Reincarnation
Chapter 7:
Ronald Knox wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve as he leaned against Will's desk in the headmaster's office of Weston College.
"Phew, he nearly had me there," he puffed to his co worker who looked very unimpressed. "Although I would not have spilled the beans like Sutcliffe nearly did."
"Hey!" complained the red haired reaper who was sulking in the corner.
"So he is working as Phantomhive butler again," Will said thoughtfully.
"Yep, he had the suit on and everything. The brat wasn't there- I overheard something about him being at Trancy's house."
"Hmm, the fact that the demon has become a butler again shows that he certainly has some interest in obtaining this Ciel Phantomhive's soul. He may also be thinking of making a contract."
"Most of our plan depends on him making the contract before he realises that the brat is not a reincarnation of his beloved former master," Ronald replied. "Phantomhive is obviously trying to stay away from him for now as none of us ever considered that he would become a Phantomhive butler again, but the brat can't keep the act up forever."
In the corner Grell pouted. Will and Ronald were always acting like the Phantomhive brat and Sebas-chan were some kind of a couple which rankled his nerves.
"I think it's unfair that we are manipulating Sebas-chan for our own use. I don't want to go to war with the demons," he interjected with a whine.
Will and Ronald exchanged glances. They had been over the subject many times with Grell in the past few years. They had explained it so many times and now it had become very annoying to explain the same thing every month.
"For the final time Sutcliffe, we are doing this because there are not so many souls left because all the demons are stealing them. When was the last you harvested a soul!?" Will asked, exasperated at his colleague.
"I know that..." Grell complained "But why do we have to use Sebas-chan?"
Ronald rolled his eyes. "This is the last time I'm explaining this to you. He is the only demon we know that has a weakness for a vertically challenged brat with an eye patch. How may demons have you seen that are like that? Our plan is clearly working if he has become the ancestor's butler."
"You are in on this too, Sutcliffe. You cannot back out now," Will continued and pushed his glasses neatly back up his nose with his forefinger. "We illegally reincarnated souls after all. If we do not get results we do not have a hold over the demons and we will be suspended forever from our jobs and we will probably end up going to way with the demons anyway with no chance of winning."
The red haired reaper frowned at the mention of a war. Relations between Demons and Grim Reapers had always been tense, but recently due to a shortage of decent souls, fights had broken out with gruesome consequences for the Grim Reaper-Demon relationship. One reaper had been found staked to a wall with his own death scythe.
Grell hadn't actually judged a soul for about a fortnight, if the shortage continued he would be out of a job and it was a Grim Reaper's job to judge souls.
Will was right. It was likely that a war was going to occur and if it did the reapers were going to need all the help they could get, even if it meant ensnaring poor Sebas-chan.
"Fine. I won't complain again. For at least a week," Grell conceded eventually.
"Thank you Sutcliffe. For the moment all we can do is wait for the demon to make the contract."
Once upon a dreary eve at midnight when all hopes and dreams had been lost...
I who had been possessed by an apparition spied a stately raven happen by overheard...
And with dreaming eyes quoth the raven, "That which is lost shall never return."
"Nevermore."
"-Ciel? Wake up," a voice called out and punctuated the darkness of Ciel's dream.
With a start, Ciel jolted awake to find Alois leaning over him with a puzzled look on his face. The sight of Alois paired with the word "Nevermore" felt out of place to Ciel.
If it had been Sebastian leaning over him... That felt right. Ciel frowned and wondered why.
"Ciel!" Alois shouted.
Ciel blinked and switched his attention properly to Alois.
"What is it?"
"You appeared to be having a nightmare so I woke you up. Anyway it is past 10 in the morning so I think we should go get some breakfast," the blonde said and helpfully pulled the covers off his friend, enjoying the shiver he made when the cold air hit him."Nice pyjamas by the way."
Ciel looked down at his pyjamas with a dog paw print pattern on the trousers and the top with "cats suck" printed on it. "I am allergic to cats you know. Personally I think mine are better than yours."
"There is nothing wrong with my booty shorts," Alois replied, a little miffed. "Do you want breakfast or not?"
After a bowl of Coco Pops and a tea cup of Darjeeling and a change of clothes, the pair adjourned to the sitting room in Alois' house to attempt to do the homework that they had both neglected. However Ciel could not get the dream from that morning out of his head.
He could not work out why it made him think of Sebastian.
"Alois, do you know a story with ravens in and the word "nevermore" in it?" he asked as he doodled on his chemistry homework instead of balancing equations.
Alois screwed up his face in thought. "It does sound familiar. I think it is something written by Edgar Allen Poe. It might be a poem."
"The American writer?"
Alois gave him a look. "Ciel, I am not an encyclopedia. Google it if you're that interested."
"It doesn't matter that much. I just had a dream..."
His friend nodded knowingly. "I often have dreams about books I have just read. I read this yaoi manga before bed once and I had a very... interesting dream."
"Ew, Alois, you're disgusting," Ciel complained and pulled a disgusted face.
"Of course I'm not. Can you help me with this question?" Alois asked, desperate to change the subject.
Taking the bait, Ciel slid Alois' chemistry book towards himself to take a look. He was in the top set for all subjects except Physical Education whereas Alois the middle set for most subjects, but was the best in his drama class.
Ciel wrote a few numbers onto Alois' homework using his friend's pen.
"Remember that Group 7 elements are diatomic," he explained. "Now that I have done you a favour, you can do a couple for me."
Alois groaned and flicked his fringe dramatically. "Not another one. First I'm stalking Sebastian, then yesterday you randomly turn up and demand to stay the night, now you're asking me for another one. You're lucky that my foster parents are still away otherwise I wouldn't be able to do most of them for you."
Ciel sighed. He had been asking Alois to do a lot for him lately, but events had sped which was something that he had not predicted and he needed all the help he could get from Alois.
"I'll you buy you some new shorts in a rainbow of colours and do all your homework for you."
"It's a deal. What do you want?"
Ciel set down the heavy tool box from Alois' garage on the bathroom floor with a thunk. He opened it and drew out a screwdriver. He pulled up the ceramic lid of the toilet in Alois' ensuite bathroom to reveal the cistern inside which had a lid that was screwed down. Holding his breath, he unscrewed the lid and opened up the cistern.
Then he picked a up a few plastic food bags that Alois had given him and double wrapped all of his ancestor's journals before dropping them in the cistern.
Ciel put everything back in place and tested the flush to see if it still worked. Luckily for him it still did although the flow of water was a little slow.
"And you said that I was disgusting ," Alois tutted as Ciel returned to his bedroom to pack his suitcase. "I'm not the one that had my hands in a toilet."
"Under no circumstances can I let Sebastian get his hands on them," Ciel said as he piled his clothes and homework into his suitcase. "Are you ready?"
The blonde tapped his suitcase which was on the bed next to him. "I'm ready to come and stay at your house and annoy Sebastian. It's going to be so fun!"