Mr. Geiller gave Jonathan a clean bill of health, and after grouching at Abigail over the state of the ritual across the hall for a few minutes, he returned to his house with the admonishment that he'd be back that afternoon to formalize a contract with Jonathan.

Jonathan left Abigail to it and went to see how the rest of the kids were doing in the kitchen.

"Everything going alright in here?" he called as he entered the kitchen, and surprisingly it seemed they actually had done some good. The broken bowl fragments were cleaned up off the floor and sitting on a towel on the island, and it looked like they'd successfully mopped up a fair bit of the water.

"We've run out of towels," said Ethan glumly.

Jonathan nodded. "That's fine." He took a breath and enlivened his magic, focused on the slight need lingering around Ethan, and conjured some extra towels into existence on the top of the island. Oof, that hurt a little more than usual. Guess he wasn't quite over the exertion from this morning. Lunch was probably going to be fun. "You kids go play. I'll finish up here."

After he'd reassured everyone that he was indeed fine with finishing up the kitchen on his own, they exited the kitchen and headed to the ritual room. Jonathan wondered idly if Abigail was actually going to be able to fix the ritual before Mr. Geiller arrived. Oh well, if the old reprobate had to wait around a bit, that wasn't the end of the world.

Jonathan refocused on the kitchen and began mopping up the last of the water, mentally adding a mop to his running list of things that he needed to conjure when he had a chance.

He was not happy about the revelation that he was toting around a murderous demon with him. It really gave the phrase "inner demon" a much more sinister meaning. After he hammered out a contract with Mr. Geiller, he was definitely going to adjust all of the kids' contracts to ensure that they could banish him if he was a direct physical threat to them, similar to Abigail's contract.

Ugh, he hated that whole idea, but there was just no way around it. He supposed his life was already in their hands, really, since if they canceled their contracts with him then Abigail's life would be in danger again, and unless he found more contractors he'd be headed for the Infernal Abyss shortly thereafter.

More importantly, it looked like visiting Eldridge was too dangerous in the short term, which put a major crimp on a lot of his tentative plans. He'd been meaning for a while to try and track down someone to talk to about possibly making this orphanage arrangement legal and official, or at least figuring out whether they were in any danger of being evicted. He put the odds of that pretty low, given how far away from everything the place was, but it wouldn't have hurt to look into the issue, and now he was denied that chance.

He'd also been hoping to drop by the "stay house" that Fowler had mentioned and scope out the possibility of "hiring" some more people to come help out at the orphanage in exchange for room, board, and maybe some magically-procured sundries. That, too, was off the table until he could figure out this whole Petty Baron fiasco.

The timing was really just exquisitely bad, and Jonathan found himself grinding his teeth in frustration.

He was deeply unhappy with this Petty Baron character. If the risks weren't so great to Abigail, he'd be halfway tempted to just take a little trip with her and see about unleashing Ebola on the bastard. But no, letting his inner demon go wild in the middle of town would probably bring all the people Mr. Geiller had warned him so strenuously about down on his head.

Which brought him back to the idea of possibly summoning a demon or two to help out around the orphanage, except now he had a very, very good idea about exactly how badly that could go.

Argh!

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Jonathan slammed the sopping wet towel he'd been using down on the stack, and then dumped them all by the back door to wash and dry later in the day. A sudden bout of exhaustion washed over him, and he sat down with his back against the nearby cupboards with a groan.

Being possessed really took it out of a guy.

On a whim, Jonathan enlivened his magic.

Mr. Geiller had walked him through the process of guesstimating how much effort a particular magical working would take. Ebola had told Abigail that he was always present, although given he had no recollection of the time he'd been possessed, Jonathan wasn't clear on whether the demon was conscious or not. But he had to have some sort of connection to the thing, presumably, or he'd be unable to channel the power of the Infernal Abyss in the first place. Which made him wonder if he could potentially connect to the demon intentionally without it taking control of his body.

Jonathan checked to make sure he wasn't detecting any of the kids desires nearby, and then closed his eyes and tried to connect to the Infernal Abyss.

The reflexive panic that he'd felt for so long when channeling magic was basically gone. He doubted he could have maintained a connection for any length of time when he'd first been summoned to this damn world, but now although his pulse and breathing hitched up a little as the prospect of pain loomed over him, he was able to maintain the connection.

Jonathan tried his best to focus on that connection, mentally poking at it. None of the power of the Infernal Abyss rushed into him; as he'd discovered previously, he needed someone nearby wanting for something before he could access it. Although that raised the question of how Ebola had performed magic. Abigail had said that the demon physically traveled through the house to clean up the people it had killed, and given the lack of bodies in any cupboards that presumably meant the demon had used magic. Was it possible to unlock a connection to the Infernal Abyss and then keep the magic flowing somehow? Something to experiment with later.

Imagining things happening wasn't actually making anything happen, unfortunately, but Jonathan wasn't ready to give up just yet. Back in college, he'd taken a psychology course that included a practical weekend where they spent the whole time practicing meditation. The class had been a little woo-woo, but he had gotten some basic mindfulness skills, even if he never ended up using them in his life afterward. Some of the fantasy novels he'd read included people meditating their way into great magical power, though, so it couldn't hurt to try!

Jonathan kept his magic enlivened and tried to maintain his connection to the Infernal Abyss, and when he felt like they weren't going to go anywhere he tried to observe his breathing.

It was maddening. Enlivening his magic was practically automatic at this point, but trying to connect to the Infernal Abyss was decidedly not. He kept almost losing the connection as he focused on his breaths, and then he lost track of his breathing when he refocused on the magical connection.

On the plus side, his symptoms of panic were subsiding even more, so he supposed even if he couldn't detect the demon inside this experiment wasn't a total loss.

Right, his professor back in the day had said to notice thoughts and then let them pass him by. He clearly wasn't doing so well at that currently, but maybe he could treat the connection to the Infernal Abyss similarly.

Jonathan sat still for several minutes, connecting with his body and maintaining a connection to the Infernal Abyss. It was certainly tricky, but as he continued to practice, memories of his meditation weekend were coming back to him and it was starting to feel less like juggling scarfs and bowling pins at the same time.

Jonathan started to lose track of his sense of time, his focus narrowing down toward the experience of his breathing and magic. The world around him faded into the background. He noticed his feelings of frustration and helplessness; they washed through him and fell away. His back was tensing slightly and he straightened his posture on his next breath. The floor was cold under his legs. Not a bad feeling, per se, just something his body was telling him. His thigh itched, and he allowed it to swell in his mind's eye, until it fell away before his increasingly-steady breathing. He felt an intense desire to murder someone.

Jonathan fell forward, catching himself with his palms to the floor as his heart thundered away and he completely lost control of his connection to the Infernal Abyss.

Holy shit, he hadn't actually thought it would work, but that last feeling was somehow very obviously not his. He'd had mild trouble with intrusive thoughts when he was in elementary school, and this had felt nothing like that. It had clearly been external in origin.

Jonathan was reasonably certain he'd just connected to Ebola.

It had also felt horrible. This was definitely something he was going to need to explore, but right now? Not so much.

Jonathan leveraged himself up and left the kitchen. It was time for lunch, if only because he was suddenly desirous of a bunch of kids needing stuff from him to distract himself from what he'd just done.