When the kids came back, it was all seven of them and Jonathan was just about bored out of his skull.

He jumped up as they started filing into the yard from a hole in the back fence. "Hey, you're back! So what will it be? Do you want to move into the orphanage and make a contract with me?"

Ethan just stood there looking displeased, but Kylus practically skipped over to Jonathan. "Yep! We're doing it! Alright, everyone, this is Jonathan, the demon Sandra and I were telling you about! Jonathan, this is Ethan, Bethany, Jamilah, Sandra—who you already know, obviously—Chris, and the little guy is Yanni." Jonathan barely had a chance to glance over the group, and completely failed to put any face to a name as Kylus rattled them off. "We're going to gather our stuff, but we'll be right back out, okay?"

And like the whirlwind he was, Kylus was past Jonathan and into the house.

The rest of the kids remained in front of him, looking shy and awkward. Sandra rolled her eyes and followed Kylus at a more sedate pace.

"Uh, I'll just wait out front, how about?" said Jonathan. "We'll have a pretty long walk to get better acquainted."

Ethan nodded to Jonathan and turned to the rest of the kids. "Okay, everyone in! Pack for a permanent move and let's get out of here soon."

While everyone packed, Jonathan practiced enlivening his magic, and experimented with detecting people inside houses. It turned out that if he knew—or at least strongly suspected—someone was in a particular direction, he could detect their smoke within a few heart beats after enlivening his magic. He was also able to pick up people he hadn't known about if he focused on an area for long enough—he tested by focusing on some of the nearby houses—but the impressions that he got off those individuals, and the smoke itself, was a lot more hazy and indistinct. Still, the ability to detect people through walls was pretty cool, even if it was a slow process. The only downside was that if he stopped focusing on whatever smoke that he'd detected, it disappeared even faster than when he stopped enlivening his magic, so he wasn't going to be able to use it to passively monitor people anytime soon.

Oh, well. It would have been handy with this crowd moving into the orphanage, but he'd make do. He hoped.

Eventually, the whole group of kids gathered on the street. They had a surprisingly small amount of stuff. Ethan had a large pack that he was carrying, but the rest mostly had small amounts of clothes and such slung on their backs. Jonathan supposed it made sense, given they didn't have a legitimate income and Kylus had mentioned they needed to move more than once in the past. It was still kind of sad, though.

"Alright, everyone ready to go?" said Jonathan. "Let's head out! Although, I'm going to need someone to take the lead until we exit Eldridge, because I don't know my way around here."

The group didn't talk much as they navigated the city; the kids all seemed pretty on edge, particularly when they entered any area with a sizable amount of foot traffic. It was honestly sad to see.

Once they left the city proper, however, everyone started to relax a bit more. Jonathan waited until they were far enough away that the foot traffic on the road had dropped a bit, and then turned to Ethan. "Shall we take a small break and have some lunch before we get to the uphill portion of our walk? The orphanage is most of the way up the edge of the valley there, so it's going to be a bit of a slog."

"Sure," said Ethan, then called out to the kids who had separated somewhat along the road. "Hey, everyone, over here! Jonathan's going to feed us before we keep going."

The group of kids gathered around, and Jonathan rotated to address all of them. "Okay, as Kylus said earlier, I'm a demon, which means that I can conjure food when you're feeling hungry. Once you make a contract with me, I'll do this regularly, but for now there's no reason I can't feed you some lunch so you can get an idea of what you're getting into. Since we're out in the countryside, we'll need something we can eat with our hands, so how about you think about whatever sandwich you enjoy most? Just focus on that, and I'll conjure the sandwiches there." Jonathan pointed to a nearby tree stump a few steps beyond the edge of the road that looked roomy enough to hold eight sandwiches.

He was getting kind of sick of sandwiches, of course, but at least now he'd have a great excuse for why he didn't want to conjure one when Abigail inevitably asked for them for dinner.

Jonathan enlivened his magic and focused on the kids in front of him. Seven different colored patches of smoke sprang into being, and he tried to keep them all in his attention. Once he felt confident that none of them were going to disappear, he connected to the Infernal Abyss.

To his surprise, the only smoke that rushed toward him was from the older girl he wasn't familiar with—he thought her name started with a "J", but couldn't remember it exactly—and a moment later eight identical sandwiches appeared on top of the stump.

As the kids exclaimed in astonished happiness and snatched up the food, Jonathan stumbled a bit. Although that hadn't taken as much out of him as he'd feared, it had definitely been a lot more exhausting than summoning food for three.

Once the initial bout of exhaustion had passed, Jonathan walked a little unsteadily to the stump, retrieved the final sandwich, and sat down where it had been resting. It wasn't the normal mystery meat he was getting accustomed to. This was more like a shawarma or gyro sandwich and was heavily spiced with relatively thin strips of meat and what appeared to be grilled vegetables and a sauce that had a citrus tang to it. This must have been the sandwich that the girl whose smoke got pulled in when he was conjuring the food was thinking of, but why did he end up with eight instances of the single sandwich that she wanted? Last night, he'd only pulled smoke from Abigail, but he had conjured four different dishes for the twins, Abigail, and himself. Though come to think, he'd had the twins describe what they wanted, so maybe he was able to sense from the smoke what someone wanted, but since he only pulled in a single person's smoke at a time he needed to otherwise know specifically what folks were aiming for?

It certainly bore experimenting, and he had a feeling he'd have lots of chances in the near future with so many new mouths to feed.

After a few minutes had passed, and people weren't scarfing their sandwiches down with such wild abandon—though Jonathan noticed that Ethan, Chris, and the girl whose smoke he'd used had already finished theirs—Jonathan lowered his own sandwich and spoke up. "Would folks be willing to re-introduce themselves to me? I know Kylus already pointed you out, but frankly I only caught one name in three."

"Sure—" started Kylus, but Jonathan cut him off.

"No, not you, Kylus. I wanted people to introduce themselves."

The kids looked around as if they were in a school room and the teacher had just told them to discuss something amongst themselves.

"I'll start," said Ethan. "I'm Ethan, as you know, and this is my sister Bethany." He patted the shoulder of the young girl, who was standing half behind his leg. Like Ethan, she had brown hair several shades lighter than Kylus and Sandra, but where his was roughly cropped near the top of his neck, hers hung down a little past her shoulders and at the moment was partially obscuring her face.

"How old are you, Bethany?" asked Jonathan.

She looked his way but pulled a little farther behind Ethan's leg. "Six."

"Good for you. What about you, young man? What's your name?" he asked the other young child who had been lingering near Ethan and Bethany.

"I am Yanni," said the boy. "I am seven!" He was a little smaller than Bethany, and looked younger somehow, so that was a bit surprising to Jonathan. His skin was darker, as well; more of a burnished olive, and his hair was a very dark brown, almost looking black. He also had a slight accent compared to the other children, and Jonathan wondered if he was one of those refugees from the south that Fowler had mentioned in passing.

Jonathan smiled. "It's wonderful to meet you, Yanni. Chris and I met yesterday, and I've spent a bit of time with Sandra, but what about you?" He turned to the girl whose smoke had summoned the sandwiches.

"I am Jamilah," she said, her voice lower than Jonathan would have expected from a child her apparent age. She looked quite a bit older than Abigail, though nowhere near as old as Ethan. "I am eight years old." Or she was actually younger, and Jonathan was awful at judging children's ages. She had an even darker skin tone than Yanni, but her accent was very similar. Her hair was a deep brown, but where Yanni's was practically black Jamilah's had an almost reddish tint. It only reached the base of her neck, but he couldn't tell how long it actually was, because she had it pulled back in a tight braid.

"I'm very happy to meet you, Jamila. I think I made a little mistake when I conjured those sandwiches, and only conjured the one that you were wanting, but I can't say I regret it. This is delicious."

Jamilah smiled, though her expression looked a little sad, too.

"And I'm Kylus! I'm nine, and—"

"Yes, yes, Kylus, I'm very familiar with you at this point," interrupted Jonathan.

Yanni laughed, and after a moment Bethany joined in.

Well. That wasn't a bad start.