“I’m not so sure,” said Yehuda Leib. “I was standing outside waiting for you to make your move for quite some time. But now I don’t think you’re planning to make a move. Now I think you’re just hiding out.”

“I am not hiding out,” said Mammon swiftly.

“No?” said Yehuda Leib. “There’s an awful lot of money in the safe down there, and you seem to think it’s more useful occupying your host, the shopkeeper, than it would be lining your pockets.”

“Money,” said Mammon dismissively. “Paper, you mean.”

“Paper money, yes,” said Yehuda Leib. “But the jewelry on your hostess is hardly paper.”

At the thought of the jeweled lady, Mammon couldn’t stop his eyes from glittering.

“What’s your point?” said Mammon.

“My point,” said Yehuda Leib, “is that either you can’t get home on your own or, for some reason, you don’t want to.”

Mammon huffed dismissively.

But he was still listening.

“Actually,” said Yehuda Leib, “I think it’s both.”

“Oh?” said Mammon. “You know me so well, do you?”

“I was standing out there a long time,” said Yehuda Leib. “Eventually I started asking myself why you weren’t moving—what might be stopping you.”

“And?”

“Well, the most obvious reason is all the Hasidim out in the street: psalms as thick as rain in a storm. That can’t be pleasant for a demon.”

“It isn’t unpleasant,” said Mammon. “It’s incredibly dangerous—like a forest fire, not a rainstorm.”

Yehuda Leib shrugged. “To you, perhaps. But not to me.”

Mammon was beginning to connect the dots—behind his cracked spectacles and beady eyes, a desire was beginning to brew.

“I wonder…,” said Yehuda Leib. “You were able to use me as a vehicle to cross into town. Could I take you safely through the psalms, too?”

“Why would you want to do that?” said Mammon.

Yehuda Leib hopped over this question as if it were a muddy puddle in the road.

“I really was out there some time, though,” he said. “Long enough to think twice, and I thought: Even if there were no psalms, how could Lord Mammon possibly go back now? After the commotion he made at the party? After boasting that he’d take the Rebbe so easily? You never even got close enough to speak to him, even with a head start. That’s a failure. That’s a humiliation. I’d probably hide out and lick my wounds too.”

“I am not licking my wounds.”

“I’m sure that smooth demon will love hearing all about it—what was his name? Belial?”

This shot hit home: “Belial,” Mammon muttered to himself.

“But it occurred to me,” said Yehuda Leib, barely even pausing. “Maybe we can be of use to one another.”

“Oh, what a shock,” said Mammon.