Thankfully for Jonathan's sanity, about three quarters through the walk, Kylus the chatterbox got a little too tired to continue his endless monologuing, and they descended into blessed silence.

At last, they reached the turn-off, and Jonathan turned to Kylus. "The orphanage is just down this side road a ways. Do you want to wait for your sister?"

"No, she's good. We don't need to take any turn-offs?"

"No, it's a straight shot."

"She'll be fine."

Jonathan gave him a look. Well, whatever. It wasn't like there were any threats out here.

That he knew about, at least. He hoped she didn't overshoot the orphanage and end up in the woods; he still hadn't had a chance to explore that place.

The two turned off the paved road, circled the hill, and started down the once-graveled road toward the orphanage. As they drew even with it, Kylus paused a moment to read the sign that was posted outside the fence. "Look at that, you were telling the truth about living in an orphanage. Honestly, I kept expecting us to be ambushed by someone on the way."

Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Then why did you come in the first place?"

"I was hoping I was wrong! And look at that, I was! Let's head in; Sandra will figure it out."

Did this kid even like his sister?

The two passed through the gate, Kylus eagerly looking around everywhere and Jonathan worried about Abigail.

"So where are all the kids?"

"Your group would be the kids, if you decide to take me up on my offer. It's just me and Abigail right now."

"Huh, okay."

Jonathan opened the door to the orphanage and strode inside. "Abigail? Mr. Geiller? Either of you around?"

"Jonathan? You're back!" Abigail emerged from one of the side rooms near the entryway and stopped short as she caught sight of Kylus. "Who is that?"

"This is—"

Kylus pushed past Jonathan. "Hey, my name is Kylus! I hear your name is Abigail? Do you live here? Is Jonathan actually a demon? Can we seriously live here just by making a contract with him? Have you done that? What's it like? Why are you the only kid here? Do you like living in an orphanage? What—"

"Kylus, give the girl space," said an exasperated voice from the door behind Jonathan, and Sandra strode past him and up to the shell-shocked Abigail, shoving Kylus aside. "Hi, my name is Sandra, and this idiot is my twin brother. We came back with Jonathan because we needed to verify that he wasn't trying to lure us away so he could do something horrible to us, but it's looking increasingly likely that he wasn't doing that. Would it be alright with you if we talked to you a little bit before we head back to the city? Preferably without Jonathan listening?"

Abigail shot Jonathan a helpless look. "Uh, I suppose? I mean, yes, that's alright. Do you mind, Jonathan?"

"No, knock yourselves out."

All three kids gave him a weird look.

"I mean, go right ahead. Before you do, though: how's that ritual coming along?"

Abigail's face lit up. "I'm almost done! It's a lot simpler than the one I needed to summon you, and Mr. Geiller was surprisingly helpful."

"Great, that's great. Where is the old—I mean, is Mr. Geiller still here, or has he gone home?"

"He's across the hall." Abigail pointed to the room across from where she'd been working on the contract ritual.

"Of course he is," muttered Jonathan. He supposed if the curmudgeon hadn't responded when he called out, he probably wouldn't react well if Jonathan tried to talk to him. "Okay, I'm going to sit down for a little bit and then do some cleaning. Give me a yell if you need anything, okay? Don't let Kylus talk you into a stupor."

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Sandra laughed at that. Maybe she wasn't as reticent as she'd seemed on the walk to the orphanage.

"Okay, you two can come in here and we can talk while I put the finishing touches on this ritual," Abigail said. "Don't touch anything, though! I really don't think I'm going to have enough energy to fix anything today."

Kylus and Sandra followed her into the room she'd originally exited, and Jonathan wandered off to change out of his dirty clothes and maybe have some peace and quiet for a few minutes.

----------------------------------------

An hour or so later, Kylus and Sandra came to find Jonathan where he was trying to wash the mud or whatever other nastiness he'd been sitting in on the side of the road out of his pants using the small metal tub in the kitchen. He was getting a lot better at getting water into it from the faucet without spilling all over himself.

When he saw the two enter the kitchen, he let the pants sink back into the water and stood up. "You heading back to Eldridge? Or do you want to stay the night? I have no idea how long the sun will be up, but I don't want to get stabbed by Ethan, either."

Kylus laughed at that, but Sandra looked thoughtful, which was not the most reassuring expression she could have made. "Ethen actually told us to stay if it looked safe," said Kylus. "He was worried about us walking around alone outside Eldridge, even though I told him we'd be fine. We've been through a lot worse than a stroll through the countryside, though I'll admit this place is pretty tiring to get to. But it's all downhill the other way, right? So that wouldn't be so bad. But yes, we'd love to stay the night, wouldn't we, Sandra?" Sandra didn't respond, and Kylus didn't actually pause to allow her to, anyway. "Plus, Abigail says that you make really fantastic sandwiches, although come to think of it, that's kind of a strange dinner food, isn't it? But on the other hand, we've never had your cooking before, so who doesn't like an adventure? Does it really count as cooking if you do it by magic, though? And can you make anything that you can imagine?"

Jonathan cut in, because he could already tell that Kylus was in full gear at this point, and the boy had paused briefly to breathe. "I can make a lot of stuff, but we haven't had a chance to really experiment yet so I wouldn't want to say I can make anything. In any case, do you two want a tour of the orphanage, such as it is? Things are still pretty bare bones, but I'm trying to improve it as fast as I can. You could pick out the beds you want to use tonight, too, so I can get some bedding on them."

"Sure, that sounds great!" said Kylus. "How are you improving things? Do you do everything through magic? If you contract with all of us, will that mean that you can do even more magic? Abigail said that you're only creating stuff with magic four or five times a day, but will that be enough? I mean, we have some stuff that we can bring with us, but not a whole lot. We lost a lot of our belongings when we had to flee the river district a month or so ago. Boy was that ever awful! Sandra can back me up. Ethan was sooooo stressed that whole time, too, the rest of us were just tiptoeing around trying not to get him riled up. He'd finally started settling back down since we found that house you tailed us to, but I'll bet he's riled right back up now. That was one of the reasons Sandra and I volunteered to come check out the orphanage, actually, because Ethan getting worked up about needing to abandon our current place if you turned out to be from a rival gang or something was just not going to be any fun at all. I wish we could have taken Bethany and Yanni, but Ethan never would have allowed it and come to think they probably wouldn't be able to make such a long walk, anyway. At least not straight through, wouldn't you say Sandra?"

By now, Jonathan had led the two upstairs, and he opened the door to the room he and Abigail were sleeping in. "Here's Abigail's and my room. There's three other rooms on this floor just like it, each of them with about the same number of beds."

"You're sleeping in the same room?" asked Sandra.

Jonathan shrugged. "It was Abigail's request, and honestly I wasn't really feeling like isolating myself in the staff rooms downstairs. Getting summoned here was rough."

"I'll bet, huh?" Kylus chimed in. "I don't actually know anything about the Infernal Abyss, but it's got to be completely different, right? Is that metal thing there something to make you feel more at home? It looks weird. I have to say, though, you just don't seem much like a demon, based on how the Quints described demons to us. Aren't you supposed to be all evil or full of violent impulses or something?"

Jonathan didn't respond at first, until he realized that Kylus was actually pausing long enough to allow him to. "Oh! Well, I'm not your typical demon, to be frank. So, there's a couple of empty rooms down here at the end, but Abigail and I haven't done anything with them yet, so there's not much to see. I guess we should head back downstairs, and I can show you the dining room and bathroom; you've already seen the kitchen."

As they headed down the stairs, Abigail found them. "Hey, Jonathan, would you mind eating dinner a little early? I think I'm going to have to go to bed soon; I'm not feeling great."

"Of course, Abigail. Are you two hungry?"

Sandra smiled, and Kylus scoffed. "We're always hungry! Sandra always says never to turn down a free meal, not that we've seen a lot of free meals, mind you. But the idea is sound. Oh, can we sit just anywhere? I'm going to sit at the head of the table, then! Good grief, these chairs are ridiculously heavy, aren't they?"

Jonathan ignored Kylus as he jabbered on while he dragged the biggest possible chair around towards the head of the table, and instead moved a chair next to Abigail for Sandra. She nodded at him in thanks, but apparently was back to remaining virtually silent. Maybe she only liked talking to girls her own age? Well, whatever.

"Alright, settle down, Kylus. Now, I want everyone to describe what they want to eat, because we don't have a lot of utensils available so I might need to make those as I conjure the food."

Kylus and Sandra both wanted to eat something that required forks, so he was glad he'd mentioned it.

Abigail, predictably, just wanted a sandwich.

Jonathan was beginning to think there was something wrong with that girl.