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Ciel kon Sel had seen better days.

Once upon a time, she would've pulled up to a shop like this in a limousine, bodyguards flanking her on either side and swept into it like she owned the place. She would've been in designer clothing, wearing jewels that could've bought every shop on the street, expensive perfume clinging to her skin delicately and tempting people to lean in closer so that they could smell its exquisitely subtle scent. Now, the girl had to approach on foot, with no company but her own thoughts, dressed all in black and smelling of nothing but incense and smoke, the stink of failed experiments.

And a duck. It followed her. She didn't know why it followed her, but it did.

Stupid duck.

Her hands were stuffed deeply inside the pockets of her black jacket, and although her boots were clean, they were clunky black things that she would've been ashamed to wear back in her former life. These days, she didn't notice how she dressed or how she looked. The only concession she made to her appearance was to keep her hair hacked off at roughly the length it had been when her brother died.

Apart from that, she looked like what she was; a woman consumed with the need for revenge. Her face was thinner, not gaunt but stark, her facial features now sharp with hunger. Once, Ciel's green eyes had shone with laughter; now they burnt with anger and hatred.

Daemonologie couldn't make it better, oh no. The girl she'd been had died in the car crash when her twin brother had. But Daemonologie could make it worse for the people responsible and that was all Ciel wanted.

She didn't hesitate, didn't worry about what she was doing; she pushed the door opened and entered.

The duck managed to scurry through just before the door swung shut.

"I'm Ciel kon Sel." Ciel took the man's hand as she introduced herself, her handshake light and brief, as if she eschewed human contact. Her hands were gloved in thin black leather, cut off at the first joint to give her maneuverability and warmth at once.

"And believe me, if I could do anything about that duck, I would've done it already. That stupid fowl has been following me for the last month, ever since I botched my last attempted summoning." She looked surreptitiously over her shoulder at the apparently innocent bird, "I don't think it's a demon, but it finds me no matter where I go."

Ciel hoped that they'd dealt with stranger things than obsessed ducks. Certainly, what she wanted was more important than that. The duck did not seem to pose a threat to anyone. It fluttered its wings and patiently settled down on the floor to wait.

Doing her best to ignore it, Ciel turned her attention back to Edward again, "But I haven't come here because of it, disturbing as it might be to be stalked by a duck. Rather, I require a very specific summoning, one that I have tried to perform on my own and never succeeded in carrying out."

The shaking of the shop windows unnerved Ciel; clearly, the dark-skinned female was no normal person. Automatically, words of protection sprang to her lips. They were one of the first things she'd been forced to learn during her own attempts at necromancy; if you summoned something you couldn't control, the least you could do was try to protect yourself from it.

But this was a safe place. This was where nightmares became real.

She only let herself be amused for a moment at that definition.

"Please, you and your associates may keep the duck. I would be most grateful if you did so, in fact. Eat the wretched creature for dinner, use it as a sacrifice, transmute it into a swan -- its fate is none of my concern." Some of her old manner still clung to her; early training told and the dismissive wave of her hand was faintly regal despite the short, bitten nails and the fatigue that ringed her eyes with black more messily than kohl ever did.

"I need to summon the demon paymaster of Hell; Melchom. And I need him to possess my twin brother's body. He died four years ago and I had the body frozen; it is in perfect condition, still." Ciel gave only the bare details of what she wanted, certain the man would ask for more if necessary but unwilling to part with any information unless necessary. She said 'need', not 'want' or 'like'. This was a need for her, as essential as oxygen. Avenging her twin was the only reason she still lived.

Ciel watched the man warily. He was handsome, she noticed in some dim corner of her mind that still paid attention to such things, and in her other life, in her previous life, she might've flirted with him. Not necessarily to do anything with him, just because she was pretty and so was he and she liked the power of ensnaring people. It was fun to compete against her brother like that, to see which of them could charm more of their guests by the end of the evening.

But Rie wasn't here and Ciel had lost all interest in such childish games. Edward's good looks were noted, nothing more, the same way that she noted the man behaved with irreproachable decorum and politesse.

Vyrokloak. The name sounded somewhat familiar, enough to make her search quickly through the store of knowledge she'd accumulated over the past four years of study. They were a type of vampire, were they not? Cannibalistic instead of simply blood-focused.

Her lips pursed slightly and she gave a small but definite shake of her head. "It doesn't matter what state he's in. If you can call him and convince him to transfer bodies, that is all that I need. I --"

There was a catch in her throat, a sign of weakness that she despised herself for, as she thought of her brother lying trapped under ice like some modern day Sleeping Beauty. "I need his help. I would not care if he were made of maggots and entrails, as long he agrees to aid me."

If Edward couldn't convince Melchom to stay, Ciel would beg, bully and bargain. Whatever it took.

Half her heart was buried with her brother; half her heart was dead in her chest.

As Edward left with the second woman, Ciel considered his suggestion of binding the vyrokloak to her. The idea of having a flesh-eating demon bound to her was hardly one guaranteed to appeal to a normal woman, but it would only be temporary. Well. No, that wasn't true. Melchom would turn Rie's body into a vyrokloak, but that would be different. It would be her brother's body bound to her, with a demon's soul inside it. A powerful demon.

She nodded her acceptance of the idea when Edward returned, offering a small, strained smile to the other woman. "I have no objection to having the vyrokloak bound to me. Thank you for your aid, Hae-min."

Hopefully it wasn't too familiar to refer to her like that.

Ciel watched as Edward sliced open Hae-min's hand, a twinge of sympathy pain echoing through her own left hand. Edward was right; Ciel had tried this before and many other methods that were far less gentle. This wasn't a crippling cut or a fatal one. The woman would survive.

When she'd started trying to work arcane rites, she'd still been naive enough to shudder at the spilling of a bird's entrails or apologize to the people whose blood she had to take. Obsession had pushed her forwards even when the rituals demanded her own blood or hair; scars marked Ciel's body that hadn't been there before and when Rie's body was awake once more, Ciel planned to cut her twin so that their scars would match once more.

Another smile to the woman, once Hae-min was about to leave, and Ciel bowed her head in respectful, silent acknowledgment of the help Hae-min had rendered. After that, she said nothing, simply watching Edward perform the ritual with intent, unwavering green eyes.

The corpse was in a horrible condition. Its stomach was missing entirely, gray juts of bone exposed and blue light flickering over its ribs as if to show that in its disintegrating condition, only magic kept it alive. The flesh was peeled off the skull entirely, blue lights in the eyesockets regarding Edward and then Ciel, and when the corpse laughed, the teeth of the skeleton chattered together like a macabre shaking of maracas.

"You again?" There was scorn in the voice but also a certain level of amusement, the sort of laughter that a sociopath might enjoy upon snapping the neck of something small and cute that had been handed to him to take care of. "You are certainly a persistent human, I shall grant you that."

Ciel might not have had the ability to force Melchom to appear to her, but repeated attempts to get him to come had had something of the same effect as constantly hearing your cellphone ring but having the person hang up before you could pick up. Eventually you'd either call them back or get used to seeing their number appear.

Melchom knew quite well what Ciel wanted from him; the skull of the corpse could not do anything except smile, teeth bared forever in a skeletal grin, but the lights in the eyesockets brightened as he looked to Edward. "And you. What have you to do with this human's importuning?"

He tested the bounds of the sigil idly, seeing if he could leave their confines.

"They killed my brother." Ciel started out, her hands clutched tightly together to stop them from shaking with anger. The words, when she spoke them out, still sounded as obscene as a murderer whispering a lullaby to his victims. "I want revenge. I want them to pay. I don't care what you want in return from me; I'll give you their souls, I'll give you my parents, I'll give you anything you want if you just help me."

Pleading with a demon wasn't an effective tactic. The vyrokloak's teeth chattered in laughter that sounded like bullets clinking together. "And why do I care what you have to offer me? Souls are what you give lesser demons. Call up someone else -- if you can."

The last bit was a deliberate jab at Ciel's lack of success at summoning Melchom on her own. Ciel paled and her spine snapped straight, the woman drawing herself to her fullest height. "No. It has to be you. I can't find the people responsible without someone who knows how to handle underworld accounting. They -- he died for money, for greed, and I need to find out where the money came and who paid them and who they are, before I can know who to kill. I don't need a demon who can kill; I need a demon who can trace money."

"So you set your sights on Hell's paymaster?" Rich amusement coiled through the words, like poison through blood. "Arrogant of you, little human. Do you not realize how high in the hierarchy I am?"

"I know." Her voice was low for a moment, Ciel glancing down at her hands. Rie had had hands identical to hers, in everything but the fingerprints. Long fingers, rectangular palms, and they even had matching birthstone rings that they'd bought each other on their seventh birthday. She never wore her ring anymore. The sight of her empty ring finger was what made her look up again, green eyes locking with light-filled sockets. "But I also know that the man or woman I want to take down will have a ranking equal to yours, though amongst humans instead of demons."

Her smile was a cold, vicious curve of her lips, lips pursed as if to utter a curse, "Summon the best to destroy the best."

"Flattery." Melchom said, but he was more amused than he would let on.

"Truth." Ciel said, and tilted her chin upwards, staring him at him boldly, "So I ask you again, will you help me? Name your price. Nothing is too dear if it will avenge my brother."

"Oh?" There was mockery in Melchom's words, the demon enjoying toying with the clearly desperate woman, "And what do you think would be an appropriate payment for something so precious to you? Your soul alone would be but poor recompense for slaughter on the scale that you plan."

Ciel nodded, having expected that. He was a Named demon and a paymaster. It made sense that he would cost more to control than a normal demon would. She dropped her hands to her side, smoothing her jacket over her hips in an unconscious gesture that still lingered from the time that she wore close-fitting silk gowns that had been tailormade for her figure.

"I know." She glanced at Edward for a moment, wondering if it was possible to have some privacy with Melchom. What she was about to offer the demon was not something she thought the other man would approve of; Rie's death had broken something inside her, morals meant nothing to her. She wasn't ashamed of what she was about to offer, but she did know that by anyone's standards, it would be wrong.

Even she knew it wasn't right, but it didn't matter. Between that and the evil of letting her brother remain unavenged, Ciel thought that this was the better choice. The lesser of two evils; she would commit an evil in order to right a greater wrong.

Ciel paused for a moment, then nodded, "I see. Then please stay."

She couldn't afford to worry anymore about what he might think of her for the offer she was about to make. Avenging her brother was more important than her pride.

For a moment, her tongue darted out over her lower lip, Ciel summoning up her reserves of courage. Lowly, fiercely, fingers knotted together tightly, she said, "I promise you my first-born child. I am not pregnant now but once you have avenged Rie, once my family is wiped out -- I will make sure to have a child, the last of our bloodline, and that child will be yours. Alive or dead, living or sacrificed, yours to do with whatever you will."

The light in the skeleton's eyes flared bright with hunger, Melchom finally intrigued. Children were what had been sacrificed to him before, when he was a god-king, but as the paymaster of Hell, such sacrifices had been forgotten. The thought of having a child die for him again, a fresh new life in all its potential snuffed out...

He could not come closer, not with the sigil holding him in place, but he stretched out skeletal hands to her, muscle and rotted tendons draping towards the ground, "That, little human, will be adequate."

Ciel nodded, trying to push away the thought of what she would have to do, and looked to Edward instead, "Formalize the contract, please."

She wanted it over now. The sooner the slaughter started, the better Ciel would feel.

The lack of censure from Edward calmed Ciel slightly. She knew that sacrificing a child was hardly an acceptable act. Revenge on her family and whomever was responsible for her brother's death was one thing. They were guilty. They deserved to die. A newborn child? It would have done nothing to her. It would be her own flesh and blood, a helpless little infant that she had brought into the world only to slaughter.

Ciel knew that was a fate that no baby deserved. She knew it as truly as she knew that nothing would stand in the way of avenging her brother.

She'd summoned a demon and was planning a blood bath. Would killing her own child really damn her soul more than killing her parents would?

She dredged up a smile and locked away the unease she felt when she thought of the contract's terms, bowing her head slightly to Edward, "Of course. In terms of ... "

Payment seemed like such a crass word to use, given the topic. Ciel changed her sentence smoothly, "... Fairness, how may I reward you for aiding me?"

Her family had locked her out of her bank account. That didn't mean Ciel hadn't found other ways to get money.

Melchom felt the magic sizzle and die down around him as he stepped out of the sigil, contract signed with a flourish. Rotting flesh hung from him in strings like moldy sausages, blue magic sparking about him as he moved. He eyed Ciel hungrily, picturing her skeleton underneath and the neat tidiness of her womb. The swell of her stomach as it stretched, the growing life within her that would be extinguished in his honor; that had more appeal to him than listening to her bargain with this summoner who'd trapped him with the blood of a willing virgin.

But he did listen.

He'd been Hell's paymaster. Power, wealth, bargains - for thousands of years, they had been what he'd dealt with. Old habits died hard and he wanted to see what this human would offer the summoner. She'd offered him her own child, after all. If she would give that to a demon, what would she give a summoner? Money alone wouldn't tempt someone to risk their life and sanity by calling down a demon like Melchom; this summoner, if he had any sense, should ask her for something exorbitant.

At least, that's what Melchom would've done in the summoner's place but he was a demon and he was greedy and the desire for anything other than death and power was foreign.