Strangely, the room with Abigail's partially-cleared ritual circle was virtually untouched. The Petty Baron's lackeys had broken or desecrated every single thing they could get their hands on, but an obviously magic circle made out of chalk was apparently a bridge too far.

Ironically, that really pissed Jonathan off, because while he didn't have anything resembling a plan, he did have a first step that he was no longer hesitant to perform, and it required some clean floor space.

"Abigail, can you please work on getting that ritual we talked about a couple days ago chalked out? The kids and I are going to need to do some deep cleaning but I want to be able to summon a demon and ask it a few questions as soon as possible."

Abigail nodded, perhaps a little too eagerly. And she hadn't even seen the upstairs yet. "Sure, Jonathan, I can do that!" She jetted off for the side room without looking back.

The other kids gave Jonathan looks of abject betrayal. "I'm sorry, kids, but I'm going to need all of you to help. We've got—well, a lot of work ahead of us if we're going to have somewhere to sleep. Ethan, can you please take a few of the older kids and gather as many of the supplies at the fallback as you can carry to bring back here? We're probably going to need to camp out again as long as the weather holds. Everyone who's left, please help me bring anything broken outside. Be careful in the kitchen, though! I don't want anyone cutting themselves on the broken pottery."

He looked at the stairs and shuddered. "I'll—tackle the upstairs."

Jamilah spoke up. "Do you want help with—"

"No, thank you, Jamilah. Trust me, you really don't want to deal with that—stuff."

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The next two days dragged by, as the kids and Jonathan slowly brought the orphanage back to a livable state. Thankfully the beds themselves were made of metal and aside from a few new dents worked just as well as before. Most of the chairs had survived, as well, thanks to their sturdy construction, although Jonathan had to conjure some sand paper and teach the kids how to sand out some of the worst scratches and splinters.

The mattresses had never been the height of comfort, and Jonathan was worried that he wouldn't be able to salvage them. Thankfully, however, Abigail had informed him they were washable—apparently children had soiled the beds frequently enough in the orphanage that the mattresses were washed with some regularity—and although washing them was difficult in the extreme, and Jonathan came out of the experience as soaking wet as the mattresses themselves. Unlike Jonathan, they also failed to dry completely within a day, and were left with a slightly musty smell.

It was still better than urine, though, and the mattresses remained moderately more comfortable than sleeping on the floor.

Luckily, the weather held and the kids were able to make an adventure of it sleeping in the back yard with the supplies from the fallback.

On the third day, Abigail finished the ritual circle.

Perhaps because they had chosen the ritual that was intended to only hold a demon for a short time, this one was even more elaborate than the ritual Abigail had used to summon Jonathan.

"This isn't going to summon some poor shmuck from my universe, is it?" asked Jonathan, giving the thing a suspicious look.

"No, no! I, uh, asked Mr. Geiller to take a look yesterday when he came over, just in case, and he couldn't find any problems with it."

Jonathan looked at Abigail in surprise. "He didn't flip out about summoning a demon?"

She shook her head. "I think those awful men shook him up. And he knows anything summoned with this won't stick around, so I don't think he's too worried. He did say he didn't want to be anywhere near when we first activated it, though."

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"Oh, so that's why he decided to take today off from coming over to teach. Well, whatever. I told the kids to stay in the back yard, and if they hear anything weird, they're to run into the forest. If you'll show me how this works, you can go join them."

Abigail looked surprised. "Alright, if you're going to activate the ritual, though, we'll need to erase a little bit of it and you'll have to rewrite it, instead."

"Which part?"

Abigail pointed to a curl of script on the near edge.

"I can…probably handle that."

Abigail gave him a skeptical look. "Let's practice over here before you mess up my ritual…"

After about 15 minutes of successive failures to reproduce the strange shapes to Abigail's exacting standards, Jonathan went and told the kids they could come back inside if they wanted. This was clearly going to take a little longer than he'd hoped.

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Another day passed, and Abigail finally decided that Jonathan's ritual shapes or letters or whatever they were supposed to be were acceptable. The next problem was that he evidently needed to "channel magic" while writing them.

Jonathan was exasperated. "What on earth is channeling magic?!"

Abigail looked thoughtful, with a hand on her chin. The effect was somewhat ruined by the chalk dust she inadvertently spread all over, since until recently she'd been crouched on the floor with Jonathan drawing out example after example for him to imitate. "It's like enlivening your magic like you did to activate catalysts, but instead of letting it brush against a catalyst you sort of press it into the ritual as you draw. It's the same thing you'll need to do to activate it."

Jonathan gave her a flat stare. "And how do I do that exactly?"

Abigail sighed.

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Another two days later, Jonathan finished redrawing the portion of the ritual circle that Abigail insisted had to be his responsibility if he was going to be the one activating it, and he was finally ready to try summoning his first demon. He chased all the kids, including Abigail, outside and made them promise to run for the woods at the first sign of demonic trouble, then returned to the ritual circle alone.

"Okay, I can do this!" Jonathan wasn't usually one for talking to himself, but he was feeling nervous now that it was just him, a ritual circle he didn't truly understand, and the prospect of meeting a strange demon.

Then again, he wasn't a normal human anymore; he had a demon of his own! Heck, he was probably going to be the scariest thing in the room, if only because it was impossible to tell there was any danger until the demon emerged.

Nodding to himself, Jonathan leaned over and channeled magic into the ritual circle.

Nothing happened for a minute or so, but then the air in the center of the circle seemed to stretch and there was a strange snapping sound…and Jonathan definitely wasn't the scariest thing in the room.

The demon he'd summoned looked like someone had taken a human skeleton and then stretched a skin over it that was several sizes too small. The thing was downright skeletal, with its pelvic bone and ribs standing out in sharp detail against its dusky skin, and legs and arms so thin they looked like they were about to snap. Weirdly, because it had eyes the right size for its skeleton but not enough facial musculature around them it looked like its eyes were bugging out.

Jonathan inadvertently took a half step back, and the demon's eyes locked on the movement. It pressed itself right up against the edge of the circle circumscribing where it could go and stood there staring silently.

"Uh," said Jonathan, completely unnerved and having a hard time gathering his thoughts. "Um, okay, that worked, I guess. I'm going to ask you three questions. If you wish not to answer or answer untruthfully, you will be returned to the Infernal Abyss. Once you have answered my third question or when I decide I am done listening to the answer you will return to the Infernal Abyss. Depending on your answers, I may summon you again in the future."

He and Abigail had worked this approach out together while they were planning out what the circle needed to include. It required a much more involved ritual and a bit more magic to be channeled, but hopefully would allow them to get honest answers to the two questions they actually cared about without exposing Jonathan to any undue risk.

"Ask," said the demon, its voice like sandpaper dragged across a knot.

Jonathan swallowed, trying to get some moisture back in his mouth. He knew he was as safe as he could expect—heck he'd been trapped in a ritual like this himself—but it still looked like the demon could jump him at any time.

He needed to get this over with. "What is your greatest desire here in the mortal realm?"

The thing gave him a rictus grin. "I will pin you down and slowly pull your limbs off. I will revel in your screams as—"

"Okay, second question. What is your name?"

The demon glowered at him for a moment in silence. "Necrosis," it said at last.

Jonathan carefully wrote that down on a pad of paper he had conjured for the purpose. "Last question: do you have any other desires here in the mortal realm?"

This time the demon practically jumped at the chance to answer. "Yes! I wish to serve you loyally for as long—"

There was a repeat of the snapping sound and the demon seemed to twist into midair and disappear. Which was super disturbing all on its own.

Abigail had been right with her prediction, though: the demon had clearly decided to lie in response to the last question.