I wanted to turn myself in, or at least write a confession—you know, like a memoir. I thought it might come to me easier in writing, but in the end I always backed down.”

“Where would you start, then? Your memoir?”

The mere thought of writing makes him relax. His face sheds some of its disquiet and his voice settles into a lower, steadier pitch.

“I’d start five years ago, I think. When I was twenty-nine. Teaching English in secondary school, tutoring French, barely getting published.... A wannabe author stuck in a cheap Newham flat with delusions of grandeur.” He smiles bitterly but fondly, remembering bad yet better days. “Gosh. I used to be so angry at everyone and everything for how my life had turned out. At my parents, my ex-girlfriend, my landlady, my cat. I was one of those bitter nobodies in the crowd who secretly thought they were some unappreciated genius. My time would come, I was sure, and one day it did: I was struck by a groundbreaking idea for a book.” He sighs. “Genius or not, it did make me famous. I just had to research something to make the plot happen.”

“Satanism,” I say. Personally I couldn’t get past the blurb; some drivel about reviving the dead and summoning demons in Victorian England. Aurora Society.

“Yes, but it wasn’t all bad at first. I found LaVey’s teachings and I swear none of it seemed bad. Pleasure, freedom, celebration of individuality and life as a whole.... A philosophy for the superior, not the evil blasphemies that people always make it out to be. No demon worship, no killing cattle, no drinking blood. The infamous magic rituals were nothing but spiritual fantasies for the gullible, little more than harmless nonsense to take up as a hobby or, like me, as artistic inspiration. I got sucked up into the world of it, not just for research, because it spoke to me on some deeper level. I ran into a community online—friendly lot, the good sort of eccentric, full of unconventional opinions—and I hung around the forums until I received a message from someone named Claude. He offered to share his knowledge and show me something real, so I agreed to meet him.”

He taps the pen against paper and makes a blotch of ink, looking up as though in search of a flowery synonym to a boring word. His pupils are dilated from alcohol and caffeine. 

“It’s difficult to understand or explain it, but meeting him was comparable to... meeting a movie star, I suppose, or meeting a deity. He gives off this aura of greatness that makes you want to be like him and be around him just to bask in that powerful presence. All of a sudden your life seems small, meaningless, like you’ve been living it wrong this whole time, or like you never knew anything but it didn’t matter because he’s come to teach you, to show you the right way to exist, and you’re just hungry for his acknowledgement and the honour of his attention, for anything and everything that he might deign to give you. You’re buying whatever he’s selling.” Wordsmith laughs, helplessly, and shakes his head. “Or that’s how it went down for me, at least. It never even crossed my mind to refuse him. It’s easy to charm me with words and God, did he ever have a way with words! Everything flowed out of him in this cadenced, rapturous stream that had me gaping and nodding in awe. It was like music, or an actual magic spell. It felt like love.”

I link my hands. Claude sounds like someone I’d enjoy meeting.

“He said that in order to understand Satanism, I needed to first of all embrace my carnality, and I... well, I had plenty of carnality to attend to.” Wordsmith’s cheeks dust rouge. “He invited me to private, um, parties. There were women. He took me around exclusive gentlemen’s clubs, game nights, casinos. With him at my side, I magically couldn’t lose; he was my lucky charm and everything he touched turned into gold. He lent me money and told me where to invest it, when to invest it, making me rich so fast I couldn’t believe it could have ever been that easy. He was like a genie to me: granting all of my wishes. I wrote like mad those days too, page after page materialising under my fingers, until in just a few months I finished Aurora Society and dedicated it to Claude. I thought I owed him at least a book after everything he’d done for me. He noticed my self-proclaimed genius, raised me up out of Newham, and I never had any reason to do anything but revere him. So when he asked if I would like to take the trial and join his secret society, I immediately agreed.” 

At this point in his memoir, Wordsmith fractures. His face crumples back into that infirm, tortured grimace and he looks older, wearier, as if he’s aged ten years in between sentences.

“He introduced me to his two right-hand men, Brother Asmodai and Brother Malphas, placing them in charge of my initiation. Wear the robes, do everything they say, and you’ll be welcomed into our inner circle – that was my only introduction before that night in Earl’s Court. I imagined the trial as one of those stupid magic rituals, but it wasn’t. I imagined the society as a LaVeyan paradise, but it wasn’t. Nothing was like Claude had said. And before I knew it, I was...”

Raping and sacrificing children for the glory of Satan. Yes, that took a rather bumpy turn.

He sniffles and palms his forehead, shaking his head. “How could I have been so stupid?”

“You weren’t stupid. You were a vulnerable target for someone who preys on the vulnerable and intoxicates them with power. Are you familiar with the term ‘love-bombing’?”

Wordsmith perks up at the word ‘term’, desperate for anything shaped like an explanation.

“I’ve heard it once or twice. It does sound like something Claude might do, you know? Make love into a bad thing.”

“It’s a method of luring people into sects and cults. They’re showered with affection, sympathy, riches, acceptance. It’s not stupidity but human condition; we can’t be blamed for wanting to belong, least of all to exclusive circles that promise irresistible privilege. Being chosen makes us feel special, and being part of something secret makes us feel superior to those not included. It’s a very intricate trap.”

Wordsmith’s lips crook in a self-deprecating smile. “‘If you would take, you must first give.’ Is that from Laozi?”

I nod. A clever quote; a tasteful tactic.

“Well, Claude is a master of that. The giving then taking, the bombing with love. I just didn’t realise it until I was already done for. Until I was deep in shit, up to my elbows. Claude owned me, and he owned the men who were with me, and if I’d tried to resist they would’ve cut my throat for failing the trial, so I just... let it happen.” 

He forgets about fake-writing a memoir and cradles his head in both hands, sinking low onto the table as if to melt. Wrestling, probably, with the memories that must often take him by storm, and the nausea that must rise to his throat in ugly tandem. Or maybe it’s just the coffee and the booze.

“I need to know. How is he doing, the boy? C-Ciel, right?” he stammers, as if unsure whether he had the right to pronounce his name.

“He’s come a long way. We both have, in fact. He’s worked hard to gather the courage to tell his story, and I’ve worked hard to help him achieve that. This is the best way for you to redeem yourself to him, Mr Wordsmith. And to everyone else you’ve had to hurt.”

“I tried to make it right,” he half-whispers. “Asmodai and Malphas told me to keep an eye on Miss Dalles, make sure our traces were covered. It was my first important duty, but I lied to them because I knew they would have come back to kill him. I told them she’d disposed of the body and reported the boy as missing, and they believed me. They never even checked.”

I wet my lips. Such a key player in Ciel’s fate, and my own!

“But that was my first and last act of rebellion. That night, after receiving the call, we kidnapped a random girl off the street for the ritual. I killed her during initiation like I was told to, dagger to the heart, earning my baptism as Brother Forneus. Whatever Claude told me to do from that moment, I always did without question. Just like the rest of them.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Twenty nine now, I suppose. With Malphas gone.”

Why, I almost feel excited. Maintaining dominion over thirty people requires first-rate artistry, and I am the right kind of critic to appraise the craft. I must see it up close with my own eyes.

“Has no one tried rebelling?”

He shakes his head. “Never. Everyone’s looking to replace Asmodai and Malphas as Claude’s top henchmen. He’s good to us if we’re obedient: the genie, the protector, the wise head of the family. No one would be where they are if it weren’t for him. We owe him everything and he keeps giving us everything as long as we’re good, but if we’re not…” He swallows and discontinues, letting me use my imagination. I happen to have one especially vivid. “No one knows his real name, where he lives, or what he does. We call him Brother Faustus and don’t ask any questions. Some say he’s a master of black magic, others say he’s a demon in human skin. How and why would you oppose someone like that?”

“It’s all an illusion,” I say. “He’s still human, even if he thinks of himself as more than that.”

Wordsmith gapes, as if the notion had never crossed his mind. “You’re… right,” he says, seized suddenly by some silent mania, eyes steeling and voice swelling with spite. My words touch him like a gospel.

“You’re right. Who does he think he is? I can destroy him like he destroyed me.” He snatches the pen and starts translating the code in furious scribbles. “He’s corrupted my entire life, that son of a whore. I can’t look at a child without seeing a sacrifice, I can’t look at a woman without seeing the rapes and the orgies. I used to live to write and now I hate every word that I write, I’m rich and I’m famous but it tastes like shit and what’s even the point? I live from one gathering to another and whatever happens in-between is just waiting, expecting, following his sick orders. It could ring in a minute or in five months and I always have to be ready, I can never relax. It’s a fucking nightmare.”

The pen makes a few last scratches before dropping onto the page, its duty fulfilled. 

“Here. Chamber’s pager has been deactivated, but Ferrara’s should still work. The coordinates are sent only a few hours ahead of the gathering. Claude punishes us for arriving late and doesn’t forgive absences, so everyone should be there on time. You can catch them red-handed if you act fast.”

I cork the pen, slip the notebook inside my jacket, and sit studying him with a pleased smile. Too easy.

“Brother Faustus had grossly misjudged you, Mr Wordsmith.”

“…Thank you.”

“No, no. I mean that he overestimated you.” I lean my chin on the tips of my fingers. “You weren’t built for superiority. You were never close to genius. Claude failed to convert you not because you’re a good person, but because you’re a miserable coward who should have stayed just a nobody in the crowd. Instead of reaching for superiority, you waited for it to fall from the sky; instead of fighting for autonomy, you accepted everything like a puppet of some cosmic force. And you know what’s your biggest issue?”

He blinks when I point at him with a gun.

“That you keep trusting the wrong kind of people. Story of your life.”

There is consternation, of course, which I patiently watch unfurl on his shrunken face. It always takes a while.

“I don’t understand, why would you— you’re a—”

“It’s not necessary for you to understand. Take out your pistol.”

“What?”

“I know you have a pistol tucked in your bathrobe; take it out and slide it over. And push your chair back so I can see you.” 

With a quivering hand, Wordsmith reaches inside his pocket and sends the pistol skidding across the table. 

“Look, I know it’s hard to forgive me for what I did to—”

“Shut up.” I lean forward, chin in hand, aiming at his heart. “Now tell me: are you afraid of pain?”

He doesn’t answer.

“You may have caused some, but I have caused worse. You may have seen a lot, but I have seen more. It means you should be afraid, Mr Wordsmith, and be on your best behaviour. You don’t want a taste of my kind of pain, believe me. I could make it look like your cult came to remove you—stage it into a messy, Satanic-themed slaughter, maybe draw a message with your blood in the code you so helpfully translated—but that would open an actual investigation, and I would prefer to avoid that. You know what I’m thinking? That nothing would suit you better than a cowardly death. Already the headlines are asking if you’re battling depression—it’s not like the world wouldn’t see it coming. What say you?”

I leave him to think it over. Bit by bit, his face loses expression until it thaws finally into a mask of indifference. He looks strangely at peace now, like a weary traveller after a long journey home. Like someone who has given up hope, but did not miss it. 

A puppet until the end, then. Pathetic.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I say, putting on my white gloves. Wordsmith watches me with polite curiosity, even a hint of a smile. 

“Funny,” he says. “You’ve just given me an idea for a book.”

“Wherein I’m the main hero, I hope?”

“No. The villain.”

I take his pistol and walk around the table, feeling a restless itch in my fingers. Guns feel impersonal, and I haven’t got close and personal with death for months. I want to turn him inside out, wring every last drop of blood, make music from his breaking bones. I want to disassemble him like a gory puzzle: paint him all over the Moroccan backsplash, mince him on the brown concrete countertops, spill him in the spaces between the hand-cut terracotta tiles. 

But in the grand scheme of things, I must be patient.

“Ah, I nearly forgot about those pesky cameras. Unlock your phone and access surveillance.”

He obeys me wordlessly, mechanically, while I lean next to him against the table and watch as he types in his password.

“1234ABCD? However did you become a writer, with that kind of imagination?”

“I made a deal with the devil,” he answers, and seems to find it incredibly funny, for he laughs and laughs until I jam the pistol into his mouth and he can only giggle in the back of his throat, teary-eyed and shaking, lips twitching as they wrap around the barrel. He pries my hand from the handle and puts his finger on the trigger almost eagerly, almost as though he can’t wait, and dies obediently by his kitchen table like it was always meant to be.

Chapter 29

I tighten the belt of my trenchcoat, wandering the Islington Cemetery in search of the right grave. ‘Come pick me up,’ Ciel texted after a whole day of absence, and I didn’t even need to ask where from. Where else could he go on the 20th of September?

It’s the sycamore I notice first, branching tall and wide over a quiet lane. The trunk spirals with ivy and the leaves hang yet unshed, still verdant with summer. A plain grey slab of granite marks the grave below it, unremarkable and untended, giving no testimony to the affluence of the buried. Forever missed, says the epitaph etched into the headstone, and on the bench under the tree sits someone who will, in fact, forever miss them.

Ciel doesn’t even lift his head when I join him. He sinks his hands into his pockets and heaves a pointed sigh, like I’m intruding.

“I just remembered something funny, you know,” he says, gaze fixed on the tombstone. “During the mass at my parents’ funeral, aunt An and I were sitting next to this old lady who used to be my mother’s teacher, or babysitter, or some distant cousin. She said I shouldn’t be too sad because they would always be watching me from above—from heaven.” He chuckles drily at the thought. “I very much hope she was wrong about that.”

I huff. If my real parents are dead and there’s a heaven, I definitely wouldn’t mind having them as an audience.

“Did you think of it during that month? Whether they were watching you or not?”

Ciel rolls his eyes. “Ugh, this again. You cannot form a sentence without nagging me about ‘that month’, can you? You’re like a wind-up toy.”

“There are things you still haven’t talked to me about, mon petit. And forgive the nagging, but all of my elegant strategies have respectively misfired. I’m simply countering your stubbornness with some of my own.”

“So you want me to talk about it over the grave of my parents, on the anniversary of their death. You hold nothing sacred, do you?”

I shrug, and he scoffs. “I don’t know what you even expect to hear, you vulture. I hated every minute and every second—what else is there to say?”

“Ah, we both know that’s a lie. It’s not that you have nothing to say; it’s that you have too much to say. Your true problem is picking the right words out of thousands.” 

“What if I’d like to keep it to myself? Maybe the reason I don’t want to talk about it is the same reason I hope my parents aren’t watching me from ‘heaven’. It’s disgraceful.”

“Believe me, little one: you could never lack grace. It’s an indelible part of your being, not easily swayed or eroded.”

Ciel sighs again, but it’s a sigh of surrender. Of concession.

“All right. Whatever. You’re never going to let this go anyway, so ask.”

I cross my legs. Finally I am privy to the last of his secrets. I know what happened only from implications, conjectures, therapy slip-ups and fragmented accounts of nightmares. What I want is an official statement, accurately explicit, leaving nothing to my imagination.

“Did you have any idea what was going on all that time? What they wanted from you, and why?” 

Ciel turns over the question, as if picking the right words out of thousands. 

“Yes and no. The very first night, when my aunt let that man into my room... I understood. I recognised it from the way he looked at me and the way he approached me. It didn’t matter that I’d never seen it before; I couldn’t mistake it for anything else. I understood what he was going to do and that I was powerless to stop it. What I didn’t understand was why me, a child, and why like this. Why pay to hurt me, why make me do these things, why take pleasure in something so vile. I didn’t understand the extremities of adult perversion—the foul fetishes, the sadistic instincts—but they made sure to teach me.”

“What happened? What did they make you do?”

Ciel’s lips twist to the side. “Of fucking course you’d ask that. You’re a man who’s fond of details, aren’t you? Wear this, do that, call me daddy…. Is that what you want to hear? How dehumanising it was, how degrading? Fine, then.” His voice drips venom and his temper keeps just barely in check. “There was a man who pissed on my face and a man who choked me until I fainted. There was a woman who breastfed me milk meant for her dead baby and a man who dressed me up in his little daughter’s used underwear. There was a man who trained me in sucking his fat, unwashed dick until I lost my gag reflex—but you’d only thank him for that now, wouldn’t you? Well, I wouldn’t. I was reduced to a toy for sleazy old perverts, tied up like a slave and raped until I bled. So tell me, Sebastian: how in the world do I pick the right words?” 

He doesn’t have to. His face says it all. It will always be there, that hatred I’ve been pursuing since the moment we met. It rises like nausea but he swallows it down, bottles it back up. He’s used to it—I’m not.

How could I have let Lau live for so long?

“Or maybe you’re angling to find out if I ever liked it, hmm? If so, then yes: I did. Just once. It was the sixteenth day and the man who entered my room was a good two decades younger than my usual visitors. He looked different, nervous, and I could tell at once that he’d never done this. He sat on the edge of the bed, looked me up and down, reached out towards my shoulder... but he couldn’t bring himself to touch me. He took back his hand and started bawling his eyes out like a little baby.” Ciel snorts, half in laughter and half in derision. “It stunned me. I’d cried only once, only the first time it happened, and only alone. But there he was, snot and all, wailing about his tragic fate and the cold, cruel world. He told me how much he hated to have been born this way, how he’d tried to be normal but it was always stronger, always there, how it would be better for everyone if he just ended his life. And you know what I said?”

“‘Good idea’?”

“Exactly. I told him to quit whining because no one would ever feel sorry for such a freak. I said he should do the world a favour and blow his brains out because there was no other way for this to stop.” Ciel lifts his chin, smiling up at the windblown sycamore leaves; a jarring softness. “I lashed out and waited for him to strike me, to do what he came there to do but twice as hard, maybe even kill me in a fit of blind rage… but he didn’t move a single muscle the entire time. It was as if he agreed with my every word. He just sat there with his face in his hands until our time ran out and my aunt barged in to chase him outside. That felt good, to vent everything off, to hurt someone else in return. I comforted myself with the thought that maybe I’d convinced him to actually end it, that maybe I’d helped at least a little in ridding the world of vermin.”

Ciel looks to me for the first time, tearing his gaze from the gravestone. His iris burns a startling sapphire in the cemetery gloom, vivid against the drab sky and the moribund green of the trees.

“There, did that scratch your itch? No, don’t answer. I know what you’re really after. You want to know if I hated myself, not just the strangers. You want to know if I wanted to die.” 

Ciel pulls his hands out of his pockets and lays them across his knees, porcelain pale on soot black. He lets the wind sting them all it wants, lets the chill have its way. 

“I suppose I started thinking of it in the most ridiculous moment. One of the men was spanking me with his belt, and it occurred to me that I’d never been spanked before in my life. Spanking was for bad children, and I’d never misbehaved enough to earn it. My father never spanked me, my mother never spanked me, my aunts never spanked me... but this man spanked me, this smelly old stranger who didn’t even ask my name, and what could possibly give him the right to decide if I’d been good or bad?

“But then I remembered: that I was too numb to cry at the funeral, that the lorry had missed me by just a hair’s breadth. That maybe if I hadn’t overslept we would have crossed the street earlier, or if I’d walked just one little bit faster it would have been someone else to end up in pieces. I was a bad child; it took only a few seconds to make the difference between literal life and death, and I made that difference. If I hadn’t wasted those few precious seconds, my parents wouldn’t lie buried in this ugly grave, my aunt would never have gone crazy, and I wouldn’t have to sit here pandering to your sick curiosity.”

His fists unclench. The sensitive pale of his skin blooms pink, irritated by the lightest prickle of cold. I want to warm his hands with my own, but the gesture feels cheap. Inappropriate.

“Survivor guilt,” I say, forcing a mask of self-possession. “You felt like you deserved it because if you didn’t, it would mean that everything was happening for no reason. You needed your pain to have a meaning, even if that meaning was punishment. It’s easier to suffer for something, anything, than for the sake of suffering alone. Finding a logic or attributing a purpose is a natural way to endure it.”

Ciel shrugs. “Maybe so. But sometimes I ask myself if I endured it because I wanted to endure it. I wasn’t trapped there, not really. My aunt had barred the window, but I could have tried screaming for help while she was out buying booze. And there were some paperclips in the drawer; I could have at least given the lock a go. The films always make it look so easy, and yet I couldn’t make myself get up even once. I did eventually try it one night, two years later, and I managed to get my doors open in half a bloody hour. All this time I could have escaped, got help, but I just couldn’t be bothered. I accepted my punishment and endured it.” He ventures a glance at my stony profile. “You must think me a weakling, to have just lain there taking it.”

“No,” I say, almost too quickly. “Depression is not a weakness; it’s an illness. Non-physical, perhaps, but just as paralysing as any injury of the flesh. You were bedridden with it like you would be bedridden after an asthma attack.”

“Being ill equals being weak.”

“Illness cannot be overcome through will, like weakness. You don’t choose to be ill and you can’t stop what it does to your body. I think you demand too much of yourself, absorbing all the blame when—” I halt, rethinking, then curb my tone into a text-book manner. “There was nothing you could have done. Apathy is a natural psychological reaction to a continued onslaught of stress, and children in particular have a tendency to become passive in the face of danger.”

“Yawn. How boring and typical of me, no?” Ciel says, overdoing the sarcasm. “Pardon for not being above natural reactions.”

I bite my tongue. ‘Hated myself’, he said, in past tense, but I see that some of that hate still lingers. 

“It’s as if I have no past before that,” he picks up, much quieter. “As if everything began that month and anything that had happened before didn’t matter, or it had happened to a twin brother of mine while I stood and watched from a window. Back in Cannes, when I sat with aunt Frances in the evenings and asked her to tell me about my parents, it felt like listening to stories about ancestors who had died a hundred years before. I barely remember anything; just bits and pieces, useless bits and worthless pieces, like the time I found that rotten mushroom with my mother, or the time my father stubbed his toe on a table leg and cursed in French. I don’t remember how we celebrated mother’s birthday, I don’t remember when father taught me to play chess, but I do remember in film-like detail how they died, and I’ll always remember every single night of that month.” His lips pinch together and his frown gets darker. “I think of it every time I come here. How much I took them for granted, how little I actually knew them before they died. How I missed them not as people but missed the life I had under their care.”

I shake my head, slow and sure. “I know you forget it easily, Ciel, but you were a child. You were only ten. Look at any ten-year-old before judging yourself so harshly, look how unprepared they are for the world before calling yourself a weakling. Think how anyone—whether they were twenty or forty or eighty—would have broken in face of what you survived without letting it beat you. Think of how the brain works, especially young, discarding one memory after another and keeping only those steeped in emotion, or those relevant for no other reason than whim. But most of all, you have to understand that all of this had happened to you, not because of you. You couldn’t have known to cherish every moment you had with your parents, and you couldn’t have predicted the future, and it wasn’t your fault the driver was drunk or the light turned green when it did, and—” I stop, noticing the incredulous look on Ciel’s face. “What is it?”

“Are you… comforting me?”

I blink, caught off guard. 

Was I? It did sound like I was, but I didn’t mean to. The words just went and marched out of my mouth. 

“That—” I stutter. Since when do I stutter? “That may have been my intention. Are you comforted?”

Ciel laughs. “Maybe I would be, if I weren’t busy being so bloody shocked.” 

“Well, it’s getting late. We should go.”

“Mm. Just a few more minutes,” Ciel says, dropping his head to my shoulder. Wind rustles the ivy and drizzle seeps through the branches. Any time now, the groundskeeper will start his rounds and ask us to leave. 

Ciel shivers against my side, squeezing our hands tighter inside my pocket.

“It scares me, you know.”

I squeeze back. “What does?”

“How human you sound, sometimes. More than me.”

And at this point, after everything, I think I might be scared myself.

Chapter 30

Up a hill, down a forest road, past a rust-eaten gate with broken chains. The coordinates lead me to an old Victorian manor outside of Maidstone, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

I pull up by the column of elegant SUVs and kill the engine. I left the Aston Martin in Hampstead and made the trip in one of my backup cars, a low-profile Ford Mondeo with stolen plates that I keep parked in North Finchley. It looks laughable next to the shiny new Lexuses and Audis, but I’m here to impress with something other than money.

On the front seat rests the disguise I looted from Wordsmith—a sea-monster mask of fine craftsmanship, textured with kelp-green scales that give off a slippery shimmer. I put it on with special care, wary of its needle-sharp maw and horn-rimmed brows. One of the black garnets ringing the eye-slits has worked itself loose, dropping onto my lap, and I slip it back inside the silken pouch. Wordsmith must have been in the habit of taking his frustrations out on the mask, smashing it against the floor along with his scratched-up pager.

I pull up my hood, step out of the car, and squint at the house. It’s not a grand residence from The Dumas Club or Eyes Wide Shut—not for this gathering, at least. The roof is punched through with gaps, columns barely upright, the bay windows shattered. A forgotten half-ruin eternally for sale, destined to crumble brick by brick on the silent field. 

I wade through mud towards the front porch. The night wind, October-cold, catches at the hem of my robes and swirls into the crevices of my mask. At the door, lit by a single lantern, stands guard a cloaked figure in a lustrous black mask: no ornaments, no patterns, only the sculptured outline of masculine features. A pressed mouth, an aquiline nose.

“Ave Satanas,” I try, closing a hand around the hilt of my knife. I’ve hidden away two more and did not forget to bring a gun.

Not that it will help much, if things go wrong at the wrong moment. The risk lends everything such a sweet, sober spice.

“Rege Satanas, Forneus,” answers the guardian, voice tuned to a menacing depth, and opens the door. I pass him swiftly, like I’m expected.

The floorboards hardly creak as I enter, too mushy and mouldy from leakage. The dust has been contained for the occasion, swept enough to spare me a cough, but the humid stench of neglect still taints the air. The hall gapes wide like an empty cave; all the rugs, curtains and chandeliers have long since been plundered, or moved out with the last owners, leaving only shadows to furnish the rooms.

And yet the house lives. I turn left by the splintered staircase, directed by a voice, following it past a small vestibule and past a tall arch.

The room might have been a dining hall once, or a parlour. Now it’s been refitted with church pews, a confessional, and dozens of black taper candles. Their little flames seem to float bodiless in the dark, flickering where the wind slithers through leftover cracks in the hastily patched panes. A complex scent weaves into my nostrils, the same I’d smelled on Wordsmith’s robes before I donned them: dried nightshade, henbane, myrrh, and datura, rising up in smoke from the brass incense burner by the wall.

I take my place among the hooded crowd, perching on the edge of a pew. All heads are turned to the centremost pedestal, where a maskless man in a black chasuble stands silhouetted against a triptych of windows. The moon shines clean through the middle pane, stopping right above the man’s head to crown him with its silver sickle, as though he’d put it there himself. His arms are splayed: not wide in a welcome but low in a posture of preaching, palms upturned above the ornate wood of a lectern. His powerful voice resonates through the chamber, reciting what I make out to be a sacrilegious variation of the Latin Eucharist rite—a parody enacted seriously, and taken seriously. Every now and again, prompted by a passage, the grave chorus of the assembled echoes his words in a harmonic rumble.

This must be him, then: Brother Faustus, the master of puppets. But instead of devoting him all my attention, instead of devouring every element of the scene, my eyes stay fixed on one spot and refuse to look away.

In front of the lectern, flanked by tall candelabras, sits an altar. And on the altar, restrained with leather straps and naked as a newborn, lies a blond boy around the same age as Ciel.

He’s unconscious, but not much longer. Claude had to have drugged him with a pinpoint dose, measured to miss the preparations but not the party. After all, what joy would there be in slaughtering a sleeping lamb? In sparing it pain, and the crowd a spectacle?

There’s an undertone of expectation in Claude’s low, sedate chanting. We both expect it, anticipate it, and the boy wakes as if summoned. His limbs scrape on stone and his eyes squint through the candlelight. They blink, and widen, and sweep in panic around the masked mob. For some reason I’m sure they’re blue.

“Claude? What’s all this? What the fuck’s going on?”

I’ve watched this moment enough times to know how it plays out in unfailing, chronological order: confusion, terror, struggles, curses, bargains, pleas. Almost every awakening follows the same pattern, but this awakening has to it a secret ingredient: heartbreak. Betrayal. Trapped prey tends to call for God, for help, for their mum, for mercy—but the boy calls for Claude as though he were the only person in the world that mattered.

“Come on, Claude! This is a prank, right? You’re just fucking around with me, aren’t you?”

Claude turns the page of his tome, not one dip or stutter wavering the rhythm of his Latin. The leather straps creak and the buckles clang as the boy turns to struggles.

“Just say something! This isn’t funny anymore! Let me go right now and I’ll just forget it ever happened, okay?”

More chanting.

“CLAUDE!”

The screams scale, and the incantations scale in tandem, and they clash with each other and jump over each other until the boy’s shrieking and Claude’s booming from his pedestal like a wrathful god.

“Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso—”

“Look at me! ANSWER me!”

The Latin stops. The screaming stops. Not a single rustle sounds from the pews, not even a stray stir of a shifting robe. Just the whistles of wind and the boy’s manic breathing.

Claude tuts—the way one tuts at an impolite pedestrian—and shuffles towards the altar. The candles cast eerily sharp shadows on the bones of his face, but the boy doesn’t seem scared. Tenderly, with a gloved hand, Claude takes him by the chin and swipes a thumb over his bottom lip.

“Hush now, sweetness. No more fretting.”

The boy calms on command. His emotions bare themselves with such raw, piteous zeal – all that trust and love and relief flooding in like they never left, oozing from every pore in his body. The naiveté.

One more caress, and Claude’s lenient smile darkens. His thumb shoves past the boy’s teeth and his knuckles wrestle inside, prying at the clench of his jaw. He fights off the bites, yanks out the writhing tongue, and cleaves it off with a silver dagger. Not cleanly, no; not in a swift, decisive chop. He saws through it like the dagger is dull, or the tongue too thick. A dozen of slow, minute cuts when all it would’ve taken was two.

The boy shrills and gurgles and flails like an eel. His fingernails scratch madly at the stone of the altar, filing and cracking, swelling with blood. His screams rend the air and bounce off the walls, enter every room, carry out into the hush of the forest—and they echo, uselessly, without an answer. Met with a silent sea of masks.

“You’ve always wagged your tongue too much, Alois,” says Claude, brandishing the slimy red muscle before the boy’s face. He wiggles it impishly back and forth—spraying droplets of blood on his bare chest, and the candelabras’ silver columns, and his own pointed chin—then smacks it onto the pedestal and retreats behind the altar. The Latin resumes, calm as ever.

The boy keeps trying to call him back. Wails bubble in his blood-flooded throat, all in doomed attempts at a name. His head lolls to the side as he sputters, gagging and gulping as if trying to swallow something repulsive. His crimson chin trembles through each surge, eyes weeping and bulging out of their sockets in mute supplication. But they no longer look to Claude. They turn to the audience that watches him die in silence, roving the rigid rows of strangers for signs of compassion. I feel like he’s looking straight at me, penetrating the shadows and the scales of my mask. Big, anguished, accusing blue eyes.

If he wanted mercy, he should have bled quicker. He should have done himself a favour and died within the first two minutes. But he’s still conscious when Claude grabs his ceremonial dagger and carves him open – first left arm then right, up from the elbow and down to his dainty wrist, all the way deep to the bone. Blood gushes in fresh rivulets from his seizing body, seeps down the wall of the altar, pools across the pedestal, and drips onto the mildewed parquet below. He’s still twitching when Claude puts a silver chalice to his limp hand and drains his blood like sap from a tree.

“Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes,” he intones, holding the full cup aloft, “hoc est enim corpus meum.”

The cloaked mass shifts in practised unison to form a sinuous line below the pedestal. I make sure to queue up last, watching a figure in a painted Venetian mask go up the small steps and kneel before their high priest. 

“In nomine dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi,” says Claude, dipping a piece of sacramental bread in the chalice and holding it out between his fingers. “Amen,” answers the cultist, a woman, making the inverted sign of the cross before lifting her mask just enough to take the blood-soaked host into her mouth. She steps down, turns left by the confessional, and leaves through the double door manned by another black-masked guardian.

One by one, the cultists go up the pedestal to take their unholy communion – a morbid parade of masks. The mask of a dragon, a raven, a bull; a theatre mask inlaid with glinting gems; a heavy copper mask contorted in the grimace from Munch’s Scream. The doors open and close, again and again, granting me glimpses of the room beyond: cushions, red-tinged lamplight, carafes of wine and food platters lined on a long, black-clothed table.

But most of all: cages. Within the cages, hunched naked bodies in chains and collars. Some have been dragged outside by the guards and others sit awaiting their fate, meek like doped cattle.

Soon I’m the last left in line. I pass the altar, careful not to squash the amputated tongue under my heel. Alois really did have blue eyes, I can tell; bluer and brighter than Ciel’s, even dimmed by death and dark lighting. The host is soggy and metallic from his blood, and I swallow it without chewing. Amen.

The mass is over, but I don’t join the debauchery in the other room; I enter the confessional and sit on the side meant for the sinner. It’s hard to see in the dark, but the wooden crate dividing the priest has been torn down, creating a window, and the walls have symbols carved into their creaking wood. Claude’s runic code, undoubtedly.

A disgruntled tut reaches me from the pedestal. “Brother Forneus. Not only were you late but you stepped out of line. I intend to call for Sister Halphas first; do await your proper turn.” 

I ignore the order, feeling for the knife in the folds of my robe. One of the guards enters the room with an armful of plastic foil – the grim reaper, I assume, here to collect what’s left of tonight’s sacrificial lamb. I can’t say I’m not envious of having lackeys to clean up the scraps. From the altar comes the jangle of unbuckled restrains and the screechy stretch of duct tape; from Claude, the impetuous thud of his liturgical tome followed by the stomp of approaching footsteps.

He emerges, candlestick in hand, bringing light into the glum confines of the confessional. His chasuble swishes noisily as he takes a seat, face cold with fury.

“Congratulations. I was going to be merciful with my punishment, but you’ve succeeded in changing my mind. I’m the one who does the summoning around here, not you.”

“Forgive me, Brother Faustus,” I say, then pull down my hood and take off my mask.

The flames flutter from the puff of Claude’s breath. He pulls up the spectacles on his scrunched nose, and stares. I stare back. Does he feel the same? Like he’s looking into a mirror? Ciel was right: it’s in the eyes. I can’t see what colour they are, but I can see how they could lure with false promise and tantalise young, impressionable boys. 

We’re alone now, the guard gone. He clambers through the archway with Alois’s plastic-wrapped body over his shoulder, leaving us with the muffled din of revelry on the other side of the wall. Screams, moans, music, laughter. The feasting cultists must be shedding their robes now and settling onto the cushions, chasing down the iron of Alois’s blood with glassfuls of wine or mouthfuls of fruit. They must be picking out playthings, plucking them from their cages, and pulling their helpless bodies into their own eager laps.

Claude folds his arms on the shelf. “And who might you be? Where is Brother Forneus?”

“Home. By now in the active state of decomposition, I’m afraid. He missed a charity concert last week and it’s not long before someone realises that he’s missing, not just holed up writing another book. Suicide, I’m sorry to say. Almost unassisted.”

“Is that so?” Claude asks, almost politely, all trace of anger gone from his face. He waits for me to answer the first of his questions, but I don’t intend to.

“Well. Whoever you are, your presence here is an insult. Not only have you killed one of my acolytes, but you dared invade the secrecy of my mass without earning the honour.... Unschooled, uninitiated, unfaithful. I should kill you right here and right now.”

But he won’t. I cannot vouch for his intentions, but I can vouch for the unopposable force of his curiosity. Until it’s sated, I’m virtually untouchable.

“Unschooled? Would someone unschooled be able to seek you out and blend with your disciples? Am I uninitiated when I have done my part and offered you a sacrifice, the soon-to-be traitor Brother Forneus? He was the one who hadn’t earned the honours, a thankless weakling blind to the greatness of your work, a coward unworthy to be part of your congregation. I came to present myself in his place.”

Claude’s mouth twitches at the flattery. “Forneus was mine to deal with and mine alone. I chose him, shaped him, and claimed the right to dispose of him as I saw fit. Your intervention was not only unwelcome, but unnecessary. I had him contained.”  

“Did you? You knew he’d been planning to confess, then? You knew he feared the police would get to him first, or that he’d follow after Asmodai and Malphas? He would have betrayed you all to buy his own safety and ease his own guilt. If I hadn’t got to him in time, tonight’s mass would have been stormed by Met, Alois and the cage thralls rescued, and the celebrations thwarted.” I nod my head left, where the feast rages behind the wall.

Claude’s lip curls over his teeth. “Police. No one would walk out of this house alive if they were to find us. You’d know that if you belonged here.”

“But it didn’t come to that, did it? I removed the threat, Brother Faustus, and for that you are welcome. How can you call me unfaithful, after everything I’ve done for your cause?”

He chuckles: mirthlessly, in the back of his throat, without lifting a single corner of his mouth. “Such impeccable timing you seem to have, friend.”

“Always.” I grin. My presence here is indeed an insult: to everything he has built. We can never be friends, I fear.

“I will ask for the last time: who are you?”

“You know who I am.” I lean closer. “I am a fan of your work. I wish to pay tribute. Observe, take part, be of use.”

“And to submit. Yes or no?”

I bristle. Such a powerful word, to submit. It’s not merely a matter of curiosity anymore; it’s a question of pride. He has been infiltrated, challenged, mocked. A game is afoot, and he will want me alive until it’s over.

“I will do your bidding. I will not act against you. Is that submission enough, Brother Faustus?”

Claude spreads his arms, as wide as he can in the cramp of his booth. “You have seen my flock. Do I look like someone who would be satisfied with just that?”

“You look to me like someone unwilling to share power, before anything else. Which is just as well, for I have no intention of trying to take it. Truly, consider me but a humble scholar pleading access to a treasured library; I shan’t stain a single page or bend a single spine. In return, I will respect your authority and put my resourcefulness at your disposal.” I send him a diplomatic smile. “Do we have a deal?”

“A deal....” He weighs my words like a priest weighing his parishioner’s sins. “Yes. I see no reason why I shouldn’t trust you.” He returns my smile, sharp and insidious, and offers his hand through the window.

“Welcome, Brother Berith. Patron of blasphemy and murder.... Don’t you think that suits you? I think it suits you. And now that you have a fitting name, allow me to give you a fitting reception.”

Chapter 31

“Jesus,” says Ciel the moment I step through the front door. I’ve never heard him curse like that: artless and resorting to God, the cheapest form of surprise. “Where in the bloody hell have you been?”

I shrug off my coat, steadying myself through a stagger with a hand on the wall. The stairs spin and Ciel’s frown cuts deeper. Did he miss me at night? Was he worried? I must look dreadful if he’s not even trying to hide it. It seems we’re both out of our usual touch this morning…. Or is it already past noon?

I do know where I’ve been, but I don’t know what happened. My head aches; I ache all over. The images are fragmented, blurry, like a filmstrip cut to bits and pieces—gory bits and obscene pieces that either assault me in sharp flashes or float dimly at the rim of my memory.

Delirium. Primal indulgence. Senses inhumanly heightened, then curbed all at once into stupor. What was in the hippocras? What was in the smoke? It wasn’t nightshade or henbane or myrrh or datura. In the apex of it, I have killed – this I know for sure. An Indian woman, skin the colour of cloves, limp under the force of my frenzy. Was it a dinner knife in my hand? Was that what I used instead of my three daggers? Laborious work. I sawed into her larynx, attacked the cartilage, nicked her artery. I looked inside. Tried to dig my way to the esophagus, but she was dead before I could grab something sharper. Warm blood soaked my hands, so pleasant without the gloves. Is it still under my fingernails? I don’t remember changing out of my robes and I don’t remember returning to London. Someone had to drag me out and drive me back. Was it one of the black-masked guards? It must have been. They must have taken my sad old Mondeo and dropped me at Battersea, or at Walworth, where I left the car and took a taxi. Maybe. I think. It’s what I’d do now, soberer, trying what I could to shield my identity.

Have I ever been sloppier? Claude could have sunk his claws into me a number of times in a number of ways. A fitting reception, he’d promised, and made sure to deliver.

Maybe sleep will stitch the images together. Maybe once I can stand firmly on two feet and my vision is no longer doubling, the night will come back.

I take a step forward. Ciel takes a step backward.

“You’re still drunk. No, high on something. What have you done this time?”

“Nothing,” I say, and take another step. Bigger. Ciel twitches in reflex, fighting the urge to recoil. Is he scared of me?

“You’re on your own with this one,” he grinds out. Scolding me, but not like he scolded me for Isabelle. It lacks heat, and malice. “I’ve got no alibi for... for whatever it is you’ve dragged yourself into.”

He is scared of me.

I lunge. Did he close his eyes, expecting a blow? His breath is stopped and his body stiff as I pull him into my arms, the whole of him braced for impact. He thinks I haven’t killed since Paris, that we haven’t talked much since Islington because I’m losing interest. I should tell him I wouldn’t hurt him, not now and maybe not ever, but my throat is dry and my mind of no use. I clutch him tighter, but he stiffens still more instead of relaxing. I hear him sniff me, feel his chest expand in a deep inhale. He bears it for a few more heartbeats before slowly, cautiously, attempting to free himself from my embrace. No sudden moves, like I were a feral animal that could pounce if provoked.

“I’m going to aunt Frances,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “Get some sleep.”

 

***

 

I sleep the entire day, half the night, and wake up feeling the foulest and filthiest I’ve been in a long time, if ever. The migraine is gone, but my throat rages with thirst and my muscles ache from something forgotten.

In need of a cleanse, I step under the shower and crank the temperature from one extremity to another. The heat stirs my blood and purges my skin; the cold sobers the last of sleep and drug-induced daze from my mind. I lather myself with soap and gel and shampoo, scraping with the rough side of the sponge until I’m red and prickling from head to toe. There was dust in my hair, rusty specks behind my nails; there was dry sweat and unnamed impurities invisible to the eye, like touch.

I wash the night off, regaining no memories. They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you, but not in this case. Any of what I lost could be used against me, and I won’t even see it coming. I’m sure Claude enjoyed drugging me almost as much as I enjoyed my surprise in the confessional; such a crass welcome after such an elegant entrance.

I have revenge to exact, control to regain, and I plan it as punctiliously as I scrub every milimetre of my body. Not all of last night is a yawning blank; there’s the handful of names I remember hearing, the few license plates I registered before entering the estate, the bits of careless conversations that rattle around the recesses of my mind. I’ve got plenty of direction to take, and there’s nothing I love more than to busy myself with whims.

I step out of the bathroom and scroll through the long list of calls that has amassed on my work phone while I slept. Bard’s number pops up the most often: four rings in the afternoon before he gave up and sent me a voice text. I tap ‘play’.

“Watch the news,” says his gruff voice from the speaker. “But long story short, bestselling writer Arthur Wordsmith put a bullet in his brilliant brain and sat rotting in his kitchen for over two weeks. So much for our plan, eh? They didn’t find anything – no robes, no pager. Maybe I was wrong. Either way, I can’t be doing this anymore. I’ve got nothing. Good luck with your patient.”

Well, that was fast. Claude is not one to waste any time, is he? I hope he went there himself, up to Wordsmith’s dusty little townhouse in Richmond, and personally smelled the two weeks of rot before calling it in.

I rifle through my clothes, a dirty heap on the floor, and find the pager tucked into the breast pocket of my shirt. There, too, waits a message. By now I’ve memorised the code enough to decipher it without a chart.

A street, a name, a deadline. Three pieces of information, each of them a taunt, daring me to put my skills to the test. Who’s my fist target, I wonder? A religious government official, or a particularly orthodox preacher?

I stare at the signature—an all-too-familiar duo of runes, attached at the end of every message I had once tried to decode over books and websites. 

Satanas vobiscum, Devil be with you.

 

***

 

Two days later, I wake to screams. 

“Ciel?” I call out, fumbling to give him a shake on the shoulder. I have to stretch my whole arm to reach him, far to the right side of the bed, where he tends to avoid sex and touches after we’ve had a fight. We haven’t had a fight this time, not literally, and yet it feels like it couldn’t get any worse. He wouldn’t be sleeping in my bed right now if he didn’t think it could fend off his nightmares… which, tonight of all nights, decide to return with a half years’ worth of pent-up force.

He wakes at my touch, but it does nothing to soothe him. He gasps at the shape of me in the dark, at the mere idea of me at all, then rebounds in a fit of even greater terror. He tumbles onto the carpet, hits his head on the nightstand and cannot, even then, tell dream from real life. I switch on the lamp, wanting to shock him into clarity, but all it does is send him blinking hysterically through the painful light. His eyes are no more lucid than they were in the dark. They find no comfort at my sight, only more mindless fear.

So it’s like that, then. It’s none of the old nightmares, it’s none of the old demons. It can only be one thing.

I fix the bedding while Ciel fights to ground himself in space and time. He gropes around the room and over his own body, patting himself head to toe as if to make sure his limbs are intact. “Fuck,” he breathes out, finally himself, lingering at his scalp to rub away the ache. His body sags in sullen relief on the carpet.

“It was just a dream,” I say, knowing the irony of it coming from a psychiatrist’s mouth. I have an entire shelf dedicated to proving that dreams aren’t always ‘just’ dreams. Freud called them the ‘royal road’ to human unconscious, the seat of our deepest fears and desires, a world of hidden symbols. I too, in the dreams of my patients, have often found answers to the afflictions of their waking life. When dreams steal hours of sleep, soak the sheets in sweat and tear screams from one’s throat, are they really just dreams?

I didn’t mean to say that all dreams are worthless—just this one. I meant to rob this one dream of importance and dispel its prophetic powers. Ciel shouldn’t have had such a dream in the first place.

Whatever you saw me do to you was nothing but sleep-muddled fantasy. A projection of an irrational fear. A cruel joke of your unconscious mind. Whatever you saw me do to you I would never actually do.

But before my words can put themselves out and achieve even a single thing, Ciel rises from his knees and leaves to seek peaceful sleep alone.

Chapter 32

“This is so tasteless,” I sigh, hammering a nine inch nail through the priest’s folded feet. The cross lies stretched between the pews and the sanctuary, still horizontal, and my arms throb at the thought of having to lift it all the way up from the ground.

“I need you to know one thing: this really isn’t my style. Too much overdone symbolism and not enough spontaneity. If it were up to me, your death would have been a much more worthwhile experience for both parties involved. But I’m actually following instructions, can you believe that?”

The priest, father Daniel, moans something pitiful into his gag. Each strike of my hammer echoes like a gong throughout the silent church, forking into the transepts and splitting down the aisles.  

“I know, I know. Why let that bastard degrade me? Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be putting up with this fucking charade if it wasn’t worth it. I mean—the last gathering? Oh, you should have seen it, father. All that pomp and circumstance, like some twisted sort of courtship. All that showing off, just to impress me.”

I put down the hammer and sift through my toolkit.

“And I am impressed, all things considered. Drug trafficking, arms trafficking, human trafficking... you name it, father – Brother Faustus just does it all. A Renaissance man par excellence, if I’d ever seen one. It makes one wonder where he finds the time to order me around and prepare his idiotic rituals.” I chuckle. “Such a lovely little Satanic empire he’s built himself there, hasn’t he? It’d be such a shame if someone smashed up all of his toys.”

I pull out a jackknife and resharpen it on a whetstone. Then, carefully, in my best runic penmanship, I start carving the symbols for ‘hypocrite’ across the priest’s dough-pale chest.

“But that would defeat my purpose, wouldn’t it? It’s all about the toys, in the end. It’s all been for the sake of that merry band of sinners. And you’re no saint yourself, father, but I’m afraid that your faint, morally-grey heart wouldn’t be able to handle the likes of Sister Luvart or Brother Gressil. No, compared to them you’re a meek little lamb. All the Hail Marys in the world wouldn’t redeem their souls.”

The runes brim with crimson, so I run a damp rag over his chest to soak up the blood. I need it clean, legible.

“Fascinating, every single one of them. The most diversely eccentric bunch of specimen I could have asked for. But there’s just one thing spoiling my fun, you know?” I sigh, folding and zipping up my toolkit. “And by that I mean whatever the hell’s going on with Ciel. We’ve been doing so well for so long and now he tiptoes around me like I’ve gone rabid? Like he’s got a reason? I have no idea what he’s up to; he has no idea what I’m up to. We’re drifting apart when we could be doing all of this together, and for what? Why is he still so stubborn?” My voice raises, just enough to form a small echo. “I get that I’m what you’d call a wild card, but why now? Because I’m keeping secrets? He was the one who cut me off and called independence, so that one’s on him. Or maybe it’s because of that one pesky dream? He’s never been scared before, not even when he should have, so what’s changed? Does any of this make sense to you, father?”

He looks at me, a tiny arch to his tortured brow. Almost cynical.

“Ah. Sorry.” I bend over him with a toothy grin. “How thoughtless of me to talk your ear off like that. You have other problems right now, of course. But I guess I just needed someone to vent to.”

I swipe the rag one last time, rise from the ground, and critically examine my work. The martyr is ready: knees bent at a forty-five angle, wrists pinned through the soft flesh below the carpals. I’ve had to nail them precisely, right in the narrowing gap between radius and ulna, rupturing the median nerve in four brutal bursts.

Everything has been done by the book, but I hate it. Even without a crown of thorns, the scene feels too tacky. Maybe it’s the religious overkill, or maybe it’s the pain-in-the-arse logistics that have gone into making this happen. It’s all been a bigger hassle than it had to be.

Claude offered to lend me a helper for this occasion: a personal black-masked pawn to command at my disposal. I had every intention of refusing, of course, but I happened to remember that a full-sized wooden cross weighs around one hundred twenty kilos, and that father Daniel must weigh around eighty kilos himself, and that I haven’t exactly been hitting the gym these past few months. It was hard enough to carry the cross from the van and up the steps and into the church; now we have to erect the bloody thing with added weight. Father Daniel’s scrawny and brittle with age, but tall. And the fact I haven’t slept in a day or eaten in a half certainly won’t make things easier.

I sigh and cross the nave towards the entrance. The guard is right where I left him: outside in the churchyard shadows, posted as a lookout. “Help me lift,” I murmur, letting him in through the crack in the doors. He’s wearing a black balaclava, but I recognise him from the previous gathering by stature alone – almost two meters of solid muscle that bulge even through the loose fit of his robes. I could have put on a disguise myself, but why bother? He’s seen me without a mask just as he’s seen all twenty eight of the others.

We squat and lift the cross on one two three. My knees buckle and my lower back screams in protest as the entire structure settles upright with a wooden thump – upside down, because Satanism. The same death that befell Saint Peter, only for a much different cause.

I blink down the spin in my vision and try to keep my step steady. The guard himself looks unruffled, as if he could crucify ten father Daniels in a single evening without breaking a sweat. I circle around to test the stability, giving the beam a few shakes here and there for good measure. Robust walnut, expert woodwork. Claude had it made thicker and sturdier at the bottom, designed to fulfil its purpose to the letter.

“You’re dismissed,” I tell the guard, but he’s waiting. His eyes blink at me slowly through the gap in his balaclava.

Do I really have to do this? I lift my gaze at the vaulted ceiling, like it might send reinforcements. Two words only. I worry my tongue behind my teeth and force out:

“Satanas vobiscum.”

The guard bows his head and echoes in answer:

“Satanas vobiscum, Berith.”

And that’s that. He turns on his heel, no mention of payment, like he’s been perfectly happy to help. “It’s all in the family,” Claude had said, and I cannot help but wonder just how much he has to be paying for such absolute, mute obedience. The guards seem as mindless and indistinguishable as clones, trained to speak in the same old formulas and to never ask questions. Even their voices sound alike, deep and guttural, as if Claude’s made it a necessary qualification for the job.

But when something appears perfect, it’s rarely perfect. There’s bound to be strife, and secrets, and weak links like Wordsmith. There are bound to be things that money can’t buy. If I look closely enough, I’ll find loose threads to pull and have the entire happy family falling apart at the seams.

But for now I need to act like I belong in its ranks.

The guard’s gone now, having shut the door behind his back with the utmost care. It gave but a quiet clang and the church would have fallen silent—a perfectly peaceful house of God after midnight—were it not for the hacking breaths and aborted moans of father Daniel.

He makes a sorry sight on that cross, I must say: strung, haggard, face red like communion wine when it hasn’t even been one minute. Without so much as a scrap of loincloth for modesty, his shrivelled old cock hangs fully exposed to the sculpted gaze of Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. It flops up into the bush of his pubic hair, limp from gravity, oozing droplets of piss up the pasty flab of his stomach. His muscles flex and labour beneath the sag of his paper-thin skin, a desperate flutter of abdominals as he fights the pull of his own weight.

I crouch in front of him, resting my chin on one hand. I can see every bulged vein on his temples, and the sweat that beads in the wrinkle-dug trenches on his forehead, and the tears that leak from his bloodshot eyes and soak up into his brows. He looks like he has something to say, but all he does when I remove the gag is gasp for more air. No last rites, no prayers. I suppose I can respect that, the integrity to not beg his God for forgiveness after years of sin in his service.

It’s only fitting that he should die inside the church he’d preached in all his life. He can’t see much of it from this angle, though—only the entrance, and the inverted rows of the same pews he’d been feeding his hypocrisies. Maybe a wink of the pipe organ on the floor above, but the sanctuary itself stretches well beyond his sight: an ivory altar, a frosted pair of stained glass windows, a lectern for the ‘Good Book’ that looks exactly like the one from which Claude reads his ‘Bad’ one.

And in the centre of it all, a sinfully hideous iconostasis depicting the fourteen Stations of the Cross.

“I’m trying to decide which is more painful,” I speak up, looking each image over, jaw moving up and down on my hand, “traditional or reversed. Neither spares you much in the end, I think. One way or the other, you’re stranded like a piece of ham just waiting around to expire. If you so much as wiggle your toe, it’s agony; if you do nothing at all, it’s still agony. Each breath feels like a herculean feat and every muscle tortures itself beyond limits to hold you up, tiring and weakening until your bones crunch out of their joints like limbs torn from a plastic doll. And then there’s absolutely nothing to support you but those three immovable nails, nothing to save you from that too-great-for-words torment of shredded nerves. From the slowest, cruellest asphyxiation that makes drowning seem like a kindness.”

I rock back on my heels and ponder that image. The torture itself is blameless; in the privacy of my cellar, I could have savoured it like a wine. But not on Claude’s terms.

“It must be even harder to breathe like this, head down, lungs squished steadily by the weight of your organs. But I do wonder if it isn’t cardiac arrest that will get you before everything else, in this case. All that extra blood flowing towards your heart, all that extra pumping it has to manage at your ripe old age of seventy eight.... You’re feeling it already, aren’t you? Thump, thump.” I touch two fingers to his neck, and his pulse jumps out at me even through the gloves. “Mm, yes. A few hours at best. Three, maybe four. But I’m not sure if I have the time to keep you company quite this long, father; I don’t get enough sleep as it is. Jesus had all the time in the world to hang around on that cross, but you’re not Jesus. What if you miraculously live to see the morning? It pains me to do this, especially after all that hard labour, but it seems that I have to cut your martyrdom short. Claude won’t know, will he?”

Father Daniel tries to make himself still, small, on the best of behaviours. Anything so that I don’t change my mind.

“All right, you’ve convinced me. Five more minutes.”

His wails follow me up to the chancel. I stroll around the ambulatory, frown at the iconostasis, knock at the confessionals. I peek into the sacristy and rifle through wardrobes, chasubles, through drawers full of rosaries and cheap gilded trinkets. I pocket two flasks of holy water and loot a stash of host from the tabernacle, just as a bonus. As spoils of victory for my esteemed master Claude.

When I return to finish what I started, my eyelids are heavy and my Todestrieb still indifferent. The misery on father Daniel’s face makes the Christ on a cross right behind him look peaceful. He tries to breathe through my palm as I choke him, but it’s only a reflex; even survival instinct cannot trump the allure of a quicker death.

It feels dangerously like mercy, and that prospect alone spoils whatever satisfaction I may have derived from this joke of a kill. I don’t think it would have been any more rewarding had I waited for it to run its full course.

I sigh and gather my tools. It’s barely tickled my Todestrieb, not even enough to distract me on the ride back to Hampstead. Instead of lingering in the moment, celebrating another taken life, I’m cornered into impractical thoughts of what’s waiting for me when I get home.

Not Ciel, to be sure. Nothing pleasant. An empty bed, a pile of work, and a whole lot of silence. We’re like a separated marriage these days: good morning, good night, I won’t be home for dinner. I keep asking if anything’s wrong, and I keep hearing that nothing’s wrong in the least. That he’s busy, both of us are. That it’s best if we got out of each other’s way.

And he’s stellar at that: avoidance. I almost forgot how well he can disappear. For all intents and purposes, he’s turned back to the half-existence of a ghost – a quiet, polite ghost who will not leave a rogue book lying outside the library, displace a teacup, or move the chess pieces without rearranging them back to order. Even December nights pass without haunting—no midnight screams down the corridor or shy knocks on my door, not one nightmare I could soothe with honeyed milk and get back in good graces.

The house feels as empty as when I lived alone, and just as soulless as when Ciel left for his summer in France. I wished then that he would call me, at least once, to humour me with an update and sate my itch to know. Now even the drudgery of small-talk would suit me, the scrap of a sentence at dinner, a handful of worthless banalities about school. Has that clingy transfer student from India finally left him be? Was his shopping trip with Mey-Rin as awful as always, was Elizabeth any less of a nuisance? I want dull daily minutiae and I want, most of all, to find out what words he uses to curse me in his head, and why; what he thinks of during our silent dinners and what he dreams of at night, where he disappears to by day.

Perhaps he wants secrets of his own. Perhaps he seeks to replace the ones I have stolen. “He’s going through a pivotal point in therapy,” I told Mrs Midford when she phoned to ask me if anything had happened, “and it’s challenging, but the growth he will have undergone is sure to transcend every obstacle met underway. He needs only to move forwards.”

But he’s not moving forwards, only backwards. It’s last February all over again, when all I had worked for got ruined by a single stray look. What we had back then was so brittle, a tentative partnership of minds ripe with secrets and unexplored potential. How can he avoid me again after everything we’ve been through?

Whatever this is, he could have at least turned it into a game—or lied. I know I would, if I could. A thousand stories wait readily on the tip of my tongue, but Ciel does not digest stories; they’re all bound for disbelief, even untold. I could feed him falsehoods but he would only spit them back out. Just this once, bitter truth seems to hold more promise than lies. How much more harm could it cause at this point? A fault confessed is half redressed, it is said. If I tell him everything I did behind his back, he might fume and stomp his feet and call me some new names, but eventually his tantrum might pass and harmony could be restored. He might understand, forgive, even help me—but he might also sabotage my plan before I can even set it in motion. He’s as much of a wild card as I, and I’m not keen to start gambling about with high stakes in play. Too much risk, even for me.

Perhaps he was right: we should get out of each other’s way. I should tackle one thing at a time and appoint my priorities. I can’t afford to deal with Ciel’s dramas or have him cluttering the precious space in my mind. It’s not his schemes I should be focusing on, it’s Claude’s. He’s my main act, and everything else is the props.

I need to destabilise him, learn how to map out his way of thinking. Expose his identity, cut off his resources, pin down his informants. Erode the trust of his flock until he’s got nowhere left to turn.

And somewhere in between, I need to sleep.

 

***

 

It’s Tuesday and every muscle in my body remembers lifting that cross. I didn’t even catch four hours, driven out of bed by a meltdown call from Mr Redmond. I had to dab Ciel’s concealer on the bags under my eyes and drink another espresso, which was enough to get me heart palpitations but not enough to get me through afternoon sessions.

I have better things to do. So many better things to do. I’d be glad to tell Mr Brown what I really think of his hypochondria, or explain to Miss Diaz exactly why she doesn’t need another terrier, but I must summon every bit of professionalism and keep biting my tongue until it’s sore (partly to keep it from wagging, partly to stay awake). It’s eight in the evening and Redmond’s my last, so when I open the back door to let him out I expect the waiting room to be empty.

It’s not. An unscheduled visitor sits cross-legged on the middle chair.

“Good evening, Brother Berith. I trust you don’t mind the sudden intrusion. After all, I am merely returning the favour.”

I step aside, allowing him in. “I’ve been expecting you at one point or another. I must say it took you longer than I thought it would, Brother Faustus.”

He passes me without a glance and sits on my sofa without taking off his coat. “Thoroughness always takes time, I’m afraid. And you would know something of this, wouldn’t you? Struggling as you are to navigate my flock?”

I walk back to my armchair, teeth clenched. “I don’t consider the pleasure of gradual discovery a struggle.”

“I’m glad you find it your liking,” he says, looking none too subtly around my study. “My disciples are interesting subjects, are they not? I am protective of them, I must say. Proud. Each and every one of them had been a valuable investment. Even Forneus, lost cause though he was, had cost me much dedication. Do you feel the same way about your patients?”

“Some. Sometimes.”

“Ah, so you understand. But I cannot claim to know what it’s like to have someone... special. Irreplaceable. Do you know what I mean? A favourite I could keep close at all times and watch as they flourish under my care. I am as quick to lose my interest as I am to gain it, I’m afraid. I can keep it stoked for a couple of months at best, never longer. But let us suppose – a year? That would certainly be something special, wouldn’t it? Yes, a year sounds like a long time to have anyone around. I would have to be quite fond of them indeed. Hmm. But no, I cannot say I have a soft spot for anyone... not even pretty little orphans.”

His yellowish eyes seem to flare behind his spectacles. An unnatural colour, like a hawk’s.

“Alois was an orphan too. Remember him? A rebellious child, starved for affection, waiting for a fairytale prince to swoop in and take him away from his sad grey life in the Hamlets. I made those dreams reality, you see. I gave him everything he ever wanted and everything he never even knew he wanted. Don’t you think enticement is far more sophisticated than force? It has always been my favourite method, to give and to win over. To earn worship, faithfulness, gratitude, submission. But sometimes... sometimes being benevolent is not enough, is it? One needs to found loyalty on things more stable than easily swayed belief. A pinch of fear is called for, yes, the leverage of a looming threat. Not giving but taking, for instance, something special that they hold dear....”

A year ago, I would have laughed. ‘You will find nothing of the sort,’ I would have said. To say it now would be lying, and it’s the first lie that I can’t seem to squeeze out of my throat. I sit still as a statue, fighting the torrent of impulses flooding in from my brain. All my life I have feigned emotions and now here I am, feigning their lack. Where is my cruel apathy when I most need it? Why is it suddenly the hardest thing in the world? My Todestrieb has never, never been this loud. It wants Claude, and it’s right: I should rip him to shreds. I should lock him in my cellar and carve off piece after piece until there’s no body left to dispose of.

Claude smiles. He saves his smiles for special occasions, makes each of them count. And it’s subtle, but I hear it: the click of a safety lock as his hand shifts in the pocket of his coat. On, and back off. A warning.

“Qui totum vult totum perdit, my friend. Who wants all loses all, and it seems you have something precious to lose indeed. Do try to handle it with more care.”

Chapter 33

I hate cameras, but I had one installed by every entrance. The front footage tells me that Ciel left shortly before eleven and had a taxi waiting for him outside the gate. Now, at three thirty, there’s still no sign of him coming back.

First I waited in my study, then I moved to wait on the tufted Victorian settee by the front stairs: half dozing and half worrying and half reading up on the research I never have time to complete. Wherever he’s gone, this isn’t his first or second disappearance. I couldn’t get my hands on his mobile, so I’d sown the tiniest tracker into the seams of his coat—only to find it deposited on my desk the day after without so much as a note. No threats to stop, no smug explanations to how he knew I’d do this.

Finally, just after four, the gate slides open and the porch lights switch on as they sense movement. I put down my notes, straighten my spine, and fold my hands upon my lap.

Ciel enters, letting a blast of December air into the hall. It’s nowhere near as cold as his eyes.

“Where have you been?” I ask.

He calmly sheds his scarf, gloves, overcoat, shoes. I ask again.

“That’s not a question that gets answered around here,” he says, making a move for the stairs—trying to slither past like a ghost—but I step in to block his path. Once closer, I smell something musky on his hair and notice smudges of ash on the sleeve of his blazer.

He looks up, provoked into a reaction, pupils blown unnaturally wide. I know it well, this look of silent judgment. It’s the same look he puts on whenever someone says something so scandalously, irredeemably stupid that he cannot decide if it’s worth wasting breath to correct them.

“Fine. If you’re so eager for chit-chat then sure, by all means, let’s swap gossip.” He wets his lips. “Did you happen to hear any news from your pet junkie, by any chance?”

“Grell? He’s probably dead or half-dead in some alley.”

“Not quite. See, he popped by last month to check in with you. Wanted to see what you’ve been up to, what’s been keeping you busy. But you weren’t home at the time, so he had to make do with just me.”

“And?”

“And it baffles me why you ever kept him around. He’s crafty enough, I suppose, but entirely too chatty. Such interesting things I made him tell me with a single pull of the tongue! According to him, I was never meant to be more to you than a ‘toy to toss aside’—was I? But that one I could have guessed, that one didn’t surprise me. The fact you sent him to look for Lau, though? The fact that you found him, that you met with him to arrange my touching reunion with Vanel, that all this time you knew exactly where to find him and lied? That one pissed me off.”

He thrusts up his chin, daring me to make excuses, but I have no time to feign guilt.

“Is that where you’ve been, then? Down there?”

“Oh, I’m a regular by now. Even met some of my old... customers, for want of a better word. We’re on speaking terms, in fact.” He waves his hand and laughs in my face, at my face, like it’s nothing. “I have to tell you, thrashing them all at pool and poker has proven miraculously therapeutic. More than anything you ever did, for sure. They can never fully keep their hands to themselves, of course, but Lau doesn’t take too kindly to harassing his patrons. Not to mention that Ran-Mao has taken a special liking to me and scares them all off.”

I swallow. My saliva feels like liquid fire. What is all this? Not that long ago he feared my every step and woke up screaming at imaginary cruelties by my hand, but now he doesn’t so much as flinch?

“Why?” I hiss, hovering closer.

“To win back something my aunt had lost at cards. And that’s all I’m telling you, now move.”

He tries to dodge past, but I’m faster. Our shoulders collide.

“Foolish child. You could have been sold off again, or killed. You should have—”

“—asked you for help?” Ciel snaps. “So that I owe you more and more until you own me? No, fuck that. I’ll deal with them myself. You go on and have fun crucifying priests for your little cult.”

My mouth opens, then closes.

“Oh, that’s right. You think I can’t put one to one? That I didn’t smell it that day you came home all wasted? Myrrh, henbane, datura… the same stale stink I’d smelled on Vanel and Chamber’s robes? And did you think you’d done a good job of hiding your pager, your cloak, your shiny new mask? Please, Sebastian, do not insult me. By now you should know better than to treat me like a complete fucking fool.”

I boil. Deep breaths don’t help.

“So you can feel, after all. Good. At least one thing you didn’t lie to me about. Oh, and before I forget... if the reason you keep such a close eye on me is because you’re worried that your Satanist friend will come snatch me away, then—”

I pounce at him, grab him by the shoulders, squeeze hard, see red.

“You talked to Claude?!” I shake him and he winces, so I shake again. “What did he want? What did you tell him?!” 

Ciel twists away like he’s disgusted. “I’m touched by your concern, but I can take care of myself just fine. I’m not going to lie back while you two psychos fight over me like hyenas.”

“But isn’t that what you’re used to?” I growl. “Just lying and taking it?”

He tries to slap me, but I see it coming. I catch his wrist, one after another, so thin and breakable in the vice of my fists. He curses, struggles, keeps on cursing. Demands me to let go in the squealing tone of a rowdy, lamenting child. He kicks me in the shin, tries to bite into my palm, aims to smash his knee into my crotch. But he’s too weak, too small, and the one thing he hates being the most: helpless. Reduced to a whining brat, stripped bare of his poise and pride and authority. It makes me hot with something more than just fury.

I grab his chin and smash our lips together, craving to defile his sweetness but tasting only blood, seeking his soft tongue but meeting teeth. He batters his fists against my chest, yanks at my hair, sinks his nails into my neck and rakes them down, down, all the way to the clavicle. When we tear apart his mouth is puffed, eyes mad—or maybe they’re my own eyes, reflected in his. I have never felt less sane.

He makes one last attempt at escape before I snatch at his clothes and throw him at the settee. Full force, heedless of his delicacy of limb. He rams his jaw into the stiff, decorative trim and scrambles up, panting, cornered. I come up behind him and tug his trousers halfway down his thighs, just enough, licking the blood off my mouth.

“Stop,” he pleads, sliding up on the leather. Maybe if he said stop one more time I would stop, but first he gasps and spreads his legs, then says stop. Maybe I could reason with this feral lust if he hadn’t kissed me back, or if he hadn’t ground his thigh into my cock like he wanted this to happen. Or maybe I’ve never had that kind of control, maybe I’d do it no matter how loud he screamed for me not to. It’s been too long.

I tear through my belt buckle and hold down his hips. He’s too tight, and I take him almost raw—just spit and a quick stretch of fingers, barely enough to push in by force. It doesn’t stop me. I fist his hair, jerk his head back, and fuck him. He shakes and sobs but I don’t care if it hurts, I don’t care if he comes or not, I just want to own him. The leather creaks as he claws into the backrest and his knees skid back and forth as I pound him into the seat. His cries sound pained, punched brutally out of his throat, never leaving him enough breath to keep begging me to stop. But he tries. He wriggles under my hands and I have to grip his hips tighter, imprint a new bruise to join the blooming violet on his wrists and the cut on his jaw. My neck stings from his scratches but he’s subdued now, all mine to break, just mine.

It’s been too long since I last had this. The release, when it comes, feels like a cure; a momentary relief for all the roiling, confusing emotions that I never know what to do with. The red haze dissolves, the frenzy snuffs out. It has me collapsing, drained of strength, with my forehead upon Ciel’s shoulder.

Release was a cure, but bitter. It cleared the storm but left behind a splintering wreckage.

Ciel pulls up his trousers and stands to his wobbly legs, suckling on the tear on his lip. I’m sure he’s going to say something derisive—turn this around and come out on top, reassert his lost dignity, or at least try to properly slap me—but all he does is start slowly towards the staircase. This time I don’t stand in his way.

Chapter 34

I needed more than the element of surprise. She’s too vigilant, too quick of a draw. We stand in the shadowy hall of the teashop, me pointing a gun at Lau and Ran-Mao pointing a gun at myself. It’s midday, and what rare winter sunlight shines inside does so in long, feeble rays that illuminate every mote of dust in the air. No one comes here during midday; some errant, oblivious customer may occasionally wander in despite the tinted storefront panes, but the first glance at the state of the shop usually stops them from wandering further.

Lau regards me genially through the thin slits of his eyes, hands folded in the width of his sleeves.

“You’re a liar, Dr Michaelis. You told me we’d never see each other again.”

“Yes, I am a liar. I am a lot of things. I remember what I said about playing our games, but this is not a game.” I tighten my hand on the grip. “If you let Ciel in here again, I will kill you. If you ever go anywhere near him at all, I will kill you. But right now I need you to tell me what he’s been trying to gamble back.”

“Ah… you must mean that old bauble. An ancestral ring of his father’s, or so the kid said.” Lau waves his hand dismissively. “He offered me lots of cash for the buyout, but where would be the fun in that? I made him play for it.”

“That won’t be necessary anymore. I’ll cover the rest of what he owes you.”

“Sure.” Lau shrugs. “It’s high time that happened, actually. The kid’s been kicking everyone’s butts so much that it’s bad for business. He’s quite the sensation around here, you know.”

“Just give me the ring.”

“Oh, I don’t have it. I sold it next door, but you can still track it down. Luo Zhang has excellent memory.”

My eyes narrow. “I recall you saying this exact same thing about yourself. And now you can use that excellent memory to give me the names of every single client you sent to Earl’s Court four years ago. Now.”

Lau raises his hands in the air, as if only just realising I have him at gunpoint. A gesture of peacemaking, when I haven’t the least interest in peace.

“Come now, why all this aggression? You weren’t interested in justice the last time we talked, if I remember. Even the kid seems like he doesn’t give a damn, to be honest. Is he even that worse off for what happened? He’s certainly gained balls, if you want my opinion. But what will I do if you delete half my best clients? They’re not so easy to come by these days, and I’m sure you don’t mean to start a war. Do you?” His voice lowers. “Be reasonable.” 

“I am a lot of things, but reasonable is not among them. Not anymore.”

“Empty threats,” Ran-Mao speaks up, her aim unwavering. “What can you do to us? You are just one man.”

“Oh, I am far from alone. I am Legion, you could say, for we are many.”

I cringe at the words as soon as they’re out my mouth, and I cringe at the memory of Claude up on his pedestal with his arms thrown wide like a prophet, citing that exact same passage in Latin. What a joke he is, and what a joke I am for needing his protection.

“Oh dear. So you’re in league with those devil-worshipping loonies? They’ve been stepping on my toes enough as it is.” Lau heaves a chagrined sigh, shaking his head. “Which I guess means war.”

“War? I’d like to see it. A war in which one side knows everything about the other—their whereabouts, their numbers, their leader—and the other side is completely in the dark.”

“Maybe one side is bluffing.”

“Maybe. Does the other side think it’s worth the risk to find out? When all I want is a few names?”

Lau falls silent, no longer smiling. Our eyes clash, and he must see something in mine he’d rather not challenge. He sings out the names, one after another, each searing into my brain like a brand.

“Only seven? I think you’re holding out.”

“Look, four of them are already goners. We play a dangerous game, as you well know. And unless you fancy chasing the last three all the way to Shanghai, I’d suggest you cut your losses and take the seven.”

“Tip them off or interfere in any way, and—” 

“—and your mates will sacrifice me to Satan, or boil me in a cauldron, or whatever it is you do in your spare time. Got it.”

I reach inside my coat, pull out a heavy paper bag, and toss it across the room to Lau. “I trust this will conclude our business, at least for the moment. Things don’t need to get any uglier than that. And while I’m being generous, allow me to throw in a word of friendly advice: move on while you still can. The police are looking into Vanel’s drug deals, and he used to be your main supplier. Breadcrumb trail... remember?”

I back out of the shop, still aiming between Lau’s eyes. And with one hand on the doorknob, one leg out on the street, I turn to Ran-Mao and say:

“Thank you. For keeping Ciel safe.”

 

***

 

My hands are perpetually stained with blood. Seven names, like a countdown, like steps on a ladder. The further I climb, the more I expect death to lose its taste, but my Todestrieb feasts and carouses and there’s no such thing as too much.

To round them all up, I adopt a strategy. I take up the dusty old mantle of the London vigilante, reviving my jilted experiment for a spree of revenge by proxy. It may be last year’s news, but how could they have forgotten? All seven used to fear I’d pay them a visit.

I make up a story about my enigmatic break from murder, explaining why I stepped down and allowed copycats to smear my name. I go on a rant and spout excuses about having to rethink my methods and realising that redemption would suit my creed more than execution. I promise that if they confess and prove themselves regretful, their punishment will be more lenient—perhaps they might even be pardoned. I show them Ciel’s old Paris photo and tell them there is no use denying what I already know they’d done, but I wish to hear it from their mouths so that I can pass their sentence knowing both sides of the story.

I listen to them more closely than I would to a patient. I accept no euphemisms, forgive no omissions, and then I choose the best means of making them pay.

The first five try to butter me up with faked remorse and hollow promises, advertising their redemption like it were a business pitch, not their last judgment. They make the funniest faces when I stop playing nice, convinced until the last moment they had my forgiveness in their pockets. The sixth one alone refuses to cower: unapologetic until the very end, even when I have him strung up and bleeding from a hundred minute incisions. The seventh one—the final piece of my collection—figures out the pattern and tries to flee, first flight to Rotterdam, but makes the mistake of dropping by his safehouse in Finchingfield to recover a spare stash of money. I catch him in the garden shed, bouncing frantically from suitcase to suitcase, cramming stacks of ill-gotten pounds and pouches of jewelry into every possible pocket.

By the beginning of February, I have hunted the last of them down. Day after day their faces come up in the news, but Ciel doesn’t seem to care. There’s no shifts in the air or breaks in his silence. I hoped he’d conquer his grudge and come to me for tales of poetic justice—ask me for the beautifully morbid details of how much and how long they suffered—but my deeds go unrewarded. I killed them all for his sake, and he’s not even grateful.

It wasn’t easy, either. Seven perfect crimes in two months, and I am just one man—no matter how much I might try to defy it. I am one man who had to play Doctor Michaelis and Brother Berith and the London vigilante all at the same time. It’s not that I’m in over my head, no; I simply tire. I tire in the basic, unconquerable, physiological meaning of the word. I tire of vigilance and manhunts, of scheming and acting and looking out for cameras. I tire because my only rest comes in stray moments of haphazard microsleep and hasty, half-hour naps.

But how can I have any rest when I have no plan? Initially I imagined planting a seed of discord, worming my way into the minds of Claude’s Brothers and Sisters until they were swayed to my side. A schism, intricately concocted, little subterranean movements that would surface someday as a grand coup d’état… but I have no time for grand designs. Claude approached Ciel, and I’m in need of a slapdash solution. 

Perhaps he only meant to make clear that he could do anything he wanted. A display of power, the same as the night he drugged me. I haven’t yet given him a reason to hurt Ciel; not so early in the game, when neither of us has made a move aside from testing the waters. I likely have time. But it’s the idea of it that plagues me – over and over I stage their encounter in my mind, screenwriting the dialogue in every disastrous direction. Did Claude try to win Ciel over? Brainwash him like his lackeys, use him to teach me a lesson, then dispose of him in a garbage bag like he did with Alois? Could Ciel have agreed to strike any kind of deal and get his revenge on me instead of on Claude?

No, no. He’s not a fool. I know that first-hand, but Claude has no idea who he’s up against. He must have taken Ciel for little more than a child – naïve like Alois, incapable of manipulating the manipulator and calling the shots. But if he somehow saw through him, if he recognised his worth and decided to keep him for his own... there could be no worse scenario.

I don’t know what happened between them, and I hate not knowing. I don’t know what chances I can take or how much longer I can afford to play house. I want to keep playing, and if not for the leverage of a certain threat I could play without restraint, play dirty, even get some sleep, qui totum vult.... 

The thoughts swim in my head. One second I’m seated on my study sofa, trying to predict the future, the next I’m being called to consciousness by a scratchy voice.

“Sebby? Helooo? Wake up!”

I rise on my elbow, blinking up at Grell. I left the alarm on and locked all the doors, but it was never enough to stop him. Did he ring and knock and I slept through it all? A cup of cold coffee sits half-drunk on the table, and I gulp the rest greedily down.

“Wow, sorry! Looks like you really needed that nap, eh? Keeping busy?”

My eyes find the clock. I slept for five hours, and the world didn’t seem to fall apart while I was out. Not that I could see. 

“Is that all you have to say for yourself? After taking all that money and ditching my every call since Paris?”

“Oh, don’t sulk, darling. You know how I get. I’ve hit a bit of a rough patch as of late, but it looks like you’re doing all right on your own! All those rich arseholes and clergy murders... that’s you, innit?”

Something in the tone of his voice—some falsely offhand note—grates on my ear and alerts my instincts. I turn to look at him, see him properly for the first time in months. His clothes are new, hair combed back and conditioned, hands steady and skin a healthier, evened hue. Almost as if he hasn’t been doing any drugs, but not because he ran out of money – on purpose. For a sustained period of time. Taking his mood stabilisers instead of dosing himself with heroin, not in a rough patch at all.

“You look nice today,” I say, standing.

He bats his lashes and does a little twirl. Even his teeth, as they flash exposed in his signature grin, are no longer that yellow. “All for you, Sebby darling. You kept ignoring me so I had to step up my game. You like?”

I hum, drawing closer. He stops himself from flinching as I crowd him against my desk, but I don’t miss that single second of tension. He’s not that good of an actor. His breath reeks of mint and his neck of women’s perfume, the sickening sweetness of a knock-off Chanel no 5. I twirl a lock of his hair around my finger, snaking a hand around his waist and feeling him up and down. It’s right where I expect it, tucked behind the hem of his trousers.

I pull the gun out and turn it over in my hands.

“You don’t really need that here, do you? It’s a nice neighbourhood.”

“Sure! I just carry it 24/7. A girl’s got to protect herself, you know?”

I throw the gun out of reach and smooth my hands down his sides. In the right pocket he keeps his mobile, locked and silenced, but in the left – a small recorder. I press ‘stop’ and smack my lips.

“Now, what do we have here? Naughty boy. Who put you up to this?”

He keeps his mouth shut.

“Fine, don’t tell. There’s only one person who knows about me anyway. It was that stuck-up prig William, am I right?”

His look says it all.

“Hah. I did always consider that you might turn on me if you fell for somebody else, but Will? William Spears? Terrible taste. What does he have that I lack?”

“Oof, that’s a hard one. Maybe feelings?”

“Please—you think he cares about you? You may be all clean and pretty, but you’ll always disgust him. He’s just using you to get at me.”

Grell tries to back away, digging his scrawny hips into the edge of the desk. “Better used by him than you.”

“Is it? Because clearly you’ve bet on the wrong horse. Will has a rich history of losing to me on every turn; the only way he could have won was get you to shoot me in my sleep, and that ship sure has sailed. I’m wide, wide awake now.”

Grell draws breath, but I put a finger to his lips. “Ah-ah. Shh. Not in the mood for your nonsense today. You caught me at a bad time, love—or the perfect time, actually, depending on how you choose to look at it. It’s high time, to be sure, for you to find out what it’s like to die: for real. No failed attempts. You’ve tried in vain too many times and clearly need a helping hand. I’m good at it, trust me.”

His palm smacks the desk, fumbling for something sharp or heavy. Maybe if I hadn’t had that nap he’d stand a chance unarmed, but five hours of rest had made a world of difference. I’m about to knock him out when the front door opens, closes, and Grell shouts at the top of his lungs:

“HELP! Over here!”

I laugh against his neck. “Don’t get your hopes up, it’s just Ciel. You know, the very same you gossiped with behind my back and turned against me? He’s not a toy to toss aside—you are,” I hiss into his ear, but he wrenches the other way and stretches his neck over my shoulder. For three full seconds, it’s quiet.

“Welcome back,” I say, turning just enough to see Ciel in the doorway. He sweeps his gaze disinterestedly about the room, school bag in hand.

“Thank fuck,” Grell gasps, deflating in relief, as if Ciel were his long-promised saviour. “Stop this lunatic, please. He still listens to you, right? I know I screwed up the entire deal, but I swear I did everything like Will told me, and—”

“Wait a second,” I interrupt, stuck between trying to keep Grell pinned and facing Ciel. “It was you? You were the one who hooked him up with William?”

Ciel’s silent, deciding if I’m worth the answer. Not that I really need one; it’s a simple enough connection. Hardly a surprise at this point, nor a thrill. Just a fact.

“That’s right,” he says. “Two people who know too much, two people you’ve wronged, working together... I was curious to see what would happen. You understand that feeling, don’t you? Curiosity. Whimsy. They had ample potential to bring you down, but this plan they came up with is frankly sad. A child could do better.”

“You lying little shit,” Grell snarls, then immediately rethinks his tone. “This isn’t what we talked about last time, remember? We’re better off without him. He’s a monster, a demon, messing with our minds. Come on, kid—you know that. We don’t have to do a thing he says anymore. Will promised he’d get us both help, so for fuck’s sake please—”

“—I won’t be home for dinner,” Ciel cuts in, unperturbed, moving his gaze from Grell’s face to mine.

I nod. He hasn’t eaten with me since our fight in the hall, missing dinners without a notice. I didn’t take the hint and kept saving him a plate every night, so he started letting me know: sometimes through a note on the kitchen counter, sometimes via text, sometimes face to face if we happened to cross paths on the corridor. The only exception to his silence.

“Very well,” I always respond. I must, because I can’t keep him on a leash or lock him away. I’ll take his freedom only as a last resort, and only as a way to protect him.

“Who gives a fuck about dinner??” Grell shrieks. “Get him OFF me!”

And who could have guessed? Grell Sutcliffe, a man reborn. Fighting for his good-for-nothing life. I’ve dealt with his hysterics in the past—I’ve seen him as a rabid, snivelling, suicidal mess on the floor—but never like this. Never dead serious and desperately sober. This time he has something to live for: a requited love, a stable future, a shot at happiness after years of addiction and depression and crime.

Nipping those hopes in the bud will be my utmost pleasure.

Ciel leaves Grell to his fate, sparing me a rare glance before stepping out on the hall. The shortest of eye contacts, but it’s more than I’ve had in long weeks.

Grell keeps calling after him, but I palm and turn his cheek so we are face to face.

“Hush now; I know what you need. How about I make you even prettier for Will? We can go downstairs to the cellar and put my surgical knife to good use. Shave off your ears, peel off your lips, carve off your nose... not just the tip,” I say, giving it a flick, “all the way to the bone. You’ll need a new set of teeth too, of course, so I’ll make sure to pluck them out neatly one by one. And for the finishing touches, I will slice out the eyelids to fully bring out those lovely green irises of yours. How does that sound?”

I run my thumb over his cheekbone, braced for backlash, but he’s frozen.

“You’re right: that sounds like a plan. And once your face is all made-up we shall move lower, slim out your figure, lose a few unnecessary kilos. I happen to have a brand-new chainsaw in your favourite colour—what do you say we take it out for a little spin? I’ll even let you choose the order: arms first, legs first, or take turns. You’ll be sure to lose a lot of blood, but I’ll try to cauterise the wounds as soon as I can. If we burn the stump on the stove right away, we’ll be able to keep going without a break! You’ll pass out from pain at some point, of course, but no worries – I’ll wait until you wake up to continue. See how special you are to me? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

We wrestle. He manages to fish out a knife from his boot and land a shallow cut on my neck before I twist his arm, grab him by the long, sleek ponytail, and slam his head against the desk. My Todestrieb, though sated so plentifully in the recent days, growls in demand of yet another offering.

If this keeps up, I will lose count.

Chapter 35

The Phantomhive family signet had been auctioned on Amazon, used in a costume for a theatrical play, and passed around antique shops until it fell into the hands of a Birmingham collector. I followed its journey like treasure hunt clues, making slow way from lead A to lead B towards the X that marked the spot.

It cost me a lot to retrieve it, but Ciel had risked more. He sat by the same table with his abusers, treated them as equals, and endured their lecherous glances despite the pull of his vengeful nature—all to reclaim a keepsake after his parents. He appraised the ring above his own dignity, which rendered it priceless. Not too long ago, I wouldn’t have spared a broken penny for sentiment or symbolism; now I would have chased the ring down to the other hemisphere, if I had to. It’s worth more than its intricate craftsmanship, more than its centuries of legacy. More, even, than the enormous sapphire that seems to have been made just for Ciel, that would suit no one else in this world.

Now that it’s mine, bought with hours of sleep and thousands of pounds, I carry it like a hard-won trophy up to Ciel’s quarters. An olive branch, I wish, a token of my remorse. If there’s any sort of apology he’d accept, it has to be this one.

The first three knocks go unanswered. On the other side of the door, Ciel must be frowning and wondering if he didn’t mishear it. I imagine the tense, confused look on his face in the littlest detail, because all trace of it will have disappeared the instant I enter the room.

I knock twice more.

“What,” comes the answer, without inflection, without invitation. Enter if you must, and I do.

He’s up on his bed, just sitting. No eye-patch, no book in his hand. I imagine he must have been lying there with his head on the pillow and thinking, thinking of me. 

“I have something for you,” I begin, coming nearer. He doesn’t hold out his hand, not until he sees what it is. I drop the signet onto his palm and step back the way a chemist steps back to observe a reaction.

It’s a slow one. Ciel handles the ring with worshipful suspense, like a gift box that needs unwrapping. He squints at the gem, the band, the hallmark. He moves closer to the light of his bedside lamp and inspects every detail from every angle, as if I’d dare hand him a forgery. And then—quietly, slipping the ring on his thumb—he starts to cry.

Gentle, gleaming tears that seem to flow on their own. He cries daintily and without spectacle, even after four years of smothered sorrows. No wet sniffles, no grimace, no dramatic wailing. Ciel’s dignity withstands even tears.

I forgot to want this. The whim had long since slipped my mind, detracted by others. His tears used to be my fantasy, my ambition, then only a legend. A lost relic, like the mirth in his smile. I never wanted to give up, but time passed and our bond evolved and Ciel’s shell never softened. His tear ducts seemed to have dried up, like mine.

Isn’t this something of a miracle, then? The rarest of boons, the highest of honours? I stand in respectful silence, watching two more tears roll down the soft slope of his cheeks. Odd, but I can’t seem to put a finger on how they make me feel. They’re a bittersweet wonder.

“This ring...” Ciel rasps, rubbing the sapphire with the pad of his thumb. “I found this ring in my father’s belongings on the same night it started. I was up on my bed, staring at the crest on the bottom, when the first man walked in. He tried to make me open my fist, to touch him, but I wouldn’t. I refused to let the ring go no matter what he did to me. I just kept clutching it tighter, focusing on the hard shape of it inside my palm, feeling the sore imprint turn into a blister.... A few days later, I knew the thing better than the back of my hand. The weight, the texture, the sharpness of its prongs. I knew every time-worn jag along the edges, all the way down to the tiniest graze on the side.” His fingernail traces a line up the shank. “It was my anchor. It reminded me of who I was and kept me sane through the worst of it—or the first week, at least, until my aunt noticed I had it and took it away. She had to scratch me up pretty badly to pry it out of my hand.”

I wait, but all he does is peer down at the ring. Here it comes, now or never: my cue to offer him comfort and make things right. I take a step forwards, reaching for his shoulder, but Ciel snaps his head up and his eyes warn me away, tearful but focused.

There is no forgiveness in them, nor gratitude.

“I was supposed to be the one to take it back, not you. I put everything on the line for it and I was close. You told me once that empowerment and reclaiming control were vital to healing the wounds of the past—so here you are, making sure I have no say in anything whatsoever. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“What?” I frown. “No. It seemed important to you, so I wanted you to have it.”

He scoffs, then hiccups. “Don’t. Can’t you see that you’ve won? You don’t have to keep pretending.”

I could tell him the truth—something that he seems to want—but would he believe me? I don’t trust my truth to sound like the truth. 

Ciel slides the ring off and rotates it between his fingers. Having it back doesn’t seem to bring him much solace; he doesn’t even hide or bite back his tears. I think that now, only now, have I truly got to know him. I’d never seen him this vulnerable, not even when he startled awake from a nightmare or came undone in my arms, and he lets me see it. His walls are nothing but rubble now.

“This is it, Sebastian.” Ciel’s voice sounds tired. “Can’t we be real with each other just this once? Go on and admit it. There was always an expiry date to your interest, like a ticking bomb that could go off at any moment. All you ever wanted was to toy with whatever feelings I had left after—” he breaks off, teeth clenched, and closes the ring in a fist. “After. And you know what? Those three years I spent alone at my aunt’s, things were fine. At least I had nothing more to lose. I wasn’t scared of anyone or anything because the worst had already happened. I was invincible, and then you...” he hisses the word like an insult. “You made me care again, and I hate that. I hate the power you hold over me, I hate how much you can hurt me. I always thought I was smarter than everyone else, but it turns out I’m no different from all those fools who swoon at your feet. No—I’m worse, because they see only the perfect surface while I knew too damn well what lay beneath it. And even if you didn’t plan on me finding out... it worked. It worked because of it, not despite of it, so congratulations. Game over, bloody well played. Do you want an applause?”

I stay silent.

“No? What, then? This is the big moment you’ve been waiting for, so why are you quiet? What more do you fucking want?”

I’ve always had the right answer to everything. A swift riposte, clever lie, wise advice. Words have bought me so much in life yet now they seem futile, divested of meaning. I have not a single word to give.

Because what do I want? Nothing and everything at once, perhaps. Right now I may want to kiss away his tears, but will I still want to a few months later? Will I want to wrap my arms around him and cradle his head to my chest the way I do now? Or will I have the urge to wrap my hands around his scarred throat and claim my sweetest kill, my rarest prey? Feast on the trust I betrayed, on the passions I’ve so painstakingly revived from near to nothing?

Somewhere along the way, I forgot the true reason I had taken Ciel under my wing. But does it have to mean the reason no longer stands? I can see myself wanting what I’d wanted all those months before, back when everything used to make sense. Look how he’s meddled already, foiled my plans and made me lose to Claude; a hurdle in the way of my nature, a handicap as vulnerable to abuse as an exposed nerve. I could never place him beside me and call an ally, not while it could put him in danger. Not while I have this feeling, this paranoia, that wears me thin whenever I’m not there to protect him. It began the week I let him roam free around Paris, then struck again when he left for Cannes, then refused to relent since the day Claude came through my door. A constant gnawing.

I don’t want to feel this way always. And though I’ve come to terms with my newfound capacity for love, I never believed it could stand the test of time. Once my lust and obsession burn away, once I bleed him dry and there is nothing left to nourish my whimsy... won’t I have the urge to tie him to an altar and swipe my thumb over his lip before plunging a dagger into his fluttering heart? Would he make a better sacrifice now, after I’ve rekindled his lost spark of life?

I thought I wanted to make amends, but instead of making amends I’ve only been making things worse. What does Ciel want? Why was the ring not enough, or the murders? I can’t think of any other way to prove that I care. And if gestures fail, then what use are confessions? I’ve proclaimed love before, lied passionately about devotion to doe-eyed admirers, but this doesn’t feel the same. This feels real. And it’s supposed to come natural, if real, but it doesn’t.

“I’m sorry, little one,” I say. “I don’t know myself as well as I thought. I don’t know how this ends.”

Ciel laughs. “Oh, that’s all right. I know how it won’t end, at least: in a happily ever after. And honestly? This is all my fault. What the hell was I thinking? That I could change you? That I could win? I was so quick to ignore who you are, who you’ll always be. I got so hung up on the idea of being a special fucking snowflake that I wilfully chose to neglect the facts.”

We both did, in a way. Thinking back to the beginning—to that day he wheeled his tiny suitcase out of Earl’s Court and into Hampstead—all I had in mind was to crack him like a case and move on. And after all the turns we took, after all the outlandish complications, it does seem like I’ve orchestrated an impossibly elaborate gambit.

It’s a terrible thing I have a done to him, isn’t it? And though I’ve done a great deal of terrible things to a great deal of people, this is the first time it’s ever felt wrong. But maybe tomorrow it will feel right, or the day after. Someday it must.

“Don’t think of it that way,” I speak into the silence. “You are special, because no one has ever meant to me as much as you. No one has ever come even remotely close to mattering. If you think this was like any other whim for me, then you’re wrong.”

Ciel looks up, face indecipherable.

“But you’re also right: the game is over. What more can you offer? You have given me all your secrets, your body, now tears and a confession. All you have left is your life.”

Ciel nods. The words make sense to him, and they should make sense to me. It has to end; I have to go back to the status quo. What I called a bond is nothing but a vicious circle designed to make each of us only more and more miserable; as with a limb ravaged by infectious disease, the only solution is to sever it swiftly at the source. Harsh, perhaps, but necessary to prevent irreparable damage. My past self would do it without blinking, and my future self will only be thankful.

As soon as my hands wrap around his throat, it has to start feeling good. It will be the best high I’ve ever had. I could grant him a painless instant of a death, but he wouldn’t want me to hold back on him now, so I won’t. I will look him straight in the eye and let him feel every second. There will be no staging the scene, only the act in its purest form, stripped of theatrics and faux enhancements. Raw and intimate, the only right way to do this.

And after? I will bury him someplace nice. Take a hike to the Epping Forest and find him a quiet patch of ground, somewhere by the bank of a lonesome creek or in the sleepy shade of an old, sprawling oak. I will phone the Midfords twelve hours later and report him missing in twelve hours more. Sick with worry, I’ll drop everything to aid the search and pray that his aunt doesn’t send a PI to find grounds for a lawsuit. A pesky bridge to cross, once I get to it.

I cup Ciel’s face in both hands, then slide them slowly down to his shoulders. My thumbs smooth along his clavicles, sharper now after he’s thinned from all the skipped dinners. Touching him feels surreal, but he allows it. He knows it’s time.

“Will you do something for me? A dying wish, as it were?”

I nod.

“Kill them all – the cultists. Once you’re done playing.”

“Of course.”

“And make it count, you bastard. Make it good.” Ciel’s smile is crooked, but daring. “Fool them like you fooled me. Put that smug asshole in his place, once and for all.”

I smile back. My hands move to his throat, testing the fit, then pause in position.

“Is there anything else?”

His lips part, one corner up, twitching as he picks his last words. He doesn’t seem to have thought them through; I almost give up on waiting. And then, with a small shrug, like it’s an afterthought, he says:

“I love you.”

The words do something to me. A horrible, squirming heat tightens like a noose in my stomach—and higher, in my chest, in my throat. I never should have let things go this far, I never should have got to the point where mere syllables can make me feel like the whole world’s collapsed on my head. I need this out of my system.

I squeeze. Ciel doesn’t struggle. I push and his body lowers pliantly onto the mattress, spread out not in offering but in placid surrender. His hands circle my wrists not to wrestle but to brace for what’s to come, sealing the grip like it’s a deal I can’t back out of. The reclaimed signet sits askew on his thumb, biting into my bone.

I squeeze harder. A chopped gurgle rips from his throat, just one. His right leg kicks up in reflex and his nails burrow into my skin. He seems to have left just enough air in his lungs for me to relish the kill, but not enough to prolong his suffering. A compromise – something we never could have reached.

His face is red now, mouth gaping, but all I feel is sick. My vision blurs into a blotchy spiral and my stomach revolts in nauseous lurches. That dizzying heatwave won’t break, scouring me from within, cooking every cell inside my body. My hands last locked in the chokehold, neither loosening nor tightening, paralysed. Numb. My pulse speeds up with every second, and every second passes with terrifying momentum, and I can’t tell how many more are left—only that Ciel’s hold on my wrists is weakening, slipping, and before long his arms will thump lifelessly onto the sheets. His eyes roll upwards already, blinking in spasms at the ceiling, soon to flutter shut.

I leap back as if I burnt myself on his skin, gasping as if I’d been the one getting strangled. I let go just barely in time. Ciel seizes up on the bed, eyes shocked wide open, and doubles over in a feral fit of winded coughing.

I look at my hands but they aren’t my hands. They’re transplants, fakes, prostheses. Those hands that can’t kill can’t be mine.

“What the fuck was that?” Ciel wheezes, hoarse beyond recognition—spluttering now, almost retching, as if the life-giving air he’s regained tasted vile. He forces it all back out of his wanting lungs. “I’m not playing any more of your games, Sebastian. Finish the job!”

He snatches at my sleeve, but I back away towards the door. Something primitive takes hold of him then, some snarling madness that sends me another step back. He looks—and sounds—inhuman.

“Get back here, you coward! End it or I’ll go to Claude and he’ll do it for you! Is that what you want??”

He scrambles up, dragging the sheets to the ground, livid as if I never stopped to choke him. I bound out of the room and press my back to the door.

“Fine! Then I’ll do it myself and you’ll be fucking sorry you missed your chance, do you hear me?? GET BACK!”

A pillow thumps on the door. Then a bottle of pills, rattling as it drops and skitters across the floor. Then a whole raging cascade plummets off the end table: the lamp and the clock and Ciel’s favourite teacup. The porcelain shatters, then crunches to atomic bits below something heavy—his hardback copy of Ulysses, or the carved cedar box in which he keeps only bookmarks. Then the table itself crashes against the parquet, splintering one of its legs with a brittle crack.

“SEBASTIAN!”

The cry is so desperate I almost rush back inside, but the next thing to slam on the door are Ciel’s fists, shaking the frame as they bash and hammer and rattle the knob. He’s crying again, this time high and hysterical, sobbing and wailing between shrill intakes of breath.

I don’t budge from my spot. I stay and listen to every sniffle, every hacked curse, every new thing that smashes on the walls. And all the while my heart is pounding—even long after he’s quieted down, long after his last resigned footsteps and surrendering whimper.

There is no sleep for me that night – only restless, simmering heat.

Notes:

plz send an ambulance I overdosed angst XD

Chapter 36

It’s summer that I think about the most now.

I long for warmer and easier days, conjuring the languid embraces of June and lazy terrace talks of July. I wade into the trusting silences of August and settle in spaces untouched by the melancholy of September or the lies of October. I sit and bask in past peace, rewatching sunsets, inventing phantasmal images from Ciel’s holiday on the French Riviera.

I daydream of moments unspoken, perhaps unlived—moments I wasn’t there to witness, but wished that I had.

I imagine him bundled under the sheltering shadow of a beach umbrella, wincing as Elizabeth sprinted towards the water and sprayed sand between the pages of his book. I imagine the incandescent noon rays bearing down on his pale flesh whenever he peeked out of cover; I see him hiding from it under roofs and marquees as they strode through town (Elizabeth in the lead and Edward lagging behind to look out for pretty French girls and boys). I know he didn’t smile for the photos, and I know he walked past all the souvenir shops hoping to see an ice cream parlour around the next corner. I picture his battles with the sunscreen: waiting for it to dry so he didn’t grease the pages of a novel, squeezing the bottle to its last drop only to find it emptied. What a chore it must have been to apply it around the eye-patch, or to have his skin swelter constantly beneath the thick fabric. I wonder if he wasn’t tempted to just tear the thing off and let his banished violet eye soak in the sun, and the sea, and the vast azure skies. Perhaps he wanted to smear the melting foundation off his neck, strip the shirt off his back, and let the world stare.

I wonder if there were evenings when he would lie in bed with his finger hovering on the dial button below my number—arguing with himself whether to press or not to press—while the thin, white lace of his balcony curtains swelled with seaside breeze and the holidaymakers outside were just beginning to party. I wonder what made him decide not to press, in the end. If at any moment—as he stood on the shore with waves lapping at his shins and his toes buried in the sand—he felt glad to be away from me at all. If the breath of late summer air he took into his lungs wasn’t, to some degree, a breath of relief, or the salty taste on his tongue a taste of freedom. Whether or not all the joy and festivities tempted him to abandon the darkness that awaited him at my side.

I missed a lot back then, and I keep missing more every day. I lose moments even though Ciel is right here, in England, and not on the sunny south coasts of France. I couldn’t make enough of it up even if I tried. Fantasies can keep me company, but they cannot fill all the gaps and make up for every hour of lost time.

We’re stranded in limbo. That night in his room should have been the end: nothing more left to say, only one thing left to do. I thought we’d reached the culminating point—the peak from which events would inevitably tumble to a resolution—but everything has spiralled into stasis, and there’s no one else to fault for it but me.

For once in my life, I did nothing. I let go of the reins. I’ve tried reconciliation, I’ve tried severance, and now I’m waiting for the issue to take care of itself. Fizzle away, preferably, or submit to external factors, or—worst of all—solidify into a constant.

I abstain from action, counting on Ciel or Claude to act in my stead. I sleep six hours a night, no longer trying to prevent whatever may or may not happen under the cover of dark. I see patients and run errands for Claude as if a storm weren’t brewing, as if there’s never been any bad blood or high stakes in play or even a game to begin with.

A classic diversion of responsibility. How many patients have I accused of that very habit? I can’t recall. I can recall, however, having condemned them as indolent doormats too scared to take control of their life.

How pathetic of me. How human. I know this, I hate this, and yet I can’t bring myself to make the first move.

I had two paths to choose from, and I chose neither. If I were to reap the reward for fostering then breaking Ciel’s spirit, reaping it now would be akin to plucking an overripe—or even a rotten—fruit. I gave him time to digest his tragedy when I could have, should have, struck when he was weeping and confessing and submitting to my will. I had him cornered, wounded, and I failed to finish him off. I let the climax fall flat and amount to no satisfying conclusion. I don’t understand why I gave him time to rebuild his walls—and I don’t understand why, on a sleety March evening, he follows me into the parlour and takes a seat on the armchair opposite mine.

Ciel, reading, in the same room as me. Such a simple scene, yet straight out of fiction. We used to read like this together, his legs thrown over my lap and his fingers up in my hair, threading and weaving back and forth without respite. It used to be his favourite thing to do, but now it’s another memory left behind in that remote realm of the summer. Him, now, here, feels like a figment of some fantastical world that has stolen into the mundane, wintry present.

I can no longer focus on research. I commit to watching Ciel from the corner of my eye, filing away each banal detail like a momentous discovery: the quaver of his lashes, the light bob of his throat when he swallows saliva, the effortless elegance with which he flips the pages. He keeps glancing at the clock above the fireplace, as though he were peckish and awaited dinner, but we haven’t dined together in more than three months. Perhaps there’s a limit to how long he can stand to be around me. The clock says he endured a full hour, but I could sit and watch him for two hours more. My gaze never strays, sensing that our time is at an end, and soon Ciel closes the book and leaves it lying upon his lap. He stares at the cover, swiping his thumb over the embossed title, then pinches the bookmark between two fingers and slips it out from between the pages.

Maybe I should ask why wasn’t Faulkner to his liking. Baby steps: first chat about books, then talk about the glaring chasm between us that I must either bridge or allow to engulf him. He stands up, and I think he’s about to leave me—like a ghost who’s made a rare apparition only to dissolve again into the walls—but he directs his steps towards the sideboard where I keep my records. His fingers sift through the collection like a library catalogue, knowing exactly what to look for.

He finds the right album, carries it to the turntable, and plays it not from the start but a few pieces over. My ears recognise the first notes of Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale, the soft plucking of pizzicato before the main melody in F minor. Con espressione e dolcezza.

It’s the same record I used to teach him how to dance—yes, in the summer. I remember picking a more suitable waltz, but Ciel specifically refused to ‘prance’ to any of Strauss’s ‘peppy jingles’. He would step on my toes, grumbling at me all the while for being too tall, and the way his eyes kept straying from mine made it seem like he felt more exposed than he did when I undressed him. As if he thought it more intimate to be joined in dance than in flesh.

And I could sink again into the wormhole of our lost summer idyll, but the waltz is playing now and Ciel is here now, perfectly tangible, reaching out his delicate palm to me in mute invitation. Come dance, like it’s summer, like nothing has changed. 

His hand is warm and doesn’t tremble as it closes around mine. I lead and he follows, I spin and he turns. We’re so very good at pretending, aren’t we? His feet remember where to step, his eyes no longer shy away from my own. The ice has melted, the tears have dried, and just for this dance it feels like I have him back. 

The last note takes me by surprise. I’m unprepared for that short interlude of silence before the waltz changes into one of Chopin’s. I kiss Ciel’s fingers the same way I used to after each lesson, certain that he’s paid his tribute to what we once had and will now seek to escape it forever. But his left hand stays on my shoulder, and his right hand drops to my waist.

In the first moment, I’m stunned. In the next, I’m swaying along to the stepless rhythm he sets in place of the waltz.

I notice it when he lays his head on my chest. In September, the very first day he returned to school, he came home all pensive and asked how come he stayed the same height while even the girls in his class had outgrown him over summer. He asked this as though he were a clueless child and expected me, a grown-up, to provide a rational answer to something that didn’t make sense. “Isn’t it weird,” he said, wanting to sound as if he didn’t care, “when both my parents were tall?” And I could have told him the unpleasant truth of it—that traumatised children didn’t always reach adult height, that if he hadn’t grown the entire year he was likely going to remain hundred and fifty two centimetres forever—but I chose to leave all that unsaid. Instead I used some silly metaphor about a plant and a box, wherein he was the plant and his past a small box in which he sat cooped up and shrunken, unable to grow until freed. He shot me a weird look for it, but stopped pressing the issue. I gave him false hope, a so-called white lie, because I didn’t want to see him disappointed.

And now? He’s actually taller. I’ve wasted so much time.

“I daresay you’ve grown a bit lately,” I say, putting a hand on top of his head.

“Have I?” 

“Four centimetres, by the look of it. You may yet be able to reach the tea cupboard without pulling up a stool.”

I think he smiles, enveloping me tighter. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Chopin’s waltz ends, replaced by Schubert’s. I’d want nothing more than to turn slowly in place with Ciel in my arms for the rest of the night, but the night has different plans in store. My pager rings, vibrating inside my pocket, and it might as well: I have made my decision.

Ciel shivers at the melody, but lets me read. He still has to lift his chin to meet my eyes.

“Do you have to go?”

“Yes. But not for a while.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says. “I don’t care about any of it right now. Just take me upstairs.”

I don’t allow myself to feel any relief. We’re not making up and calling it water under the bridge. It’s a makeshift settlement, not a solution. An indulgence, more bitter than sweet, because we’re tired.

I carry him to my bedroom and let the door shut behind us.

It’s not like in the summer, indelicate and shameless, our hands knowing exactly how to touch. It’s a lot like our first time, desperate and in the dark, wanting too much at once and getting only a modest fraction. It’s gentle like no other time—because I’ve already hurt him enough, because I have too many gentle things I cannot put into words: apologies and confessions that fail to sound right no matter how many times I rephrase them.

And like every time, it feels to short. Short like the waltz and short like the summer.

I slip outside, leaving Ciel asleep on my bed. For the first time in a long time, I know exactly what I need to do.

Notes:

A'ight, this is it. I'm going to post the last two chapters together, so prepare for endgame -- and a massive wait.

I'm nervous!

Chapter 37

I smash my prepaid phone under the foot of Mrs Greenhill’s heirloom vase. Not to prevent tracking; to vent off at least a part of my frustration.

It clashes in me, and it will clash in Ciel. He’ll accuse me of playing with my food and harbouring ulterior motives. But once he calms down and thinks about it rationally, he’ll see that I had nothing to gain. He’ll understand that I chose, for the first time, to be done with my whim before the whim was done with me. That I chose to fight my nature, for him.

The next thing he’ll do is call me a coward. He’ll criticise my lack of poetic sense and I’ll agree with him because I don’t like to be closing all the doors and burning all the bridges. I hate not having finished the game, not having won against Claude. An almost physical force pulled at me as I typed in the number, but I fought it off and pressed dial. No take-backs now, only the aftermath.

I rarely think of the future, but the only reason I did this was because of the future. Because I want us to have one—near and far, bitter or sweet, but together.

I can already see it unfolding. Satanic panic will spread like wildfire through all of Europe in a few hectic days. I’ll be left empty-handed, Ciel will be left festering in unpaid grudges, but still we’ll be better off than we have been in months. We could take a week off from London to lick our wounds and heal his trust, try to find a new way to coexist. We could leave this house where silence has settled like dust in every corner and clogged our lungs—just let it air out while we’re away.

Wouldn’t it be nice to rest from work and take Ciel on a trip around Vienna? He’s always wanted to go. We could get a top-floor apartment, like we had in Paris, and people-watch on park benches or in cafés by the biggest window. He could try genuine Sachertorte, or taste apple strudel even better than the one I made last year for his birthday. I’m sure he would love to lose himself in the halls and corridors of Hofburg Palace, or pay a visit to Freud’s museum and go on a rant about his biased, fabricated theories that have long since gone out of date. And though we’ve never cared all that much for Mozart, perhaps his music would resonate differently in the city where he composed his way to fame, where on his deathbed he fought to finish his glorious Requiem. We might even find the time for a weekend trip to Budapest, if only to see the grand gothic Parliament lit up at night across the river. Perhaps we’d cross all the way through the windy Széchenyi bridge without Ciel feeling tempted by the depths of the Danube. 

Our future will be brighter, now that I know what I want from it. All Ciel needed to do was allow me a taste of what I was losing. Whatever whim may come along from now on, whatever dispute or conflict of interests, we will deal with it as we come to it. We will have our highs, and lows, and moments when we’re not sure ‘what now’, but we will always overcome it together because we’ve already been through worse. I’ll make him into my strength, not weakness; a partner, not a burden.

And for the sake of that future, I must sacrifice the cult.

Sit and wait? No. I have not quite vanquished my whim. It tugs at me like a child tugs at their parent’s sleeve, pleading for one more spin on the carousel. Just one last time and promise that I’ll be good.

I can’t even be bothered with a backup vehicle. I walk out into the driveway and start up the Aston Martin, setting my course for Brentford.

I want to hear the shot that kills Claude. I want to see his body wheeled out on a stretcher. And though I know he would never surrender, I fantasise about him leaving the warehouse with his hands in the air and ‘don’t shoot’ on his lips, letting Bard (yes, for some reason I picture Bard) handcuff him on the ground like a dog. What a glorious sight that would make! A tamed predator, fangs filed and claws clipped, locked in a cage. The vermin who dared show up on my doorstep and threaten Ciel.

It’s almost midnight. I park a few blocks away and lie in wait behind a crumbling fence on the other side of the street. I spot Claude’s black Mustang and a lone, faceless sentinel posted at the metal door. The warehouse is old, brick, dark, abandoned on any other night but tonight. And yet nothing moves or shimmers through the boarded-up windows. The ritual chamber must be further in, Claude must be further in, waiting dressed in his black chasuble for the arrival of his flock.

They’re always punctual, appearing in a procession of sleek SUVs with silent engines and tinted windows, rolling one by one into the car park up front. Brother Valac opens the door for Sister Luvart and helps her down, bowing his head with gentlemanly decorum. I watch everyone exchange curt nods, like church-goers offering each other the sign of peace during mass.

I was so close. I know every name and every face behind every mask. I’ve already sketched out the intricate hierarchies and delicate balancing of power: rivalries, alliances, inner circles within a circle. I’ve gained favour for disposing of their spineless little brother Forneus and trust for my brief yet fruitful service to Claude. I already know who might have supported me in my coup and who would have defended their high priest with their dying breath.

I bite into my thumb. It has to be worth it, letting another experiment meet such an abrupt end. They must die tonight—in the safest, quickest, if unpoetic way.

I know what happens in the event of a breach: Claude spoiled it to me the very night I infiltrated his Maidstone mass. A flock of brainwashed, armed to the teeth fanatics ready to die for their cause... what could go wrong? And if it’s not about the cause, it’s about money. Claude, to them, is a gold mine. A lifetime insurance of luxury and privilege for the minor price of their conscience. They couldn’t ever go back to their previous lives.

I’ve staged a bloodbath with minimal odds of survival. A handful may run or surrender, but I’ve spent enough time dissecting them to know the extent of their loyalty. None are like Wordsmith. I did consider a worst-case scenario—wherein Brother Valac or Sister Saleos survive the purge, bend under pressure, and identify Brother Berith as none other than Doctor Sebastian Michaelis—but no reward ever comes without risk. It’s just another one of those bridges that can’t be crossed until arrived at.

How easy it would have been to do it by myself, had I only the time to prepare! Claude never so much as warned his guards to keep an eye on me, trusting—much like myself—in the force of my curiosity and my desire to ‘win the right way’. Can I even blame him for not seeing this coming? It’s unthinkable that someone like me should give up so much for another person.

Two more vehicles pull up in front of the warehouse. A shameful pair of latecomers, clutching at their hoods and hurrying towards the garage as if escaping a downpour. Ten minutes later, another convoy emerges from behind the corner of the street – beacons off, sirens off, materialising as silently as the cultists before them. The lone guard retreats inside the warehouse, early enough to warn of what’s coming but too late for evacuation. They’re trapped inside, every last one of them, and I know that for a fact because I counted.

The task force spills out from the vans in full gear, boots tramping against the concrete as they spread out and take position by every entrance. They don’t barge inside shouting for surrender or opening fire; there are civilians inside, I told them, over a dozen immigrants kept hostage, and they intend to bargain for their release before storming the building. A lone negotiator in a reflective, bulletproof vest steps forwards with a megaphone in hand, tipping it up as he waits for a go-ahead from his leader.

The first blast sends him all the way back to the van. He cracks his head on the window and collapses below the tire, dead in a blinking instant. The second blast hits like an earthquake, flinging and dismembering half the squad into a bloody puzzle. The windows shatter into a thousand directions and out comes fire, blazing, spreading, roaring through the March air. The men in the back die smashed under splintering rubble, crushed below flipped SUVs, cut up by the shower of ricocheting glass. A few thrash maniacally around the plundered car park, burning alive, howling in incoherent agony as they hurtle themselves onto the ground to put out the flames—failing, never getting back up, lying face down on the concrete while the fire calmly sizzles the meat off their bones.

Even from across the street, I can feel the terrible heat pressing into my face. Smoke spirals in swelling clouds up into the air, black as fumes from an erupting volcano. My ears ring and throb from the deafening duo of explosions, from the cacophony of car alarms wailing into the night in a variety of pitches. A handful of survivors labour in heroic efforts to drag the wounded away from the fire; two more stand gawking at the scene like shell-shocked veterans; the squad leader jumps into an intact van to yell into his radio for ambulance and backup.

Death and destruction. A licking wall of crimson against the midnight sky. I could have found it beautiful, like a living piece of art performed for my eyes alone, if only it didn’t make so little sense.

Claude never revealed gathering locations, not even to his right-hand men or his mute army of guards to help set up the scene. How could it have leaked?

Somebody has meddled, and I can’t enjoy a show of somebody else’s making. I lean out of cover, frowning, unmoved even by the hellish screams.

But out on the street, something’s in motion. I crouch back down and squint at a red Honda, rolling past the carnage at a pedestrian pace—calmly, almost admiringly, as if taking in the views.

I have seen it before. Parked around Lau’s teashop, always at a clumsy angle. The same weather-beaten paintjob, the same Chinese ‘luck’ sign swinging from the rearview mirror, the same cheap Buddha figurine with a fat, bronze belly squatting smugly on the dashboard.

Lau, outsmarting Claude?

Impossible. He must have had help.

I walk back to where I parked, ears still ringing, mind running in circles. A smaller explosion sets off behind my back, probably one of the SUV engines, popping like a microwaved kernel. I get in my car and sit by the dim console light, watching the trail of smoke and the violent, scarlet glow pulsing away on the horizon.

Pricked by an impulse, I pull my business phone out of my pocket and tap in 9366, slide to unlock. And there, on the notification bar above the pristine black background, blink thirty seven missed calls from Ciel. 

I swipe down, check the history. The first call ten minutes after I’d left, the last call cut off at 00:15 sharp, and I didn’t take a single one of them because I silenced the phone so it wouldn’t blow my cover.

I ring back, but there is no answer. My hands are steady when I switch on the ignition and steady when I manoeuvre onto the street. I’m not thinking of anything because there is no use thinking until I go back, until I see for myself. I try picturing Claude’s charred corpse—buried underneath rubble next to his crumbled altar, skin melted and chasuble torn into ribbons—but the only image my mind can hold is the image of Ciel reaching out his hand to ask me to dance, replaying it over and over in the most miniscule photographic detail: the precise curl of every finger, the set of his lips, the slow blink of his lashes, the tiny stain of ink on his wrist... and something in his eye, something uncaptured by the imperfect lens of my gaze, something important, but no matter how many times I replay and rewind it never comes into focus.

I pull up on the driveway, and something is wrong. Not that the front doors are open, or the windows shattered after a break-in, or that anything’s been vandalised or stolen—something is wrong because there are lights.

Lights, burning bright in every window, casting a shimmer on the garden grass, when I had left the house in darkness.

“Ciel?” I call at the doorway. It looks like someone is home, but the silence says otherwise.

I step inside, blinking at the chandelier. The lights are on in the parlour, where only three hours ago we danced the waltz; they’re on in the kitchen, where he once shattered a glass of milk and bled on the tiles; they’re on in the library, where he’s spent days completing bookcases shelf after shelf, and they’re on in my office, where a year ago he looked into my eyes and said he wouldn’t be fooled.

Two more steps, and something crunches under my heel. Here, in the front hall—where I bruised his wrists and kept going even when he begged me to stop—lies abandoned the smashed carcass of Ciel’s phone, thrown across the floor and stomped on until the screen had nowhere more left to crack.

I pick it up and mash the wake button. It still works, barely, unlocking on a text thread of an unknown number. Squinting through the spiderweb of cracks and haywire pixels, I can just make out the last delivered message.

It’s done.

At 00:15 sharp.

I stare at the crippled letters until the screen goes black. Did he truly think this was the only solution? Settling for a meagre half of his revenge and teaming up with one vermin to eradicate another? The enemy of an enemy is a friend... was that the math he did in his head? Did he decide that Lau was the lesser evil, and Claude the greater?

And not just Claude—me? Me, more than anyone?

I’m not angry. In the end he tried to stop me from going. We both erred and misconstrued our own visions for the future, marooned between two bad choices when there had always been a third. Just like me, he didn’t have his realisation until the last critical moment—until he faced the reality of my death. He needed to betray me in order to realise he wanted us to go back to the way things were before, in the summer.

I only wish I could have witnessed him wrapping Claude around his little finger. It must have been masterful, the way he’d tranquillised his instincts and conned him out of trust only to stab him in the back alongside that Chinese mongrel. It was the first mistake Claude ever made, and the last.

“Ciel?” I try again. He must be somewhere in the house, convinced that I’m dead, that he killed me. He’s flung every single door open, as if hoping to find I hadn’t left but merely waited the night out in hiding. I can imagine him flailing from room to room in a spree of despair, turning on all the lights and calling my name, hysterically mashing the dial button thirty-seven times in a row. I can almost hear the frantic stream of his thoughts—pick up, come back, don’t go inside—until the message arrived and he thought it was already over.

“Ciel!” I call, peering into the study. Empty. I check the main parlour, the bathroom, and sweep down the corridor to the other wing.

In the kitchen, I stop. On the island, under the cosy glow of the pendant lamp, Ciel has left a mess.

Two orange pill bottles, one upright and one overturned. An empty bottle of whisky with a dried amber trickle down the side. Three unscrewed plastic caps beside the silver key to my medicine cabinet, and all of it arranged on the kitchen island in almost artful chaos, like a composition of still nature. Like the last pieces of a puzzle left there for me to assemble the picture.

I rotate the whisky by its neck and inspect the label. The first thing Ciel could get his hands on was the same 15 year-old Macallan I once poured his aunt. He hated the taste, but it didn’t matter. There had been just enough of it left for a few, numbing sips.

I shake the pill bottles, one after the other. Lorazepam – empty. Codeine – empty, with two stray tablets spilled on the countertop and one more fallen onto the tiles by the sink. Not that they could have made any difference.

My limbs feel heavy, mind comatose, stomach screwed tight. The lightbulb flickers overhead, unchanged since last year. My vision darkens around the edges as I slog up the stairs, onto the corridor, and into my bedroom.

Ciel is right where I’d left him, as though he never even moved. He’s lying on his half of my bed in one of his two identical nightshirts, the Phantomhive signet silvering the bloodless pale skin of his thumb. He died the same way he slept: on the side, legs curled up to his chest, right hand tucked beneath the pillow. He limped back here like an animal sensing its demise, clinging to the last of its strength to find a quiet place to curl up in and breathe its last breath.

I move closer, steps sluggish and mechanical as a sleepwalker’s. High, relentless ringing splits my eardrums and throbs through my skull, as if another explosion has gone off right where I stood. On the bedside table, pinned under a blue fountain pen, lies addressed a letter. Not to me; everything he wanted to say to me he’d already said that night I gave him the signet. When he asked me to dance, he did so hoping that after midnight the both of us would be dead.

He thought it’d be easy; he thought he’d been ready for years. He thought he could plan for it like any other move.

I pick up the letter and stare at his handwriting, at the elegant cursive with calligraphic embellishments, at every final word traced with the steady, premeditated hand of someone who had no second thoughts about their course of action—not until later. Not until too late.

 

Dear Aunt Frances,

            Please don’t blame yourself. I know how hard you and uncle worked to fill the empty spaces left by my parents. You couldn’t be everywhere at once, but you never stopped trying. Thank you.

            Please don’t blame Sebastian, either. Whatever you may learn about him in the coming days, he always had my best interest in mind. You didn’t fail me. He wasn’t a good person, but he was a good person to me. And I can’t stand to see him go.

            I’m sorry.

Ciel

 

I sit on the bed and pull him onto my lap. He looks at peace now, as if everything turned out the way he’d wanted. I lean against the headboard, close my eyes, and let time pass. I don’t know what else to do. I feel Ciel’s body stiffen in my arms, the once familiar shape of him hardening into something foreign, cold and rigid as a block of ice.

We stay like this until morning. Until six, because at six Mey-Rin marches in through the front doors for her weekly clean-up, bright and early as ever, not one minute off schedule in her life. She always heads straight for the kitchen, where at this time of day I should be already waiting to greet her over a cup of coffee. There, her whistling stops.

For a vague beat of a moment, the house is quiet. Then her soft, skittish footsteps pitter-patter up the stairs.

She hesitates at the unlocked door, giving it a few wary knocks before pushing it wider. And though she cups her mouth to stifle the scream, I can hear it. I hear it loud in my head.

Chapter 38

We met at a funeral, and we part at a funeral.

I stand all the way back, like a distant relative who showed up only because it was the proper thing to do. The Phantomhive family grave has been unsealed to fit one more casket, another ‘precious life taken ahead of its time’, another ‘tragic accident’. That’s what I’ve heard people call it, anyway.

I watch the Weston procession, bigger even than the send-off for his aunt. Not at all what Ciel would have wanted. The Midfords walk ahead with their eyes to the ground, accepting no condolences, and cluster together around the bench Ciel and I talked on last year in September.

There’s Frances and Alexis, arms linked in a rare show of affection. There’s Elizabeth, too weak to stand, and Edward right next to her, his hand going up and down her back in a calming gesture—to her and him both.

There’s a handful of relatives lingering behind them, here for their sake rather than Ciel’s, hoping to lighten their load with supportive presence.

There’s Mey-Rin, weeping silently behind her thick glasses, keeping her distance from me.

There’s Tanaka, stiff and solemn in a suit that has seen too many funerals, keeping his distance from me.

A strange thing, to be a repelling presence. No one looks at me, greets me, or says they’re sorry for my loss. If Bard were here, he’d lay a hand on my shoulder and puff on a Mayfair with that rare, pensive frown on his face. A ‘good kid’, he’d call Ciel, and wouldn’t ask any questions—not if I had anything to do with it, not how I could have let that happen to the apple of my eye. All I get instead are sideways glances from the Weston group, ignorant kids trading whispered gossip with whomever’s nearby.

I pin my gaze on where they swarm the lane, fishing for familiar faces.

There’s the Indian exchange student I’ve heard so much about, bawling his eyes out into the shoulder of a classmate. There’s the math teacher who thought Ciel wasn’t a normal kid, and the English teacher who sang praises about the ingenuity of his precocious mind. Even the PE teacher showed up, preferring a funeral to another dull day of classes.

But worst of all, there’s the mob of random schoolmates who, just for this occasion, have gathered to pretend they cared about Ciel. Everyone suddenly realised he was their friend and thus should be pitied in their time of ‘grief’. If I listen in, I’ll hear them haggling over who knew him longer and better, making up memories and conversations they never shared, reciting sad maxims about the fleetness of life. What right do they have to mourn him like this, for show? Crying their crocodile tears like they knew anything about him, like their lives wouldn’t simply go on?

Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn to see William, an icy smile carved into the stony mask of his face.

“You look like shit, Michaelis,” he says, reaching out a hand in a parody of condolences. I don’t take it. “A very convincing shit, at that. Nice touch, those dark circles under the eyes. And the wrinkled suit, and uncombed hair.... You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you? As always.”

I keep staring at his hand. He drops it and steps closer.

“I don’t know what you did to Grell, but you’re going to pay for it. And I don’t know what part you played in the boy’s death, but you’re going to pay for that too. It may be sooner, it may be later, but one day your luck is going to run out.” He lifts his chin, an attempt at dominance, a triumphant leer. “Sooner than you think, perhaps, since your career is already done for, and sooner still if you had anything to do with that cult. I’ll enjoy watching you take the fall more than I can ever express.”

He waits for a comeback, but I have nothing to say. I pass him without a word and watch the priest’s mouth move through the last rites.

‘That cult’. That’s all anyone can talk about. This grim little funeral won’t stay long in anyone’s memory—what can it matter compared to the Brentford warehouse tragedy that has turned London upside down? All those policemen, all those innocent hostages, dead in what was at first described as a terrorist attack with hidden political motives. Then the word ‘Satanism’ leaked into the press, and everyone lost their minds.

A few bodies have been identified, but not Claude’s. Soon all his Brothers and Sisters will have been announced name by name and stigmatised as cold-blooded, Satanist killers before the stunned masses. Big names, big scandals. The investigation has launched with as much chaos as the public debate, burying Bard in work and guilt to the point he couldn’t even ring me back. I suspect he hasn’t slept in days, knowing that none of this would have happened if he’d caught the cult when he had the chance.

England is in mayhem, the world a few steps behind it, and I just can’t bring myself to care.

Other things have happened this week too, I think. One of my patients changed therapists and another threatened me with a lawsuit, something about malpractice. I phoned Ronald and he said he would handle it. I’d never heard him sound so serious, waging his words with such caution, like I were a brittle thing that couldn’t handle the pressure.

Even if the lawsuit drops, I’ll be facing another from the Midfords. For negligence, for another form of malpractice. For withholding crucial information about the safety of a minor and keeping dangerous medication without proper surveillance.

But I just don’t care. I don’t care about any of it.

Tragic death is like a slap that doesn’t sting until later, said Miss Durless. I’ve listened to the tape at least eight times, so I know her words by heart. For her, it took one taxi ride across London to soak up the reality of what had happened. For Mr Greenhill, it took a little over a day. For me, it should have been instant; Ciel didn’t die in an accident I never saw coming. It was a constant, almost inevitable eventuality I had been grappling with for a long time before it came to pass.

But I don’t think it has reached me. I don’t even know how to tell if it has reached me or not. Technically, factually, I do know what happened. I know that Ciel’s dead, but the word is empty of meaning, like one of those complicated emotions I struggled to grasp all those years before. I can repeat it over and over again, in my mind and out loud, but the more I repeat it the more it sounds like something in an alien language. Death used to be the part that held the whole of me together, and now I’m as lost as I had been before I found it. Death’s an old friend of mine who turned into someone else while I wasn’t looking, someone I cannot recognise any longer. A dear, old friend who betrayed me.

My mind goes and goes in a loop, from the first moment I could have stopped it to the last. I can’t shake the feeling that if only I can concentrate hard enough—like taking control over a lucid dream—I’ll be able to go back and reverse it.

That night, when he cried and cursed me and clutched his lost ring to his chest, I could have put an end to his plan before it ever had a beginning. I could have said those three words back, got down on my knees in front of him, and repeated them as many times as it took for him to believe me. But he died not knowing, with the bitter taste of whisky in his mouth, thinking until the end that I chose Claude.

Our waltz in the parlour. Why couldn’t I see that he was saying goodbye? And later, in the dark of my bedroom, when he wrapped his arms around my neck and did not want to let go... how could I have missed the signs?

Had I stayed with him in bed afterwards. He would have checked the clock, shaken me awake. “Why are you still here?” he would have asked, suspicious but hopeful, and we would have lain there together and talked until dawn rose and there were no more secrets.

Had I put my phone on vibrate instead of on silent. I would have answered his very first call and told him that everything was going to be okay and that I was coming back to him, just as soon as I’d made sure all of them were dead.

Had I thought of ringing that useless fucking landline. The pills still wouldn’t have been down his throat then, or at least not both bottles, and he would have had time enough to run to the bathroom and throw everything up. I would have found him slumped by the toilet on the cold tiles, weak but alive, relieved to see me and I him, and nothing could have broken us apart again if we’d survived that.

I blamed Ciel, too. Why didn’t he wait for television news? Half an hour, half an hour, and I would have come right back. And if instead of saying secret goodbyes he’d put me on the spot right then and there and demanded me to choose: him, or the cult, I would have made the right choice. He should have been smarter than me and given us one last chance. He should have had his realisation earlier, not after I’d got in the car and drove to what he thought was my death.

Everything is to blame, even the text message. Why was it so short? Why didn’t it elaborate that police got in the way, that something had gone awry? Ciel would have paused to mull it over long enough for me to return and explain. We would have lain low for a time and then gone after Lau together, just as it should have been since the start.

All those missed chances and unmade choices. He’s dead, and it doesn’t feel real. He’s locked up inside his too-big cherywood casket and he’s not getting out. It’s not even him anymore—just a shell. A beautiful dead doll groomed and dressed up to hide the decay underneath. Make-up for his ashen face, camouflage for his old scars; ridged caps for his eyes and wire sutures to sew his jaw shut. But no heart beating in his chest, no warm blood running through his veins—just litres of embalming liquid and organs packed up in plastic. Spotless on the outside, putrid on the inside.

The Phantomhive signet, which I had gone to such lengths to bring back where it belonged, will end its legacy buried in a wooden box with the last of the Phantomhives. It will dazzle no one down there in the ground, useless in its magnificence, never corroding or disintegrating as the skin around Ciel’s thumb slowly rots, withers, then desiccates into a dried-up twig.

How could I have ever found death beautiful? Death is hideous and does not deserve to have him. He should have been beyond it, above it, out of its reach. How dare it take him, just like that, as though he were just anyone?

The priest steps aside for the funeral staff and my mouth goes dry. It tears through my chest like a bolt of lightning—how final it is, once the casket hits the ground, once soil hits the lid, once the limestone slab is resealed... it will be over. Ciel will be gone. People will arrange flowers on his shared grave and light candles and cross themselves before saying their prayers, Lord have mercy on the soul of this poor child, amen.

They begin to lower the casket.

No, no, no. I can’t breathe. Something is weighing on my chest, crushing it, pulverising the air out of my lungs. I teeter forwards, make a stumbling step, and ram into the first ring of the crowd with demented force. Someone shouts, someone falls to the ground, someone grabs at my sleeve. But I keep going. I push and shove bodies out of the way, slamming into backs and yanking at shoulders, plunging through the thicket of limbs like I would through a copse of trees.

They shouldn’t have come here, this shouldn’t be happening. This is insane, a mistake, some elaborate farce. Do they even know who they’re trying to bury? I’m almost by the casket, almost close enough to stop this madness, when Francis Midfords steps in my path.

“You,” she hisses, eyes red-rimmed and vicious, “what do you think you’re doing? Get back to your spot, now. How dare you even show your face to us?”

“They can’t do this,” I pant, trying to shoulder past her, and it’s working—they pause at the commotion, lift their heads to look at me, flex their gloved hands around the webbing—

And they lower Ciel’s casket all the way down with a thud.

Frances digs her hand into my shoulder, pushing me back. I’m rooted to the ground, immovable, still as stopped time, but the world is spinning. Something wet runs down the side of my cheek.

“Don’t make a scene,” comes her venomous voice. Far, far away. “Don’t make this worse. You’ve done enough as it is.”

My hands shoot up to her throat. I catch her on the exhale, just before she can draw another breath, cutting it off in one brutal squeeze. Her mouth hangs open and her eyes bulge first in shock then in outrage, no panic, as if her hatred for me mattered more than her life.

It takes a while for others to realise what’s happening. Their grief-slack brains suspend mid-reaction, slow to jump from sorrow to horror, like a thermal shock but of emotion. And then her husband roars in alarm and flings himself at me from behind the bench, jostling my arms and scrambling at my palms as I crush her windpipe. Murmurs of confusion ripple through the crowd, feet shuffling and necks craning in unrest, in curiosity. Something is happening, but no one knows what.

“He’s choking her! HELP!”

A girl’s screech rips through the air—Elizabeth’s, it sounds like, answered by her father’s grunts of exertion. A mass of bodies shifts and churns behind me in a crazed stampede, broiling in contagious terror, one scream triggering another like it were the telephone game. Yelps, gasps, bellows, shrieks, feeding off of each other and then colliding with each other into one, jumbled loop of voices.

Far, far away. As if I’m underwater and every scream, every plea to stop, every cry for help, floats down at me from high above the surface. Up from where it doesn’t matter. The world blurs wetly at the edges—the yawning grave, the heap of funeral wreaths, the leafless sycamore—but Frances Midford’s hateful face stays in sharp, startling focus. We’re alone.

Hands tug and pull and scrape at me from every direction, stopping nothing. Too many hands, too panicked, and my own hands are clenched like the jaws of a rabid dog. I’m not letting go. Fingers snag my hair, heels kick at my shins, but I keep squeezing. I can’t even feel the bite of fingernails or the sting of knuckles bruising my cheekbones. Every cell in my body and every particle of my will is working to kill her.

And as her palms slip from my wrists, her head tips to the side, and the light in her eyes burns out like a lantern on a grave... I feel nothing. I kill her and feel nothing. What once galvanised my blood, sang through me in breathtaking choruses, and taught me why I’m alive—is gone. 

My Todestrieb sleeps. It’s like it never even existed.

Notes:

The End!

There’s a couple of things I want to say, but let’s start with: I KNOW, and I’M SORRY. I went for the classic ‘can’t live with him, can’t live without him’. I know a lot of you may not like this ending, but I started writing this story with no other ending in mind. Ciel was always going to die, no matter what. I did once consider making it happen in a different way -- Claude was supposed to send the warehouse location only to Sebastian as a fake tip to draw him out, while the rest of the cult was told to go to his house -- aaand they were going to make Sebastian watch as Claude killed Ciel. He would have made the ‘minor’ mistake of leaving Sebastian alive, though, who would have later gone on an absolute bloody fucking rampage.

But I wanted to give Ciel as much control as I could -- take action for himself instead of getting strapped to an altar, even though it didn’t all go according to plan. Besides, I don’t think there was a conventionally, universally ‘good’ way to end this. At least they both chose each other in the end.

That said... *pops champagne*. I’m so stoked I finished this story!! I’d never written anything so gigantic before, and sticking to it had been a huge test to my creative commitment. I’m not happy with all of it, but I’m happy I managed to see it through, and I’m happy as hell that I can move on from it with a clean conscience.

And, last but not least... I have to thank literally anyone who’s lasted until the final chapter, but especially those who left me a piece of feedback along the way. I might not have replied to every single comment, but I promise that I appreciated them all the same -- so thank you for helping me through this and giving this story a chance!

I hope you liked it until the end despite the... you know, the end. I'm very anxious to hear your final thoughts on this story!

Take care you beautiful people ♡♡