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“Really, my lord, you should know better than to drink anything from someone you’re investigating,” Sebastian chided Ciel. “I have no need—for your inane comments,” Ciel uttered through clenched teeth. He’d been taken over by a fit of chills and had to press his hands together to keep them from shaking. “You—blasted demon.”“Whatever was in that tea seems to have done wonders for my lord’s wits,” Sebastian said in a light, mocking tone that gave Ciel the urge to strangle him.He had to settle for glaring daggers at the demon, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. Had Sebastian known that his tea was laced with some drug before he drunk it? Damn that demon to the deepest part of Hell! It would be just like him to let this happen, as long as he knew that it wouldn’t be fatal to Ciel. The light rocking of the carriage made the content of Ciel’s stomach churn in a most unpleasant way. He swallowed a few times, trying to keep the nausea under control.At the manor, the servants started fussing over him as soon as he set foot inside, which was a testament to how bad he must have looked. While their concern wasn’t unwarranted, their shrill exclamations drilled painful holes into Ciel’s poor battered brain, and he had to order them to find themselves some useful task to do and leave him alone. Sebastian led him to his room and helped him get out of his clothes. Ciel’s numb limbs felt like they belonged to someone else’s dead corpse, and his vision was getting blurry and distorted.“Get some rest, young master,” Sebastian’s velvety voice whispered. Ciel had closed his eyes without realizing it. “All will be well in the morning.”Ciel willed himself to sleep so he could forget his discomfort, but his body had a mind of its own. He tossed and turned for what felt like hours, always on the verge of vomiting but unable to actually do so, until all he longed for was the relief that throwing up would bring. A light rain pattered against the windows, a sound that would have been soothing in different circumstances. Right as he was slipping into unconsciousness, Ciel sat up in bed, seized by a sudden anxiety that he couldn’t explain. His heart was fluttering like a panicked bird that had been trapped inside his ribcage. Ciel pressed a hand against his chest in an attempt to bring his quivering heart under control. He listened intently, trying to figure out what had caught his attention. He must have dozed off at some point without noticing, because the drizzling rain had now turned into full stormy weather. Thunder crashed over his head in earth-shattering bangs and the wind howled woefully like a beast in the throes of death. Ciel wasn’t afraid of the storm; he hadn’t been scared of thunder and lightning since he’d discovered that there were much more terrifying things in the world. The thunder might have been what had woken him up, but it wasn’t what made fear dig its claws into his heart. Whatever it was, he knew that he had to get up and look for it. The fear wouldn’t disappear unless he could confront it. He slipped out of his bed and walked bare foot, foregoing his slippers. The cold floor against the sole of his feet was something to focus on that wasn’t the terror he felt.The hallways were eerily silent and dark. It was cold, and yet Ciel was sweating so much that his nightgown clung to his skin. His breathing sounded so loud to his ears that he worried it would wake something up. He didn’t know what it was, just that it wouldn’t like to be awakened, and he didn’t know where he was going, but only that he was mortally afraid to go there. He walked through hallways and climbed stairs, never meeting another soul throughout his journey. The manor was vast and only a handful of people lived here. He could wander for hours and never meet anyone else. Were they asleep? Were they dead? Ciel walked carefully, watching his feet lest he stumbled onto a bloody corpse. You never knew when the whole household could have been slaughtered while you slept.An indistinct murmur hit his ears and Ciel spun around, his pulse thundering. There was no one in the hallway that he could see—which didn’t mean that there wasn’t anyone. “Sebastian?” Hating how small his voice had come out, he called again, louder, “Sebastian? Is that you?”No one answered, but Ciel’s gaze was caught by the painting that hung on the wall that he now faced. He couldn’t remember if that painting had been there before. He knew of it— this was The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, and it depicted a woman dressed all in white, lying in deep sleep with her arms thrown below her while an apelike creature crouched on her chest. In the background was a black horse with bulging eyes, and Ciel couldn’t shake the feeling that the horse was looking at him with its mad glare. Ciel stared at the painting for a long time, frozen to the spot, his eyes fixed on the nightmarish horse, until he saw the horse wave its head from left to right, then throw it back and let out a shrill whinny. Ciel startled and stepped back with a yelp, then rubbed his eyes. This must be a trick of his drug-addled mind. On a second look, the horse was once again dead paint on canvas, but just as Ciel was breathing a sigh of relief, the apelike, demonic creature that sat on the woman stirred. Its protruding eyes stared at Ciel, who stopped breathing. The creature unfurled from its crouching position and stood on the woman’s chest. Ciel heard a creaking sound, as if the ribs of the woman were cracking under the creature’s weight. Bloody tears leaked from the woman’s closed eyes.Ciel opened his mouth to shout. “Seb—” The creature leaped at him. Ciel’s arms shot up over his head to protect himself as he stumbled backward, his hip hitting the corner of a marble pedestal table. When he dared lower his arms, he saw that the apelike demon was standing barely a few feet away, flashing him a yellow-toothed grin. From it came a rotten smell that turned Ciel’s stomach again.“Go away,” he told the creature. His hand fumbled blindly behind him over the pedestal table, looking for something he could throw. “Go back into the painting!”“You’ll have to kill it, dear,” a voice said. “Otherwise it’ll never listen to you.”Ciel froze, and it took every amount of courage he had to force himself to turn in the direction the familiar voice had come from. In the middle of the hallway stood his mother, wearing that light blue summer dress that his father had bought for her on the last summer of their lives. She was smiling and her eyes crinkled with mischief, the way they did when she’d thought of a fun game to play.“What?” Ciel said.“You have to kill the goblin, darling,” Mother said.“Listen to your mother.” His father was one step behind his mother, as though he’d always stood there and Ciel had just failed to notice him. “You have to get your hands bloody if you want to accomplish anything.”“But, I—What would I even—”“And you know everything about getting your hands bloody, don’t you?”The new voice was a stab through Ciel’s heart. He didn’t want to look behind him, but his mother was smiling at him so kindly, so encouragingly that it was beyond him to disappoint her. “I’ve made you look, haven’t I?”His brother didn’t look clean and tidy the way their parents did. He wore the bloody shirt he had on the night he’d died, and the terrible wound on his abdomen that Ciel had stuck his fingers into to try and get the Phantomhive ring out. His face was pale and strained, but he was smiling the same mischievous smile as Mother. It was teasing, but not unfriendly.“I’m sorry,” Ciel whispered, tears welling up in his eyes that he was too tired to fight.“Kill the goblin, little brother. You can do it. You’ve always been tougher than you looked.”The creature—goblin, if his dead family was to be believed—grinned wider, baring teeth that were stained with blood. It sauntered closer to Ciel, as though it didn’t think it was in any danger from a trembling boy who talked to ghosts. It opened its mouth to let out a cackle, a cruel sound of mirth that deeply pricked at Ciel’s sense of pride.“Shut it,” he told the creature. “This is the head of the Phantomhive family that you’re laughing at!”His fumbling hand had found the base of a bust, which he grabbed and threw as hard as he could at the goblin.“Young master!”Ciel turned his head and watched dispassionately as Sebastian ran toward him. “It took you long enough,” he said.“Young master, what on earth are you doing?”Ciel looked back at where the goblin had stood, but the creature had vanished, and so had the ghosts of Ciel’s dead family. What was there, though, were the broken pieces of a bust and the painting it had crashed through. The painting—The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli—had fallen from its hook and the frame had shattered on the floor.“But—” Ciel said, confused. His head was swimming and connecting two coherent thoughts together was an overreaching effort. “It was there.”“What was there, my lord?”“The goblin. And—”Sebastian arched an elegant eyebrow. “Well, I guess we now know that whatever they put in your tea had hallucinogenic properties,” he said with a sigh. “Come on, young master. Let’s get you back to bed.”Sebastian put his hands on both of Ciel’s shoulders and steered him away from the wreckage of the bust and the painting. Ciel twisted his neck to be able to look at it as he walked away. The gleaming, bulging eyes of the goblin seemed to follow him all the way. Right before he turned around the corner, Ciel could swear that the creature winked at him.