Carefully, she dipped her hand into her pocket, closing her fingers gently around the frosty handle of the spoon, as if to calm it.

There, there, she thought, her breath beginning to slow. There, there.

And, looking up with a start, she discovered seven pairs of eyes trained upon her in the dim.

The lady in white was gazing at the pocket of her apron.

Without lifting her eyes, she spoke. “Come,” the lady in white said. “It is decided. You will travel with us.”

And she turned and walked into the darkness.

All around, the gray Sisters fell into step, foot and paw, now striding between stones, now hopping lightly from grave to grave.

Bluma was by no means certain that she would be safer with them than she had been walking alone, but two of the cats had remained behind to make sure that she followed.

And Bluma had no desire to find out what they might do in order to encourage her.

This is how Bluma came to travel with the ancient demon Lilith and the Sisters of the Lileen.

—

The Treasure House of Lord Mammon is a wide, rambling jumble of walls and buttresses, porticoes, arches, and columns. By the time Yehuda Leib came near, the crow had long since gone in through a window casement many stories above.

Yehuda Leib was eager to follow.

But the doors of the Treasure House are many. Those who wish to walk in unopposed find open archways; those who wish to ask and be invited find doors that swing inward at the tapping of a knuckle.

And boys like Yehuda Leib—who are as certain that they deserve to be inside as they are that they will be turned away—find locks and barriers, chains and deadbolts, and, eventually, a single, low, out-of-the-way door with a knob that turns smoothly.

As much out of habit as out of caution, Yehuda Leib left the door ajar behind him.

Everyone knows: it is unwise to shut yourself in where you ought not to be.

The room in which Yehuda Leib found himself now was low and dim. All around him, rough-hewn shelves crowded in close, reaching from the floor—which was either made of dirt or so thick with dust that it might as well have been—up to the bowed and buckling ceiling.

No one is meant to see Lord Mammon’s Hoard itself.

In accordance with the terms of a treaty once set out between Lord Mammon and Lord Dantalion, Master of Whispers—another great and noble demon—a cataloging was undertaken long ago to make a record of the Hoard’s vast holdings.

As of this writing, the project is still ongoing.