Fic: Tea on the Road to Tartarus. (Kuroshitsuji/xxxHolic xover)
Fun thing about xxxHolic, its universe has so many open unattended doors, that you can cross it over with darn near anything. I think I started this little fic solely as an exercise in perversity, but for whatever reason it decided to find some longevity. I doubt I have much more idea than anyone, how it will turn out.
Title: Tea on the Road to Tartarus
Kuroshitsuji/xxxHolic (Sebastian, Watanuki, Finny, various)
Rated for General Audiences
Tea on the Road to Tartarus
1.
"Wait, stop." The young Earl of Phantomhive put his gloved hand to his forehead, breathing a vexed and very weary sigh. "Explain it to me from the beginning."
Maylene hitched back a sob, "Sorry, Young Master..." Swiping at her tear-stained cheeks beneath her glasses with one trembling hand, the other clutched tightly in her skirt. "I'm so sorry, but all we know is that he's--he's disappeared."
"Fetch Bardroy, surely he knows something," insisted Ciel, but even as his butler bowed--"Yes, my Lord,"--the maid shook her head.
"By your leave, Young Master, he's still out looking for Finny. We've been taking turns searching, since Thursday."
Ciel turned his incredulous scowl upon the empty dining room at large. "Four days?" Then with a quick ice-blue glance at his butler, he issued a single command. "Sebastian."
"I shall search, my Lord. However, may I suggest tea and a change of clothing for the young master first?"
Turning his glare down at his dusty travel ensemble, Ciel let go another sigh, giving away the genuine fatigue beneath his impatience. "Fine. But have Maylene or Tanaka send up dinner if you have to. I want Finnian found."
**
Carrying out his master's order was not so trifling a matter as Sebastian had first made out. Though he left no stone unturned on the mansion grounds and gardens, the only person he encountered after an hour was Bardroy, marching up across the rear lawn from the distant dark woods, face haggard in the guttering glow from his lamp.
Encountering Sebastian unexpectedly in the darkness was enough to rouse the man to sharpness, but it did little to further the night's main task.
"We went through every room in the house, the cellar, stables. I started searching the woods yesterday," Bard told him, but then his shoulders slumped in disappointment. "Damned if I've seen a hair of the kid, though."
Attempting to determine the cause of the disappearance, Sebastian asked, "Have you seen anyone suspicious about? Anyone who could have taken him?"
"Who's gonna take him anywhere he don't want to go?" Bard's chuckle was a disquieting cynical rasp, before something more disquieting shifted his features. Defeat, worry. And a rather curious lack of any censure. Especially since it was Bard's colleague and compatriot they spoke of, and if there was one thing a Phantomhive servant knew to their very bones, it was that shirking one's duty to the house was utterly unthinkable.
"If you have any inkling why Finnian would have left," Sebastian said, "it would aid the situation considerably if you shared it."
For a long moment, Bard attempted to match stares with him. A guarded look unlike his normal (and entirely warranted) caution around Sebastian. Sebastian only gazed back evenly, as though he could wait all night for Bard's answer, however long that night might last. Of course Sebastian was not interested in loitering on this damp back lawn all night, he had plenty of other duties to attend, but he also had patience to last millennia.
Soon enough, Bard capitulated, shifting his stare to the ground. "In the army, we mighta called the kid a deserter. And there's a sentence for that. I know it ain't my place to ask he not get punished. But." His jaw tightened, and he shook his head roughly. "Damn I was hopin' not to show this to anybody."
"You will show me." Sebastian sensed definite intrigue here, he couldn't deny it, but it still wasn't a question and Bardroy knew it. The man gripped his lantern tight, that haggard look settling into the deep drawn shadows around his eyes, and strode off toward the stables without a word.
**
"Reckoned I ought to bury it out here," Bard offered, once they'd reached an unremarkable area of level ground, well behind the stable paddock. "The kid was too torn up over it. Didn't want nobody else to know, and I didn't blame him none. Not like he meant to do it."
Sebastian walked up to the large patch of packed earth, which normal eyes might not have noticed as being recently turned. Not that Sebastian's eyes were by any means normal. "A horse?" he asked.
"Whitetail buck," corrected Bard. "Kid was feedin' it for awhile. Got so's it would come right up and eat out of his hand. Course he didn't mean it no harm. Said he just wanted to give it a pat."
Slowly, Sebastian turned. Studied the hard countenance of the man behind him, and the cracks around the edges of that expression. "I was under the impression that Finnian was learning control over his strength."
"I expect he's learnt quite a lot," answered Bard. "Problem is, he's growing up. Getting stronger."
Sebastian glanced back to the unmarked grave, uncharacteristically irked at having been caught in an oversight. As head butler, the staff's well-being was his responsibility. However busy his young master may keep him, Sebastian could not afford to neglect developments in the rest of the household. "There've been other incidents?"
"Enough of 'em. Kid's gotten good at cleaning up his messes. If I had to guess, I'd say this one was the last straw."
"And are you entirely out of guesses as to Finnian's possible whereabouts, now?" asked Sebastian.
"I can cross the woods off the list," Bard muttered darkly.
**
Sebastian was not well pleased at having so little to report, when he went to retrieve his master's dinner cart.
"There is some likelihood Finnian departed voluntarily, as he may have felt himself a danger to others," was all he could speculate for the Earl Phantomhive. He explained about the buck buried behind the stables, and the other recent incidents Bard had filled him in on, mainly concerning broken furniture, trees, gardening implements, and a rather impressive amount of damage to the granite wall of the east courtyard.
Ciel listened in brooding quiet, turning the ring on his thumb, slowly round and round, watching its blue gem flicker in the nearby firelight. "It sets a poor precedent, if I permit one of my servants to go absent without leave."
"My Lord is aware that with a four-day head start, that gardener may prove quite time-consuming to track down," Sebastian mentioned.
"At the very least, I'm entitled to some explanation," answered Ciel. "If Finnian wishes to retire from this household, it should be done properly. This sneaking off in the middle of the night won't serve. You will find him, Sebastian." Whatever it takes went unspoken, but Sebastian heard it clearly in his master's tone.
In the space of an eyeblink, he sifted through a range of consequences. The inconvenience of his absence for his master, the possibility that Finnian had been lured away solely to draw off the mansion's greatest protection; himself. Even as he bowed and murmured his assent, he was outlining possible strategies, contingency plans, as any butler worth his salt would.
On his way to assembling the rest of the staff for an emergency meeting, he pondered what might hold greater sway in the young Earl's motives. Ciel himself had mentioned entitlement, and indeed any individual of his class and influence should--by the current standards of civilized society--be entitled to the respect of his employees. Particularly given the fact that in most cases, the Phantomhive Earl did actually merit their regard. Moreso than the majority of his aristocratic peers, Sebastian had observed.
But there was also an issue of loyalty at work here, he judged. Ciel had gone to considerable effort to hand-pick servants who would remain absolutely loyal to him; his position required it, and his survival depended heavily on it. And he had learned well to secure his servants' regard by demonstrating a certain measure of staunch loyalty to them in turn. It appeared in his grudging tolerance of spectacular mistakes, the unusual leeway he gave them in regard to their personal quirks, and--as in this case--his unwillingness to surrender them to the world without a struggle.
Still, all that determination stood for nought if they hadn't a clue where to begin looking for the boy. "Do any of you recall before he left," he asked Maylene, Bard, and Tanaka, "whether he mentioned any plans. Destinations. Anything at all."
Maylene shook her bent head, hair falling to cover her face. Bard went on staring distantly at the growing crust of ash on the tip of his cigarette. Tanaka set down his tea, and cleared his throat. "Wishes, he asked us about."
"We covered that already," shrugged Bard. "I told him what I'd learned as a kid, you went to the woods to ask the fairies to grant wishes." At Sebastian's inquiring stare, he ducked his head, frowning. "What? He liked hearin' kid stories. Anyway if he went to the woods, there's no sign of it."
"I told him about the wishing well," murmured Maylene. "Drop in a penny, make a wish. But we looked there, too."
Sebastian knew from rather personal experience, that there were other ways to get wishes granted. But for the time being, for the sake of thoroughness, he turned to Tanaka. "Did he ask you?"
"I told him the story I learned, as a child. About the wish-granting shop."
"A shop?" Maylene peered over at him. "You mean where you buy wishes?"
"After a fashion," agreed Tanaka. "The shopkeeper could grant any wish, so long as the proper price could be paid."
All the symbols and secrets and half-truths humans hid in their legends had never ceased to interest Sebastian. "And where might such a shop be found?"
"Ah. Well." Tanaka chuckled to himself. "It was said it could appear anywhere. But only those with a very strong wish could ever see it."
Which was just the thing to tempt a child--or one with a child's mentality--into searching, concluded Sebastian. At any rate, it was better than having no lead at all. Thinking to further the odds in his favor, he turned to Bard. "Fetch me an article of Finnian's clothing. Something that hasn't been washed recently. If we have to involve the police, they could use hounds to track him."
"Damn. Good thinking," Bard mumbled, lurching up out of his chair straightaway.
But Sebastian knew the idea was only to be expected, from a Phantomhive butler with the nose of a demon.
**
Of course Sebastian had no expectation of finding any wish-granting shop in the quaint crumbling village of Sorrel Glen--the nearest population center to the Phantomhive estate. He merely followed his nose, tuned to the faintest lingering thread of complex scent; thistle milk and bird's nests, white roses and warm healthy boy. He had never bothered taking conscious note of Finnian's scent before, but once identified it beckoned him, reeling him down the dark country lane and into the heart of the sleeping village. There it meandered and curled, along the back alley, up a still silent street, down the row of humble storefronts, all buttoned up for the night.
He lost the scent at an empty abandoned lot; a pair of derelict wooden fence posts framing the entrance to nothing but a shadowy patch of weeds and windblown rubbish. Deciding he must have strayed somewhere, he backtracked, past the shops, up a side street bordered by a few townhouses, and down another alley....
....And back to that empty lot. Where again he backtracked with even greater care, this time rounding the block, since Finnian must have crossed the lot on his way elsewhere. Except that the trail of scent didn't bear the theory out. No matter what angle Sebastian approached from, Finnian's scent led to this weedy dismal lot, and simply stopped. Right at the weathered gate posts, in fact.
...only those with a very strong wish... Tanaka had said. Which if one thought metaphorically, was quite apt. Ciel Phantomhive himself could attest to the determination it took to get a wish granted, and the extravagant cost as well. But literally taken, these human legends were rubbish; any truth they conveyed was buried deep between the lines.
Or was it? Sebastian studied the gate posts thoughtfully. Solid plain wood, with an iron crescent ornament topping each post. Not the usual sort of entrance for a cemetery, and anyway there were no graves or markers of any sort, in the empty lot beyond. None of the other homes or establishments he'd seen so far had any similar entrance. Perhaps it was a site of some historical significance, preserved by the villagers.
Or perhaps, he considered, raising one hand toward the nearest gate post, this lot was not what it appeared to be at all.
Just before his hand touched the deep-grained wood, he caught a new scent, strong and distinctive, prickling against his brain. Tobacco smoke. Quickly he glanced around, eyes and ears scouring the dark neighborhood, though both senses insisted he was still quite alone.
His nose and another sense, that unnamed organ which vibrated like a tuning fork in the presence of human souls, begged to differ. There was a human, not a stone's throw distant from him, and they were smoking. No English or European tobacco he could place. Not opium, he knew that odor well enough from the young master's visits to Lau.
"What do you think, Mokona," murmured a quiet voice, jolting him. "Will it come in, or just stay and sniff about the gate?" The words came muffled to Sebastian's ear from no discernible direction, like a distant conversation heard through a dense fog. But the subject of the question was clear enough, he surmised.
"Is there something to see beyond this gate?" he wondered aloud, eying the tendril of smoke now curling down slowly, from somewhere left of the nearby post. As if it were creeping over an invisible wall, seeking him out.
"That would depend on who's looking," answered the voice. A young man, smiling, Sebastian would bet his fine wool coat on it. Well. So much for all the human legends being rubbish.
"I was given to understand that a wish is what's needed, to see this place. Though since I have no wish I care to bargain over, I wonder if the orders of my master will suffice."
"Can you pay on your master's behalf as well?" Aside from the fact that it sounded amused at him, the voice was not at all hard on the ears. If its owner were half as appealing in other respects, it may well make this troublesome errand worthwhile.
"I am fully authorized to settle my master's debts," he answered. "Such is the least of a butler's duties."
When the voice next spoke, it was clearer and much colder.
"And do I have your word, as a butler,"--Sebastian pictured a gravestone, coated with ice, under the frozen light of a full December moon--"that you will attend your master's business here, and none other?"
After taking a moment to savor the chill prickle down his spine, not at all unlike the shiver he enjoyed when his young master was terrifying other humans, Sebastian answered with a slight bow, hand poised decorously over his lapel "As a butler, you have my word."
"Then you may enter."
Sebastian blinked, and there was a house beyond the gate pillars. He blinked again and it was undeniably solid, though its architectural style was none he could readily name. Two floors, with a peaked roof and a rounded cupola to one side. Warm light spilling from the tall arched windows, and the broad double door at the entrance. Behind the house rose a number of high trees, some reaching the roofline, and Sebastian blinked a third time because none of it had been here a moment ago, and in all his long demonic life, his eyes had never betrayed him like this.
What he did not see beyond the gate was the owner of that voice, but that lone tendril of tobacco smoke surely indicated the way. It wove through the air, curling and twisting like the ghost of a wandering vine, along the stone path crossing a thick verdant lawn, to the arched front doors. As Sebastian watched, those doors swung slowly, soundlessly open.
*****
Next Part
Title: Tea on the Road to Tartarus
Kuroshitsuji/xxxHolic (Sebastian, Watanuki, Finny, various)
Rated for General Audiences
Tea on the Road to Tartarus
1.
"Wait, stop." The young Earl of Phantomhive put his gloved hand to his forehead, breathing a vexed and very weary sigh. "Explain it to me from the beginning."
Maylene hitched back a sob, "Sorry, Young Master..." Swiping at her tear-stained cheeks beneath her glasses with one trembling hand, the other clutched tightly in her skirt. "I'm so sorry, but all we know is that he's--he's disappeared."
"Fetch Bardroy, surely he knows something," insisted Ciel, but even as his butler bowed--"Yes, my Lord,"--the maid shook her head.
"By your leave, Young Master, he's still out looking for Finny. We've been taking turns searching, since Thursday."
Ciel turned his incredulous scowl upon the empty dining room at large. "Four days?" Then with a quick ice-blue glance at his butler, he issued a single command. "Sebastian."
"I shall search, my Lord. However, may I suggest tea and a change of clothing for the young master first?"
Turning his glare down at his dusty travel ensemble, Ciel let go another sigh, giving away the genuine fatigue beneath his impatience. "Fine. But have Maylene or Tanaka send up dinner if you have to. I want Finnian found."
**
Carrying out his master's order was not so trifling a matter as Sebastian had first made out. Though he left no stone unturned on the mansion grounds and gardens, the only person he encountered after an hour was Bardroy, marching up across the rear lawn from the distant dark woods, face haggard in the guttering glow from his lamp.
Encountering Sebastian unexpectedly in the darkness was enough to rouse the man to sharpness, but it did little to further the night's main task.
"We went through every room in the house, the cellar, stables. I started searching the woods yesterday," Bard told him, but then his shoulders slumped in disappointment. "Damned if I've seen a hair of the kid, though."
Attempting to determine the cause of the disappearance, Sebastian asked, "Have you seen anyone suspicious about? Anyone who could have taken him?"
"Who's gonna take him anywhere he don't want to go?" Bard's chuckle was a disquieting cynical rasp, before something more disquieting shifted his features. Defeat, worry. And a rather curious lack of any censure. Especially since it was Bard's colleague and compatriot they spoke of, and if there was one thing a Phantomhive servant knew to their very bones, it was that shirking one's duty to the house was utterly unthinkable.
"If you have any inkling why Finnian would have left," Sebastian said, "it would aid the situation considerably if you shared it."
For a long moment, Bard attempted to match stares with him. A guarded look unlike his normal (and entirely warranted) caution around Sebastian. Sebastian only gazed back evenly, as though he could wait all night for Bard's answer, however long that night might last. Of course Sebastian was not interested in loitering on this damp back lawn all night, he had plenty of other duties to attend, but he also had patience to last millennia.
Soon enough, Bard capitulated, shifting his stare to the ground. "In the army, we mighta called the kid a deserter. And there's a sentence for that. I know it ain't my place to ask he not get punished. But." His jaw tightened, and he shook his head roughly. "Damn I was hopin' not to show this to anybody."
"You will show me." Sebastian sensed definite intrigue here, he couldn't deny it, but it still wasn't a question and Bardroy knew it. The man gripped his lantern tight, that haggard look settling into the deep drawn shadows around his eyes, and strode off toward the stables without a word.
**
"Reckoned I ought to bury it out here," Bard offered, once they'd reached an unremarkable area of level ground, well behind the stable paddock. "The kid was too torn up over it. Didn't want nobody else to know, and I didn't blame him none. Not like he meant to do it."
Sebastian walked up to the large patch of packed earth, which normal eyes might not have noticed as being recently turned. Not that Sebastian's eyes were by any means normal. "A horse?" he asked.
"Whitetail buck," corrected Bard. "Kid was feedin' it for awhile. Got so's it would come right up and eat out of his hand. Course he didn't mean it no harm. Said he just wanted to give it a pat."
Slowly, Sebastian turned. Studied the hard countenance of the man behind him, and the cracks around the edges of that expression. "I was under the impression that Finnian was learning control over his strength."
"I expect he's learnt quite a lot," answered Bard. "Problem is, he's growing up. Getting stronger."
Sebastian glanced back to the unmarked grave, uncharacteristically irked at having been caught in an oversight. As head butler, the staff's well-being was his responsibility. However busy his young master may keep him, Sebastian could not afford to neglect developments in the rest of the household. "There've been other incidents?"
"Enough of 'em. Kid's gotten good at cleaning up his messes. If I had to guess, I'd say this one was the last straw."
"And are you entirely out of guesses as to Finnian's possible whereabouts, now?" asked Sebastian.
"I can cross the woods off the list," Bard muttered darkly.
**
Sebastian was not well pleased at having so little to report, when he went to retrieve his master's dinner cart.
"There is some likelihood Finnian departed voluntarily, as he may have felt himself a danger to others," was all he could speculate for the Earl Phantomhive. He explained about the buck buried behind the stables, and the other recent incidents Bard had filled him in on, mainly concerning broken furniture, trees, gardening implements, and a rather impressive amount of damage to the granite wall of the east courtyard.
Ciel listened in brooding quiet, turning the ring on his thumb, slowly round and round, watching its blue gem flicker in the nearby firelight. "It sets a poor precedent, if I permit one of my servants to go absent without leave."
"My Lord is aware that with a four-day head start, that gardener may prove quite time-consuming to track down," Sebastian mentioned.
"At the very least, I'm entitled to some explanation," answered Ciel. "If Finnian wishes to retire from this household, it should be done properly. This sneaking off in the middle of the night won't serve. You will find him, Sebastian." Whatever it takes went unspoken, but Sebastian heard it clearly in his master's tone.
In the space of an eyeblink, he sifted through a range of consequences. The inconvenience of his absence for his master, the possibility that Finnian had been lured away solely to draw off the mansion's greatest protection; himself. Even as he bowed and murmured his assent, he was outlining possible strategies, contingency plans, as any butler worth his salt would.
On his way to assembling the rest of the staff for an emergency meeting, he pondered what might hold greater sway in the young Earl's motives. Ciel himself had mentioned entitlement, and indeed any individual of his class and influence should--by the current standards of civilized society--be entitled to the respect of his employees. Particularly given the fact that in most cases, the Phantomhive Earl did actually merit their regard. Moreso than the majority of his aristocratic peers, Sebastian had observed.
But there was also an issue of loyalty at work here, he judged. Ciel had gone to considerable effort to hand-pick servants who would remain absolutely loyal to him; his position required it, and his survival depended heavily on it. And he had learned well to secure his servants' regard by demonstrating a certain measure of staunch loyalty to them in turn. It appeared in his grudging tolerance of spectacular mistakes, the unusual leeway he gave them in regard to their personal quirks, and--as in this case--his unwillingness to surrender them to the world without a struggle.
Still, all that determination stood for nought if they hadn't a clue where to begin looking for the boy. "Do any of you recall before he left," he asked Maylene, Bard, and Tanaka, "whether he mentioned any plans. Destinations. Anything at all."
Maylene shook her bent head, hair falling to cover her face. Bard went on staring distantly at the growing crust of ash on the tip of his cigarette. Tanaka set down his tea, and cleared his throat. "Wishes, he asked us about."
"We covered that already," shrugged Bard. "I told him what I'd learned as a kid, you went to the woods to ask the fairies to grant wishes." At Sebastian's inquiring stare, he ducked his head, frowning. "What? He liked hearin' kid stories. Anyway if he went to the woods, there's no sign of it."
"I told him about the wishing well," murmured Maylene. "Drop in a penny, make a wish. But we looked there, too."
Sebastian knew from rather personal experience, that there were other ways to get wishes granted. But for the time being, for the sake of thoroughness, he turned to Tanaka. "Did he ask you?"
"I told him the story I learned, as a child. About the wish-granting shop."
"A shop?" Maylene peered over at him. "You mean where you buy wishes?"
"After a fashion," agreed Tanaka. "The shopkeeper could grant any wish, so long as the proper price could be paid."
All the symbols and secrets and half-truths humans hid in their legends had never ceased to interest Sebastian. "And where might such a shop be found?"
"Ah. Well." Tanaka chuckled to himself. "It was said it could appear anywhere. But only those with a very strong wish could ever see it."
Which was just the thing to tempt a child--or one with a child's mentality--into searching, concluded Sebastian. At any rate, it was better than having no lead at all. Thinking to further the odds in his favor, he turned to Bard. "Fetch me an article of Finnian's clothing. Something that hasn't been washed recently. If we have to involve the police, they could use hounds to track him."
"Damn. Good thinking," Bard mumbled, lurching up out of his chair straightaway.
But Sebastian knew the idea was only to be expected, from a Phantomhive butler with the nose of a demon.
**
Of course Sebastian had no expectation of finding any wish-granting shop in the quaint crumbling village of Sorrel Glen--the nearest population center to the Phantomhive estate. He merely followed his nose, tuned to the faintest lingering thread of complex scent; thistle milk and bird's nests, white roses and warm healthy boy. He had never bothered taking conscious note of Finnian's scent before, but once identified it beckoned him, reeling him down the dark country lane and into the heart of the sleeping village. There it meandered and curled, along the back alley, up a still silent street, down the row of humble storefronts, all buttoned up for the night.
He lost the scent at an empty abandoned lot; a pair of derelict wooden fence posts framing the entrance to nothing but a shadowy patch of weeds and windblown rubbish. Deciding he must have strayed somewhere, he backtracked, past the shops, up a side street bordered by a few townhouses, and down another alley....
....And back to that empty lot. Where again he backtracked with even greater care, this time rounding the block, since Finnian must have crossed the lot on his way elsewhere. Except that the trail of scent didn't bear the theory out. No matter what angle Sebastian approached from, Finnian's scent led to this weedy dismal lot, and simply stopped. Right at the weathered gate posts, in fact.
...only those with a very strong wish... Tanaka had said. Which if one thought metaphorically, was quite apt. Ciel Phantomhive himself could attest to the determination it took to get a wish granted, and the extravagant cost as well. But literally taken, these human legends were rubbish; any truth they conveyed was buried deep between the lines.
Or was it? Sebastian studied the gate posts thoughtfully. Solid plain wood, with an iron crescent ornament topping each post. Not the usual sort of entrance for a cemetery, and anyway there were no graves or markers of any sort, in the empty lot beyond. None of the other homes or establishments he'd seen so far had any similar entrance. Perhaps it was a site of some historical significance, preserved by the villagers.
Or perhaps, he considered, raising one hand toward the nearest gate post, this lot was not what it appeared to be at all.
Just before his hand touched the deep-grained wood, he caught a new scent, strong and distinctive, prickling against his brain. Tobacco smoke. Quickly he glanced around, eyes and ears scouring the dark neighborhood, though both senses insisted he was still quite alone.
His nose and another sense, that unnamed organ which vibrated like a tuning fork in the presence of human souls, begged to differ. There was a human, not a stone's throw distant from him, and they were smoking. No English or European tobacco he could place. Not opium, he knew that odor well enough from the young master's visits to Lau.
"What do you think, Mokona," murmured a quiet voice, jolting him. "Will it come in, or just stay and sniff about the gate?" The words came muffled to Sebastian's ear from no discernible direction, like a distant conversation heard through a dense fog. But the subject of the question was clear enough, he surmised.
"Is there something to see beyond this gate?" he wondered aloud, eying the tendril of smoke now curling down slowly, from somewhere left of the nearby post. As if it were creeping over an invisible wall, seeking him out.
"That would depend on who's looking," answered the voice. A young man, smiling, Sebastian would bet his fine wool coat on it. Well. So much for all the human legends being rubbish.
"I was given to understand that a wish is what's needed, to see this place. Though since I have no wish I care to bargain over, I wonder if the orders of my master will suffice."
"Can you pay on your master's behalf as well?" Aside from the fact that it sounded amused at him, the voice was not at all hard on the ears. If its owner were half as appealing in other respects, it may well make this troublesome errand worthwhile.
"I am fully authorized to settle my master's debts," he answered. "Such is the least of a butler's duties."
When the voice next spoke, it was clearer and much colder.
"And do I have your word, as a butler,"--Sebastian pictured a gravestone, coated with ice, under the frozen light of a full December moon--"that you will attend your master's business here, and none other?"
After taking a moment to savor the chill prickle down his spine, not at all unlike the shiver he enjoyed when his young master was terrifying other humans, Sebastian answered with a slight bow, hand poised decorously over his lapel "As a butler, you have my word."
"Then you may enter."
Sebastian blinked, and there was a house beyond the gate pillars. He blinked again and it was undeniably solid, though its architectural style was none he could readily name. Two floors, with a peaked roof and a rounded cupola to one side. Warm light spilling from the tall arched windows, and the broad double door at the entrance. Behind the house rose a number of high trees, some reaching the roofline, and Sebastian blinked a third time because none of it had been here a moment ago, and in all his long demonic life, his eyes had never betrayed him like this.
What he did not see beyond the gate was the owner of that voice, but that lone tendril of tobacco smoke surely indicated the way. It wove through the air, curling and twisting like the ghost of a wandering vine, along the stone path crossing a thick verdant lawn, to the arched front doors. As Sebastian watched, those doors swung slowly, soundlessly open.
*****
Next Part