AN: Finally, an upload, I know... I've changed a lot during these past two years so it'll probably reflect in my writing (which I hope is a good thing). This chapter is a lot less humorous, more straight forward, and a pivotal point for this story, methinks! Damn, I hope you guys will like this chapter. It's been a while after all.

Also: for those of you who review, I think I'm giving you previews to my next chapters. I will reply to your review because that's the least I can do for you guys (since sometimes it's really easy to just skip reviewing).

A note to old readers: I know I kinda lied when I said the 4th chapter would be up like a year ago (you can send me angry PM's if you'd like), and I apologize, so from now on, no more promises, so I can't break any that I haven't made right? Presently, I'm trying to do good and dish out chapters once every two weeks or so. Please enjoy and keep reading!

Chapter 4: Zombie Prostitution

A voluptuous figure, armed with a slinky waist and boobs held up by a taut, organ-compressing corset, sensuously rubbed her hands over her cold shoulders as a John walked towards her mentally undressing her as she stood under a tall iron-wrought lamppost. In the early, early morning in London, the thin fog around them gave her either a very mysterious and appealing quality or a very ominous one. Her face is just above average: not too ugly but not so astoundingly pretty enough to be anything near high class, the John thought haughtily to himself, well, I'm not paying her for her face anyways. The John chuckled sickeningly as he made eye contact with her. She, in turn, noticed the devious smile in his eyes and swaggered slyly, very vixen-like, to caress his arm, a basic unspoken contract saying, "pay in advance and no funny business." Apparently the John consented because he swept her into the nearest alley way and pushed her towards the cold, wet, and unforgiving brick walls with a certain sadistic edge. The lady did not openly object, either because it was an occupational hazard or because of her own sexual predilection (but most likely the former). Then, as the John felt the tension in the air build up, he huffed her scent and roamed all over her body with his hands...

"Ew, ew, ewwwww..." Emily gagged as she swiftly passed the newly-met and barely visible couple lurking in the shadows (damn zombie eyes...). Even her own professionalism had limits and two people snogging -nay, not snogging! -getting it on- was one of them. Stealthily, she peeked over her shoulder to witness the buff, unshaven, and obviously unhygienic man in his mid-twenties with his dusty slacks and his shoddy sweat-bleached tweed jacket running his hands through the girl's curly red hair exuberantly. The lady hated this from the obvious look of disgust-filled chagrin in her eyes which, fortunately for her, went unnoticed since the John kept himself busy enough looking elsewhere.

Emily knew she would never ever, ever start allowing somebody else to start sliding any part of themselves on her like the lady was allowing in the alleyway. As soon as she imagined herself in the lady's place, she felt a little queasy because she would hate to be a prostitute and loathed the fact that a lot of the girls didn't have that much of a choice. Shuddering stiffly, she continued to stroll through the dark foggy, unending streets of London, hoping to stumble upon Jackie the Ripper-girl quickly. At the moment, Emily was working undercover. She watched the cobblestones pass under her feet, praying that she would not be asked to do somebody a "service." The chilly wind road down the front of her chest, left uncovered by her very red, very misleading dress.

Flushed and fanning her now-burning cheeks with a gloved hand, Emily just longed to find Jackie girl already. Afterwards, she'll just go back home and hide so she'll never have to exhibit her face in public ever again. Couldn't Jackie have had a nurse or a schoolgirl fetish rather than a prostitute one? Was it so hard to find fault in ladies of more appropriate professions? Or otherwise, why did she have to go on a recon mission anyhow? Couldn't she have walked around town with her regular clothes on? Emily's fists shook indignantly as she thought of the circumstances that led her here and the man responsible.

Long, long ago... (about 12 hours, actually)...

Emily stood in front of Terry's "guest room" ready to either commit murder or cry, and with the spirit of a legendary Kung-Fu master, she kicked down the door which subsequently bashed into the wall, razzling Terry and snatching him out of his work-a-holic train of thought. He had been delicately collecting his organs (and was presently dropping a very pathetic looking pancreas into a jar for later research). Emily's dramatic entrance caused him to knock a scalpel off the table. It fell too close to stabbing his foot for his comfort.

"Teerrrry!" Emily cried, the woeful shriek followed as she wrapped her left arm around Terry's waist. Terry looked down and saw a wildly afraid and cutely tearful Emily in a heavy cloak out of which her left arm poked and wrapped around him. The grip then tightened and quivered.

"What have I done to owe the honor of this one-sided hug?~" Terry asked, privately congratulating himself for his clever pun. Emily slowly removed her cling on him, brandishing what appeared to be her right arm clasped in the palm of her left. Terry's eyebrows rose up considerably under his bangs. The silence that followed allowed for them both to hear a vague fleshy, crunching squirm, a sound that came from Emily or at least her body. Emily heard it, and she had for a couple of weeks now. At first, she could easily blame an old floorboard or the wind, but recently it happened with more frequency that she feared the sound came from something gnawing on her dead flesh from the inside.

Up until now, she ignored it with an uncompromising resolve. She flung her right arm into the pile of spare limbs in a neglected corner of a room next to the suspicious black mold ("it's not mold," Terry once told her) and the smelly boots of one of the current "guests." The arm slapped harshly against the other limbs, paralleling her own exasperation. Emily felt angry. She also felt scared: what happens when she looses all her limbs? After all, what was a zombie without a corpse?

Terry strode over to her to prepare himself for the rant that was to come. Emily grimaced, took in a large, gulping breath, and started, "Well... I was shopping for that new mattress that I wanted because I thought yours was too old and lumpy, and I saw this really cool one the other day so I'd thought I'd go back and get it even though you were all 'eh? Why do we need a new mattress?' so today, I decided to secretly buy it (it's a round mattress imported from Germany and yes, I know it sounds all fancy, but I think its best to go get a long-lasting mattress if we are, or at least I am, going to be using it a lot), and bring it home so you couldn't really do anything about it; the kindly old gentleman there at the shop said that I could receive a special discount because I was so beautiful and so I thought that was very nice, if not flattering of him, who is this homely, quite polite old man, and his shop was so nice and pulchritudinous -and I loved his brilliant painting of Artemis holding a bunch of flowers- and smelled good – and then –and then –my arm fell off! … and as it stands, I cannot possibly go back and buy that mattress!"

Terry hardly let the words catch up to what she was saying before the last part hit him (the part about the arm, not about her not being able to buy her dream mattress, and if it weren't so serious he would have suggested that this whole farce was an omen not to buy that mattress). Then, Terry looked a little confounded as he spoke, "It just fell?~" When Emily nodded, she held a very horrified gleam in her eyes – a cute improvement, Terry thought to himself. He walked over to the pile of limbs, taking Emily's abandoned arm, examining it. On the arm at the very end of it (on the humerus side), he determined that the arm fell due to the skin along the edge had lost its resilience and basically couldn't sustain its own weight. The little flaps of broken skin dangling carelessly corroborated his theory. Essentially, the skin was cut like the holes on filler paper after being tugged on too many times, so that the binder could no longer hold onto the paper, resulting in the paper falling. This meant that her skin had lost its elasticity at an alarming rate. With his back turned towards Emily, Terry pinched the skin on the abandoned arm above the elbow. It came off as easily as pulling apart flesh colored cotton candy.

"What? What is it?" Emily pipped up, becoming alarmed at Terry's silence. She stepped towards him, but he hastily threw the arm in a bin on the other side of the room with much precision. Shaking his head, he turned back to Emily, smiling. "No, nothing~ The string around your arm must have broke. Have you recently bumped into anything?"

"Well... I did think my arm got caught in this carriage door this morning..."

"Well, then~ that's the reason... Here~ choose a new arm for me to stitch you up with~!" Terry pointed at the pile of limbs, " it's times like these I'm glad I collect extra body parts~"

"Why can't I just use my old one? " Emily asked quizzically.

"Because that one's old already~ Don't you want to try on new arms? Arm yourself with new experiences?~"

"Well, actually-"

"OH~! That's right~!" Terry interrupted, "hurry up and choose an arm already~! Choose your arm so I can show you the latest victim from our Jackie girl!~"

Emily's eyebrows rose upward, interested, and began to dig through the pile. There were a lot of limbs there: arms and legs, hands and feet, torsos and necks, in such a variety you wouldn't believe: all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors resided in the pile, and Emily thought it best if she chose an arm much like hers -although maybe with longer, more elegant fingers and better manicured nails, possibly one without any scars and was really soft... Emily settled for an arm with her own skin color, pale and slightly blue-ish (depending on the lighting), and it was only a tiny bit longer (and slightly more attractive) than her old arm. As she sat on a stool, Terry filled her in about the new guest a few meters away while stitching up the new arm ("a wonderful choice~").

"Our next victim of Jackie: Catherine Eddowes. Same M.O.: the uterus removed in surgical fashion, her throat cut, but I smell the work of a non-human, too."

"Non-human? A demon?" One specific demon came to Emily's mind.

"No, no~ Demons are too old to be bothered, especially one who is under a contract like Sebastian." Terry gave her a pointed look. "More like... I sense somebody more like me~"

"What? An insane hermit who has way too much time on his hands?" Emily joked gaining another pointed look, "Okay so seriously, like a death lord?"

"Death god~ and yes, a death god working with a human, most likely."

"And how did you come to that conclusion?"

Terry shrugged his insufferable shrug, "I feel it in my bones?"

"So what are we going to do about it?" Emily asked, a little too enthusiastically. Again, Terry shrugged. He was teasing her. He knew what she wanted to do about it, but enjoyed watching Emily get frustrated.

"We should solve this case! And bring Jackie to justice!" Emily declared, liking the sound of that (Jackie to justice!), and slapping her thigh with her new right hand with newfound determination!

"And how do you suppose we'll do that?" Here Emily peered through her white eyelashes with what hopefully could pass of as puppy-dog eyes. "I was hoping you would have a plan."

Terry guffawed, "Gufuu!~ But that would be no fun right?~ Come on love~ it's not as if you don't have a brain." He eyed a container on a shelf. It contained a yellow-y liquid and a squishy pink brain in it. Terry chuckled. Emily smacked him across his head. He really was on a roll today with all his puns and ironic jokes.

"Well~... we know that a) Jackie is a woman 2) she has surgical experience 3) wait no...~ c) she is working with or is a non-human, and d) she doesn't like prostitutes," Terry listed out.

"So we're looking for a woman doctor/surgeon/medical student/illegal doctor/immigrant who used to be a doctor," Emily noted groaning, "I already feel tired thinking about it."

"I'll do the research. How about that?~" Terry suggested innocently, "why don't you do some spy work or whatever it is you call it?~"

Emily nodded rigorously. She'd been training as a spy since she was six, and although her field work assignments stopped once Vincent Phantomhive died (Ciel never asked her for her skills), Emily still retained most of her training. She thought that the "spy work or whatever it was that she called it" would be as easy as throwing carrots into a vegetable minestrone.

"Brilliant~! I have just the wardrobe for this kind of thing!" Terry exclaimed.

"Wardrobe?" Emily had an immediate heart-to stomach feeling that she wouldn't like the idea. Taking a candle from the table, Terry nodded as he took her hand in his and dragged her out of the guest room and down the dark hallway. Emily barely had space to stop herself from tripping over her own feet with the speed they were going. Soon, they stopped at the furthermost door down the hall which she had always thought was a storage room.

The dark wooden door seemed oddly foreboding as Terry opened it. Past it were dark, damp stone stairs. The air smelled a bit old and somewhere down there, she heard a dripping sound. "Terry, what in the world?" she asked.

"It's my storage room~" he replied simply, leading them down. Emily, however, took her time, her fingers tracing the wall should she need to steady herself on the perilous stairs. After a grueling minute of putting one foot in front of the other, she finally reached the bottom with an calm Terry at her side. Looking up, she saw that she stood at the end of a stone hallway with gas lights along the walls. It led to an opening, a semi-circle shaped room, which had two floors and many, many doors whose frames were lit by an enormous iron-wrought chandelier hanging from an arched ceiling. Really, who had the time to make this? Emily thought, impressed but not ready to admit it.

On the first floor, about a dozen doors lined around, one after the other, and the second floor accessible by a pair of stairs set directly in the middle. Emily first ran to a door closest to her on the right side, opening it, and discovering rows upon rows of scalpels and other medical utensils. Moving to the next door, she found neat mounds of an assortment of candles. The next door, a glass jar galore. The next, cleaning supplies. And so forth.

Terry waiting patiently until Emily wore herself out, taking the time to pick at his lengthy fingernails. He decided he needed to clean them later. "Come on Emily!~" he called out, starting upstairs. Emily followed obediently. On the second floor, there were only two doors, one at the very middle and one at the furthest right corner. Terry opened the middle door, lightly turning the brass handle. He motioned for Emily to follow; upon walking into the room, she found herself surrounded by darkness until Terry went around, lighting the lamps around the room with his candle. Slowly, the room came to life revealing a couch in the middle and a iron rod stretching around over ¾ of the room, the final portion of the room left to a tremendous vanity and a large stand-up full-length mirror. Clothes were hung sparingly on the rod, but still, there must have been a hundred articles of clothing not including the shoes, accessories, jewelry, and hats that lay on shelves under the iron rod.

Emily couldn't help but notice that a lot of the exotic clothing was designed for women. She gave Terry a look to which he smiled back lightly, explaining, "stuff I've collected over the years~"

Emily held out a white flowy toga, not knowing what it was. "Again~ Just stuff~"

Emily had never seen so much clothes outside of a shop before, and she had never seen such a varying wardrobe, containing colors and patterns she'd never seen before. Browsing through the dresses with great interest, Emily stopped in front of Terry who held a red dress in front of her with one eye closed, head cocked as if picturing her in that dress. "What's that?" Emily asked. Red wasn't her favorite color. It didn't suit her very well. All that passion and fury was wasted on her and she felt out of place in that color.

"It's your dress~"

"What?" Emily's eyes popped out slightly.

"You're going undercover remember?~"

"I know, but... do you mean...?" she scrutinized the dress: it puffed out right at the hips with a flair, red bead designs swirled around the front which dropped past what Emily believed to be acceptable, the back showed off the black string of the corset. Emily felt a wave of understanding hit her. This is what he meant by "undercover"...

"Yes~ You're going to be a prostitute and see if Jackie will choose you~ or at the very least you'll blend with the crowd and hopefully see who Jackie is!~"

Emily shook her head relentlessly, "no, nononono... that sounds...no!"

"Emily~" Terry sighed, "your pride-"

"But Terry! Pride has nothing to do with this...! It's a matter of decency!" Emily whined helplessly, but almost regretted it immediately when she saw Terry purse his lips. A wash of dread came over Emily when Terry finally spoke. He spoke with just that much more of a serious edge which scared her just that much more.

"Emily~ This is about you wanting to save human lives."

Emily swallowed though her throat was dry, allowing for the statement to sink in.

"Now suck in your pride and be a prostitute!~" Terry ended cheerfully. Emily smiled a little, "Yea, okay, but only because you asked sooo nicely," she snickered, snatching the dress and shooing Terry out of the room to get dressed. Five minutes later, Emily bellowed for Terry to come back in and tie the corset for her.

Emily's breathe hitched as the fabric pushed her organs to self-destruct on themselves. "Can't you do it any looser?"

"Honey~ Any looser and you won't look like a proper prostitute," Terry joked, but loosened the string nevertheless. When finished, Emily examined herself in the mirror with mixed emotions. On one hand, she felt like she needed a thick blanket to cover herself up. On the other hand, she quite liked how she looked -not that she'd say it aloud. Emily twirled on the spot, noting that her costume could be a lot worse, and compared to some of the things she had seen on the street lately (something about a new fashion for the younger girls), this dress wasn't too appalling.

"Terry... I look like a prostitute," Emily sighed exasperatedly.

"I'm glad we're on the same page~" Terry chuckled.

"By the way, what time is it?" she inquired.

"About three~"

Emily's eyebrows twitched a little in anger. "Then, why am I getting dressed now?" She took her old dress in her arms and was about to march out of the room when she turned around, asking, "Terry?... Honestly, how do I look?"

"You look like Aphrodite herself~" Terry answered pleasantly.

"...Huh?" Emily finally said, whipping around.

"Love, you look dashing~"

Emily stomped off towards the stairs. Her cheeks matched her dress.

Present Time...

"Arggghhh... I'm going to bloody murder him..." Emily grumbled as she treaded lightly on the stone floors. Keeping an eye out for any suspicious looking women, she was startled when a short piercing scream rang out close to her. Taking a minute to orient herself and locate where the sound originated, she took off quickly to an alley to her right, only stopping when she could hear an odd growling noise. RRRR-RRRR!

Suddenly scared, she sank to her knees and crawled to the edge of the building, peeking past the brick building to witness a long red-haired man using some sort of rotating tool to tear at a girl's body. With pentagonal glasses and an inhuman smile full of piranha-sharp teeth, he stood over the girl in the narrow, dim alley, the lamppost flickering as if the light yearned to run away. He looked as if he was having the time of his life: his face lit up like a bomb on Christmas Day, his laugh hyena-like and impossibly giddy, his clothes doused in blood. The girl's body was already a mess and thoroughly dead, but he kept slashing and slashing and slashing away until parts of her spleen sprayed on the walls and got flung upwards and rained back down.

One wet slop of red mushy goo fell a few centimeters away from Emily. She started shivering and would have vomited if she had a gag reflex or if she'd been alive. Her feet froze to the ground, but even if she could move, what possibly could she have done? The Undertaker had warned her earlier that a death god may have the power to kill her, for good this time. At the time, Terry said it so off-handedly, and to be honest, neither of them expected Emily to find Jackie.

Terry only desired to dress up Emily, and sure, Emily had said that she would try to catch Jackie, but the reality was that Emily couldn't do anything about her even if she did. Now that the fact of the matter caught up to what Emily said, Emily felt like a coward and a hypocrite. She could run into the alley and ask Jackie and the Death God to stop, but she'd be killed, for real this time. The victim had died a while back from the looks of the slashed throat, and now the death god was just kicking the dead horse, in a matter of speaking. He was playing with the body.

Having no weapon that would arm herself against a death god, Emily sat in tormenting silence, listening to blood-curling squishy and tearing sounds from a body that secreted an array of unpleasant effluvia. When the noises stopped, Emily shakily peeked out again to see two figures retreating, one with the weapon and one with a regal looking dress whose color Emily couldn't distinguish in the dim lighting. After they left and after a few moments to collect her wits, Emily stepped towards the victim. The blood ran in between individual cobblestones and seeped into the cracks on the floor. Emily dismissively wondered if the blood would always circulate throughout London when the rain washed it away and into the sewers or when it evaporated and showered down with the rest of the rain.

The girl looked to be about twenty, twenty-five at the most. Emily thought about the girl's life if she hadn't died. The girl would have continued to sell herself every night. Though, maybe she had a family to support. Maybe she had a boyfriend. Maybe today was the day she met a well-off gentleman and she be lifted out of the gutters, but that sounded doltish even in her mind. Nobody would care now, anyhow.

The girls' face was tensed with fear and angst. Probably, she gave in when she perceived no escape route. Emily bent over her mutilated body and pinched her cheeks, wiggling them around a little to loosen its muscles and closed her eyes. Once relaxed, the girl had a pleasant enough face: a fair complexion, light hair, soft rose-colored lips, long eyelashes. Emily looked down at her own red dress, its front now soaked in dark patches. She vaguely chuckled. Maybe Terry chose this color because the blood was hardly distinguishable from the rest of the dress.

Then she walked slowly to a main street to catch somebody, hopefully a police officer. It took her five blocks and half an eternity to find an officer who then grabbed her by the shoulders and chastised her for a good minute, probably because her disguise worked so well, getting mad when she just responded with a blank stare. He started to drag her somewhere, a police office no doubt, but when she gripped his hand tightly and got loose from his clutch, he blinked at her unexpected (zombie) strength and opened his mouth to reprimand her. Emily beat him to it, articulating coldly, "Jack the Ripper has struck again, and now if you'll be so kind as to join me and do your duty rather than bully little girls..."

Gasping like a fish out of water, the police officer nodded complacently, and Emily led him to the scene, all the while with her eyes looking downwards. When they turned the final corner to the scene of crime, the police officer halted abruptly, gagged, vomited, instructed Emily to stay put for further questioning, and ran off to bring his posse. "Newbie," she mumbled as she walked towards the wall opposite of the vomit, backed into it, hit her spine awkwardly, and slid down to sit with her knees pulled in and her forehead pressed to them.

The back up, what seemed like too many people for one murder scene, clambered up to be the first to see the scene. A lot of the younger members seemed to run off and vomit their guts out (later they most likely would tell stories of their valor and brandish their bravado to friends and family), whereas older, harder stomachs walked around the scene, often scowling when they accidentally step in pools of flesh.

None of them could do anything except busily chatter and make non-relevant or very obvious deductions such as "the murderer cut the victim open several times" or "the victim most likely did not have much money due to the jewelry she wore." After several bystanders identified the body, there wasn't much for them to do other than to bag the body and clean up the scene.

One officer finally came to Emily with a pen and a pad of paper. A group of officers whispered out not quietly enough about Emily, mistaking her for an old lady because of her white hair. Emily raised her head at the officer who looked surprised at her young features. He was obviously a rookie by the way his eyes looked red and bewildered from the crime scene. She answered all his questions as shortly as possible, taking pleasure in his growing impatience with her (which angered him even more).

"Knock it off, man. Can't you see the poor girl's in shock?" a voice called out, and then more warmly addressed Emily. "Are you alright?" Emily looked towards the voice, one which she obscurely recognized. It was Fred from the other day. Faintly, she smiled, "I'm better than the Miss over there anyhow." Emily jerked her head at the body. Fred almost glowered at her poor humor. This inspired Emily to act more playful with the officers to incite more of their horror. She needed a release of tension after what she had been through. She deserved to be able to antagonize and scare the officers.

"Okay Miss. Emily. Tell me what happened," he told her softly, crouching on the ground beside her.

"Well..." Emily put on her most theatrical voice, "here I was, minding my own business, strolling (business doesn't rest for the dead), and then... I hear a faint scream!" the small crowd of junior officers, that started to clustered around her, gasped, "At first from that distance, I thought it was some cats fighting or something." When Emily nodded, the rest of group did too as if they knew what she was talking about.

"So with my curiosity piqued, I follow the voice to the source. The night was dark and every shadow, every drip of water, every rat scuttling frightened me, but still, I told myself I would be brave!... The closer I got, the louder I could discern this wild, beastly giggling –I tell you, dear sirs, that cacophonious giggling sounded like the devil himself– but as I turn around the corner, my blood rushed to my ears and my heart went doomb-doomb-doomb!, there was... nobody there..." The group around her let out a collective sigh of relief, "except for the body!" the group shivered.

"Boys, you should have seen the body before the break of dawn. The putridinous, rancid corpse lay, and I was so shocked I almost screamed... BUT I COULDN'T! It shocked me so; I was left floored, speechless, even gabberflasted!..." Emily took this time to pause greatly and mock-fan her near-fainting self.

She grinned menacingly. It made the crowd gulp. "Of course, I hadn't expected anything quite so histrionical this early in the morning, but gulping down my pride, I galloped -galloped, boys!- to discover the whereabouts of a police officer (and when I did, he quite rudely and quite blatantly accused me of..." Emily faded off. The crowd gasped indigent.

"Ma'am, so you naught 'ave seen Jack the Ripper?" a junior officer questioned. Emily made a very grave face, "No, boy, but I did hear him, and let me tell you something about his laugh. That laugh wasn't human. It sounded like a banshee wailing..." her voice dropped low and quiet, "like children screaming, like fire raging. It was as if he enjoyed how he slaughtered that poor defenseless woman." Now, Emily's voice was barely a whisper and all the officers leaned in to hear her next words. "It sounded like-" Suddenly, very deafeningly, very abruptly, "GENTLEMEN! BACK TO WORK!" a thunderous voice called out, making everybody (even Emily) jump and almost fall all over one another.

Shaking the fear out of their faces, the young officers lugged themselves back to work, grumbling. At least, all of them had a good souvenir story to scare their children at home or their friends at the pub when they got drunk later that night to wipe the sight of the massacre scene from their mind.

"Miss Emily. Shall I escort you home?" Fred finally asked with a caring twinkle in his eyes. Emily eyed the girl's body as two men carried it into the carriage. She pointed at it and asked, "Where is that going?"

Fred responded, "To the Undertaker. Our work is done here."

"Oh. Then, I'll just ride with that carriage."

"But wouldn't you rather go home and take your mind off of the horrendous sight you have witnessed this morning? Surely, your employer will not mind," Fred suggested. Emily looked at him. He cared for her wellbeing for some reason. She found it simultaneously charming and vexing.

"That place is home," she responded simply.

Against her protests and repeat claims that she didn't need an escort, Fred sat beside her in the carriage. Emily looked down most of the trip, an action which Fred misread as shock and a sign of her mental deterioration, mistakenly thinking of Emily as a regular, fanciful, and innocent girl. As a result, Fred placed what he thought was an awkward but comforting hand over Emily's. The action received an irritated sigh from Emily who very much wanted to snatch her hand away from under Fred's; she was very glad that Fred cared about her, even had a little crush on her, but she also knew that she was a much stronger, much more indomitable person than Fred gave her credit for. It was only out of respect and politeness that she stopped herself.

Emily was grateful when the carriage stopped, indicating their arrival at Undertaker's shop. Rushing out of the carriage so fast Fred could almost hear the whoosh, Emily dug in her pockets for the key, but Terry surprised her when he opened the doors for her and the body. Terry noticed Emily's long face and reached up to stroke her cheek. She didn't even mind the ticklish feeling she got from his fingernails. A moment later, he found Emily flinging herself around his neck.

"Terry..." she whispered sadly, a great weight on each syllable," Terry, there wasn't anything, anything at all, that I could do."

Terry, who half carried her inside, patted her back softly. Fred was left neglected, feeling a bit of jealousy prod through his chest.

"Of course not, love~ But no worries, we'll get Jackie girl real soon. Okay?~" Emily just nodded in his shoulder. She wasn't crying. She wanted to, but just couldn't find the tears.

"E~mi~ly~~" Terry called out sing-soningly, "want to hear something that will cheer you up?" Emily nodded childishly.

"Ciel will probably come over today~!"

Emily's ears perked up as she pushed away from the hug with a very ecstatic look on her face. "Ciel?" Terry nodded in response. He was amused at her caprice.

"Well, in that case I need to make some biscuits and prepare the tea and clean up the lobby! Oh my good savior in heaven and whatnot, what time is it? Oh! So much to do!" Terry smiled as she busied herself like a bee. He always had the right thing to cheer her up.

The rest of the morning, they ate, examined the body (which depressed Emily a little bit because the girl was knocked with a blunt object but gained consciousness halfway through the dissection and screamed the scream that Emily had heard and had her throat cut open; cause of death: an instant bleeding to death), removed her organs, put her aside to be buried, cleaned the lobby, made some biscuits (in the dog biscuit shape that Terry loved), and helped think of Terry's entrance when Ciel arrived.

Originally, Terry wanted to dim down all the lights and walk in the shadows to greet them, but finally they agreed that coming from a coffin would be best. Initially, Emily told him to rise up from one of the coffins littered on the ground, but Terry's back argued strongly against it ("This is why we need a new mattress!"). So they settled on a coffin lined up against the wall.

"What are you going to say?" Emily asked.

"What about: 'Hello there, Ciel...'" Terry practiced shifting the coffin lid off with precision... before it fell and clanked on the floor. "Whoops."

"Hmmm..." Emily helped the lid stand upright again, "I'd suggest not letting go of the lid."

"How about 'Would you like to see the inside of the coffins?~'""

"No. Too... No," Emily shook her head.

Terry closed the coffin again and started again.

The lid glided open creepily, "Welcome Earl~ Do you want to see how it feels to sleep in my custom-made coffin...?~" His beady eyes seemed to glower and even Emily felt goosebumps. She gave him a thumbs up. "Yup, that's the one." Terry stepped out of the coffin, gingerly placing the lid back in place, as if not to hurt the coffin.

"You really like scaring people, don't you?"

"Of course~ It's something to take my mind off of worrying about somebody..."

"Hey!" Emily exclaimed defensively, smacking him lightly.

"Oi, oi. No worries~ I like worrying about you~" Terry grinned ear to ear.

Emily endearingly smacked him again, "Stupid Terry."