The girl looked surprised. "Oh, we never introduced ourselves, did we? My name's Abigail."

"Well, Abby, my name is Jonathan. Now about those pants..."

"Abigail, not Abby!"

"...fine, Abigail. So, the pants..."

"Your name is Jonathan? Really?"

Jonathan glared. He was starting to wonder if dying horribly in the Infernal Abyss might not have been that bad after all. "Yes, really. Now..."

"That's not a very demon-esque name, you know. You could totally be mistaken as a human with a name like that."

"I am a human!"

"...right. You know, it's not a very good start for our contracted relationship to have you lying through your teeth over things that are self-obvious."

Jonathan ground those aforementioned teeth together as he issued his best death glare.

"Fine, have it your way, Jonathan. Anyway, to answer your second question, I'm not actually sure where we can find you a pair of pants, but if you help me with the ladder over there we can go see if the docent left anything behind."

Jonathan followed Abigail over to the trap door. "What's a docent?"

With a grunt of effort, Abigail pulled the trap-door open. "Ugh, help out with this, would you?" Jonathan obligingly grabbed the ladder and started maneuvering it down. It was super awkward and heavy, making him wonder again how she'd managed to get it up into the attic in the first place. "The docent was our teacher. He didn't live here full time, but he stayed overnight most days of the week, so if we're lucky he'll have left some clothes behind." She gave Jonathan a critical once-over as the ladder finally thunked down on the floor below and he straightened with a grimace. "You aren't quite as big as him, but I'll bet we can find some rope or something in the attic if we need."

Abigail started down the ladder, and after she hopped off at the bottom, Jonathan followed her down. The hallway they emerged in was much dimmer than the attic, with the only light filtering through a set of partially-closed curtains covering a window immediately behind the ladder.

He couldn't hear any noises coming from the rest of the building, and the six or so doors lining the length of the hallway were all shut. "Where are we?"

Abigail spread her arms wide. "This is the orphanage! Welcome to my...home."

Jonathan ignored the little hitch in her voice. He'd maybe bring himself to care about her emotional well-being when he had some god-damned clothing. "And where is everybody? Shouldn't an orphanage be full of, I don't know, orphans?"

For the first time since he'd seen her, the self-possessed air Abigail had carried herself with crumbled. "Uh, well. Normally, yeah. But, um, the headmistress was getting old and none of her children or grandchildren had any interest in running an orphanage. So they shut it down."

"And the orphans?"

"Oh, um, they were distributed to other orphanages in the city."

"So then what are you still doing here?"

"Um. Well, I, uh, hid in the attic for a while. I guess they missed me?"

Jonathan shut his eyes briefly and massaged the base of his nose. "So let me get this straight. You're an orphan, your orphanage was closed down, and instead of moving to a new home like all the normal children, you holed yourself up in the attic and decided that a better option would be to summon a demon to care for you?" As he spoke, he noticed a haze once more manifesting in the darkness behind his eyelids, but it disappeared when he opened his eyes. Strangely, although it looked a lot like the haze he'd seen when he was trying to conjure a sandwich, something about it felt completely different. It was a really weird sensation.

"...that's not inaccurate."

Wonderful. So he was summoned across realities by a pre-pubescent wanting a father figure living in an abandoned orphanage. Which meant no supply of food, no easy access to clothes or money to buy them—wait, they did use money in this reality, right?—and probably the building was owned by someone who wasn't going to be interested in letting a young girl and a not-actually-a-demon cohabit. "Let's just look for those pants, yeah?"

"Sure thing, Mr. D—I mean, Jonathan!"

Jonathan shut the umpteenth empty dresser drawer he'd looked through since they'd started their search for clothing in the docent's room. "Abigail. There are no pants in this drawer. No one leaves behind a pair of pants when they move out. Where am I going to get pants?!" The question was increasingly urgent, as the place was getting quite chilly as the sun went down.

"Uh, well I found a bunch of blankets in the attic, so maybe we should go back there and check?"

"Fine." Jonathan stormed out of the room and headed through the gloom to the stairs. He was being completely reasonable about this. He's been promised pants and so far the only thing they'd found was a piece of fragrant wood that the headmistress had apparently kept in her chest of drawers to scent her clothes. It was stuffed all the way in the back, so no wonder she'd missed it. Abigail had gotten a little teary-eyed when she'd smelled it, but all Jonathan cared about was that he couldn't keep his legs warm with little scraps of wood, so back in the drawer it had gone.

This whole day was just turning out to be stunningly horrific. Ripped out of his own reality, forced to confront an actual-fact demon, and—worse—a prepubescent summoner who didn't believe a word he said, and finally insult added to injury in the total lack of pants in the abandoned orphanage that was evidently to be his new home, at least in the short term.

The place was astonishingly depressing, too. The numerous bedrooms were filled with beat-up dressers and metal bed frames that were bolted to the floor. The beds at least had mattresses, but they were thin little things that looked as if you'd get just as good a night's sleep on the ground. They hadn't unearthed any bed linens, although they'd searched every cupboard on both the second and main floors.

He hadn't had a chance to look outside—given his lack of clothing, leaving the curtains drawn had made sense—but he imagined the place surrounded by bare dirt, maybe with some rusty nails scattered about to play with.

And this was "home" to Abigail? No wonder she'd decided a demon would be an acceptable substitute caretaker.

Jonathan muttered to himself as he tried to navigate the attic by the feeble light still making it through the small windows near the gables. How were they supposed to find him something to wear in near-darkness again?

Just as he stubbed his toe on something—arg, it was the damned grimoire!—light bloomed behind him. Jonathan hobbled around and glared at Abigail where she stood with what appeared to be some sort of lantern on her hands. "You couldn't have lit that earlier, kid?"

Abigail shrugged, looking unrepentant. "I don't have much catalyst left. Hopefully it will stay lit long enough to find you something to wear."

Jonathan dragged a hand down his face. "Lovely. Where did you find those blankets, again?" Maybe he could sling some around himself like a toga if worst came to worst.

The first trunk was a bust. There were indeed blankets inside, but a mouse or something had chewed through a thin portion of the trunk's base in the distant past and made free with the contents. Abigail was all for digging through them, but Jonathan vaguely remembered mouse droppings could contain diseases that legit killed you, so he put the kibosh on that.

The second trunk was nothing but extremely faded dresses. Jonathan reserved that one as a last resort.

The third trunk contained what appeared to be a full sailing ship's worth of canvas sails.

The fourth trunk was heavily moth-eaten, but there was a single, miraculously-intact silk shirt that Jonathan immediately slipped on. Abigail sniffed, but didn't comment further, which…well, okay, fine, the shirt smelled a little funny. But it was a shirt, it mostly fit, and it wasn't going to chafe him the way canvas would!

Trunks five and six contained no clothing at all, though Jonathan now knew where to go if he needed a wide assortment of mis-matched dishware or broken wooden toys.

Trunk seven contained an assortment of what looked like wizard robes that ranged from a little short to a little long, but were wearable in a pinch. As a bonus, the trunk had been packed with an unidentifiable sachet, so although the robes still smelled a little funny, it was a vaguely floral scent instead of…whatever the shirt smelled like.

At that point both Jonathan and Abigail were exhausted from excavating and investigating trunks of junk, and the lantern was flickering in a disturbing manner. Jonathan belted one of the robes around his waist, accepted some of the blankets that she had previously scavenged with bad grace, and the two of them curled up on the floor of the attic. Neither was interested in getting caught in the lower portion of the orphanage without light, and honestly the beds hadn't looked all that much more comfortable than the floor.

Darkness overtook the attic as Abigail turned off the lantern, and for a few moments Jonathan lay on his back and seethed over his lack of pants.

"Jonathan?" came Abigail's voice in the darkness. She sounded even younger than normal, and unsure in a way that hadn't been evident in any of his interactions with her to date.

He grunted in response.

"I'm sorry we couldn't find you a pair of pants."

Jonathan breathed deeply in through his nose, and back out through his mouth. "—It's not your fault. You're what, six? It's not like you were expecting to summon something that needed pants."

"Si—excuse me! I am nine years old!" Ah, there, that was the Abigail he was familiar with.

"Really?" Jonathan couldn't keep the skeptical tone out of his voice.

"YES!"

"Okay, okay, keep your pants on. Uh, I mean—look this has been a really shi—crummy day for me. I probably have been taking my frustration out on you a little bit, so…sorry. You're in a rough spot, and pants or not I said I'll help you out, and I will. Alright?"

Abigail was silent for a few moments, and when she spoke again her voice was quieter. "Thank you. Good night, Jonathan."

"Good night, Abigail. Tomorrow will be better."

Oh boy, did he ever suspect that would turn out to be a whopper. But as Abigail's breathing steadied and deepened, Jonathan couldn't bring himself to regret saying it.