Almost a week had passed, and Jonathan wasn't sleeping well. He told himself it didn't make sense: the fallback was complete—or at least complete enough—and now featured a cleverly disguised entryway, a large canvas lean-to that Jonathan had constructed with the help of some of the older kids, and good supply of packaged food and water. He'd done two trial runs with the kids, and was reasonably sure that they would be able to make their way safely and relatively swiftly to the fallback, if needed.

Mr. Geiller's classes had also settled into a pattern, with Jonathan spending time working on reading, writing, and drawing with the youngest kids while Mr. Geiller griped at the elder ones about magic. It wasn't a situation that made anyone other than Bethany and Yanni happy, per se, but it was working well enough for the time being.

He'd even introduced the chore chart, and although success there was mixed—he had to nag many of the kids about the chores so much that it was almost as much effort as just doing them himself—at least he was getting some help. It wasn't enough, of course—it was never enough—but objectively more was getting done around the orphanage than when he was doing it all himself, even if the kids did tend to make even more work when they tried to help sometimes.

But despite accomplishing many of his short-term goals, his stress levels were constantly ticking upwards, he was having trouble getting a good night's rest, and he was finding he had less patience dealing with the kids fighting or acting out than usual.

It felt like he was waiting for the axe to fall.

He'd been trying to distract himself with meditation and reading the grimoire, but there, too, he hadn't made any new discoveries so much as reinforced what he already believed.

Aside from continuing to improve the fallback, he was at a loss for how he could prepare more for an eventual attack from the Petty Baron. His best hope was to get the kids out of danger, and if the attack was bad enough and they were persistent about sticking around the orphanage, his last resort would be to try and drive them off by unleashing Ebola.

He really didn't want to do that, though. Even with the improved contracts he'd made with the kids, that just felt incredibly risky. Plus what would he do if Ebola decided to run off without Abigail and wreak havoc? He couldn't see any way that would end other than him getting banished along with the demon.

Honestly, with Eldridge currently denied him and no other towns within walking distance—according to Mr. Geiller—he could only think of one thing he could do to pro-actively improve their situation.

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Jonathan found Abigail outside around the side of the orphanage practicing drawing some sort of ritual pattern in the dirt with a stick. He'd noticed that although Abigail clearly enjoyed having the other children around, she still tended to hole herself up on her own for long stints every couple days. He was betting if he could manage to conjure a personality test, she'd be on the introverted end of the spectrum.

"Hey Abigail, mind if I join you?" he said, stopping nearby and crouching down.

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Abigail looked startled, apparently not having noticed him approaching. "Sure, Jonathan. Did you need something?"

"No, not exactly." He paused, and when he didn't continue, she turned her attention back to whatever it was she was drawing.

"That one of the patterns Mr. Geiller assigned you?"

"Yeah," she said absently, wiping out part of the drawing with her hand, and then starting to recreate it with her stick. Jonathan honestly couldn't see the difference between the old lines and the new ones, but Abigail was apparently more happy with it.

He sat there for a bit and watched the clouds go by, listening to the gentle scraping sound of Abigail dragging the stick through the dirt.

Boy had it ever been a while since he'd just sat and relaxed. He would have tried this earlier, if he didn't always have a million things that he needed to do.

Sure enough, a few minutes after he'd sat down he heard the pounding of feet as some kids ran into the orphanage. "I don't care what you say, you cheated!" yelled someone—strangely, it sounded like it might be Jamilah, who wasn't usually one to get all heated up over a game.

He should probably go and make sure no one was going to attack anyone else, but Jamilah was one of the least likely to do so after Sandra, so—he stayed where he was.

A minute or two later, Abigail was apparently satisfied with her drawing, and she sat back on her heels with a smile. "What do you think? Did I get it right?"

Jonathan gave it a critical look, but it still just looked like a bunch of squiggles to him. "Abigail, I honestly have no idea what it's supposed to look like, never mind what it's supposed to do. But it looks really good; your lines are getting a lot more regular."

Abigail beamed. "Thanks, Jonathan! I've been practicing."

"That's great. Hey, on the topic of ritual circles and suchlike, I've been reading that grimoire of yours and I'm wondering if we should try summoning a demon, just to ask it a question or two."

Abigail looked surprised. "Oh, were you still thinking of summoning a demon to help with the housework?"

"Well, ultimately yeah. But I've got some ideas about how demons might work and I don't think I'm going to figure anything more out without actually summoning one."

Abigail grimaced. "Mr. Geiller isn't going to like that."

"Well…no. But Mr. Geiller also isn't the person responsible for an orphanage full of children. And if I'm right…I think with a little creativity and maybe some luck, I can probably summon a demon fairly safely. Plus, if I'm understanding the grimoire correctly, aren't demons unable to harm you until after you make a contract?"

Abigail shrugged. "Uh, I think? That's what the grimoire implied, anyway."

"Yeah, and I remember when you first summoned me, I couldn't leave the circle until I provided you with that sandwich."

"Yeah, that's how it's supposed to work. You can make one safe request of a demon when you summon it." She looked away, flushing a little. "Although, the book said that the request should always be to make a contract, since otherwise they can get out and uncontracted demons are really dangerous. Mr. Geiller was really angry with me about that when I told him about summoning you."

Jonathan nodded, thoughtful. "That makes sense. Do you think we could set up the ritual so that the demon is automatically banished back to the Infernal Abyss after making a request?"

"Oh, yes. That was one of the variants in the back of the grimoire. It said it's mostly used to ask questions, because if the demon uses too much magic it will overload the ritual's protections."

"That sounds incredibly dangerous."

Abigail shrugged. "The ritual is setup to automatically banish the demon in that case."

Jonathan was very, very glad that sandwiches apparently didn't require a large expenditure of magic. "Okay, good. And do we have a way to summon a demon again with a different ritual circle, if need be?"

"That's in the grimoire, too. I think all you need is the demon's name."

Jonathan nodded. "Sounds good. That all being the case, how do you feel about helping me summon a demon?"