I'm posting the final chapter/Epilogue a day early since I'm due back at work tomorrow and I don't know when I'll get a chance to do this.

Thank you all for your follows, faves, and reviews. Your praise and interest kept me going. Otherwise, I most likely would have never finished this, or even contemplated starting on the third installment! (It is underway, I promise) Love you guys!

Disclaimer hasn't changed. Don't own. Don't sue.

Epilogue
It had been ninety years since Sebastian had bid farewell to his eternal contract Ciel Phantomhive and the lady Elizabeth. He'd kept in touch somewhat throughout the decades, of course; they had sent postcards from their travels to the only address they knew he possessed and though he hadn't remained in New Orleans after his contract with the banker had been completed, he did return occasionally to check on his home and visit the mausoleum where his family was entombed.

He assumed Ciel fared well enough on his own. His contract mark had not summoned him in his ninety-year absence, and Mistress Elizabeth faithfully wore Menefer's necklace and remained young and beautiful just as she had been when they left for Egypt in 1922. She had given birth to a remarkable baby girl within that year, just as the priestess had promised; onyx ringlets and hazel eyes and Sebastian had even held her for a moment once and felt Menefer's soul inside her.

They had taken her to the Voodoo woman a month or so after her birth and the old granny had cackled and laughed and cooed at the babe, and told them to bring her back when she was five. They stayed at the townhouse while Mennie was schooled in the arts of Voodoo, but Sebastian had taken up residence with a new contract then in New York. He'd phoned the house on a whim one evening and Lizzie had answered, filling him in on the recent events and asking if he was certain that it was alright that they used the house in his absence. He assured them it was perfectly fine, as long as she didn't attempt to burn it down again.

The child became a prominent figure in New Orleans, renowned for her gifts, as she grew older. She was part demon after all, so as her father and mother did not age, they were forced to part ways for lengths at a time lest someone grow suspicious of their relationship. She did age, but after eighteen, it seemed she only aged a year in ten. Sebastian wondered if his son would have had to bear the same burden. He'd seen her again, during one of his trips home, and was startled at how much she resembled Menefer. Her skin was alabaster like her parents, but her hair and nose, cheekbones and dark eyes that seemed forever lined with Kohl were eerily identical to his former lover. She'd stared at him from across the street as she'd passed, trying vainly to place him in her past because she knew she knew him. He'd smiled politely and nodded at her as he'd entered his house and she'd remained on the sidewalk staring blindly at the front of the townhouse where he'd disappeared.

That had been twenty years previous, he figured, wondering if he'd ever run into her again. He was certain Ciel and Lizzie would have an aversion to his fleeting idea of making her his lover. He smiled despite himself. He had not taken another after Menefer. Cybille still haunted his thoughts. When he slept, he dreamed of them both. He wondered if perhaps he had loved Menefer, after all. As it were, he was still waiting on Ciel's dream to come true. The idea of meeting Cybille again thrilled and terrified him at once.

He was home again, now, in the Crescent City; still the ever-bustling metropolis, the old world providing the backdrop for the new. Filled with neon lights and smoke and sex, he longed for those days when the fog settled into the streets and he could walk alone beneath the sagging iron balconies and hear the distant thrump, thrump, thrump of the paddle wheels as they lumbered up the Mississippi. He was on Bourbon now, slithering through the crush of bodies, the music and the car horns sharp in his sensitive ears, but still, he loved it.

He was fulfilling a contract tonight. One that had come to fruition over the course of the last five years and as a final request before having his soul consumed, the man had asked that Sebastian meet him at his favorite bar-a hole in the wall called Petout's-so that he could have a plate of alligator tail and a Hurricane before he left this earthly realm.

Sebastian was nothing, if not noble, and he acquiesced with the grace of the butler he'd been, allowing the man to drive alone the two and a half hours from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans to a bar he had frequented in his youth. Sebastian had quite enjoyed Mobile, he mused, pushing through the throng of humans. The only thing sweeter than the tea had been the accents of the women and he'd heard once that the South had the loveliest women in the world. Considering he'd married one over two hundred years ago, he was inclined to at least mostly agree.

The bodies on the street thinned out somewhat as he neared his destination. It was early yet, though, and even in the middle of the week, Bourbon Street could be difficult to traverse. The sidewalks were lined with hawkers and street performers, and the noise had become a dull drone in his head. Over the ambiance of the hum, the sound of an electric guitar rose up from the murmur; a heartbreaking solo that seemed to make the instrument itself cry. Sebastian found himself smiling again as he entered the bar where his contract was waiting. He'd found in recent years, he quite enjoyed the blues; he recognized the solo from an old Elmore James piece that had since been remade by countless artists-but the original still carried the most heartache, he thought, and as such, remained his favorite.

He spotted the chubby, middle-aged man that had so recklessly sold his soul to a devil sitting at the far end of the bar, chugging back one cocktail after another. When did I lose my sense of taste, he wondered, staring in contempt at the man. He'd taken contract after contract on the Surface only so that he could remain on the Surface, but looking at this broken excuse for a human before him, he decided that he simply could not suffer the taste of another mediocre sinner.

The guitarist on the stage was a young Caucasian, slightly heavy with a cherubic face and sweat-matted hair hanging in his eyes as he played. The demon felt the music reverberating through his body as the boy played; the drummer, slightly older-maybe thirty-keeping up easily with a jazz beat and there was a bassist onstage-an older man in his late forties with long silver hair and a black goatee and mustache. Sebastian weighed each of them in his mind. Would one or all give anything to be successful? To be the next big thing?

He settled into a bar stool, paces from his forgotten contract, and watched the stage intently, measuring the talent of the musicians and thinking that anything would taste better than the soul he was loathe to consume tonight. He was drawing quite the crowd himself, he realized; his preternatural beauty was every bit as much a curse as it was a blessing.

He smiled politely to the first few women that had drawn near, but he began to will them away as they grew bolder. One woman in little more than a scrap of red fabric had even gone so far as to perch in his denim-clad lap. He shifted, and she slid off, huffing in indignation and left with two of her friends. He brushed the imaginary debris she'd left from his jeans leg and crossed one leg over the other.

He was studying his current meal now, trying to buoy his appetite by imagining the man would be anything other than greasy and bland but failing miserably. Then a voice assailed his ears and for a moment, Sebastian forgot everything he had ever known.

Please allow me to introduce myself,
I'm a man of wealth and taste.
I've been around for a long, long year
Stolen many a man's soul and fate.

I was around when Jesus Christ
Had his moments of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate.

The gravelly voice seemed to permeate his senses and he found himself staring at the stage with all the wonderment and awe in the world painted on his face. His dinner was forgotten and with little more than a subconscious thought, he terminated the contract. The seal on the back of his hand burned for a moment, but the discomfort was easily pushed aside as he remembered Menefer's parting speech to him almost a century ago:

"You will not know her by her looks, but her voice. So I want you to listen. I want my suffering to have meant something."

The woman on stage was certainly not Cybille DeMoreau. The two bore no resemblance, except the flaxen curls they both possessed. She was young, perhaps twenty-five or so, and smaller than Cybille had been. Curvy, but lean, with well-formed muscles in her arms that belied her feminine make-up and hair style.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank, Held a general's rank
While the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank!

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
What's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

The guitarist dissolved into a screeching solo and Sebastian couldn't tear his eyes from the girl as she swayed to the music, her hands clasping the microphone stand, eyes closed and plump red lips parted sensually as she rocked her hips to and fro. Many of the men in the crowd were cat-calling her but she ignored them, lost in the whining tenor of the guitar, dancing something more akin to making love with her rhythmic undulations.

She opened her eyes as the solo ended, and so too did the pendulous swagger of her hips, and she breathed and that voice came out again, velvet but harsh; a bell's tone with too much whiskey. Her eyes were blue. Sapphire, with rings of pure titanium circling her pupils, but Sebastian could tell she didn't wear contacts. And though her make-up was elaborate and dark-a facsimile of Old Hollywood with her black cat-eye liner and false lashes and ridiculously red lips-she wore no foundation and her skin was flawless but for the tiny mole just above the left side of her mouth beneath her upturned nose.

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer
Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste!

Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name
Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name...

The applause was thunderous and only then did Sebastian realize he was no longer in his seat at the bar, but had pressed into the throng of bodies in front of the stage. Her talent had no doubt doubled the patrons in the establishment, drawing them in around him as he'd been lost in the space between himself and the stage. He couldn't tear his gaze from her still.

And as if he'd willed it to happen, her eyes settled on him-taller and far more beautiful than anyone else in the bar-and though she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'd never met the man in her life, she felt her heart break inside her chest and tears well up in her eyes.