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The first of the month was the absolute worst. Why'd every damn bill all have to come due on the exact same day? Who's stupid idea was that?
Skulking around the House at 2:45am, Mammon frowned as he did the mental math all over again, for the dozenth time, hoping that maybe he'd forgotten to carry a one or got a decimal place wrong.
Forty-seven oh two from one twenty-one fifty-seven and nineteen ninety-six plus two hundred sixty-six and eight percent is…
Anyone who thought Mammon had the intellectual capacity of a doorstop had never seen him calculate quarterly compounded interest in his head.
…and fifty-six oh nine is…
…is so deep in the red, he could practically see Moses.
He cursed under his breath. Ninety-seven Grimm short, even if he stiffed his Akuzon tab and told Majolish the cheque was in the mail. No matter how many schemes he had on the go or how many tables he waited or how many valuables he ‘borrowed' when nobody was looking…
…there was never enough to go around.
And it sucked.
He tip-toed through the music room, window-shopping for anything that looked like it might be worth ninety-seven Grimm. The record collection was worthless; Lucifer kept all the rarest ones locked in a chest under his bed. (And Mammon had already picked over the rest a half-dozen times.) The small golden statue of a music note that was sitting on top of the piano was a fake. (He'd sold the real one five-hundred years ago.) The mahogany harp in the corner, one strung with real silver threads, was worth more than enough to cover his whole debt… but there weren't a hell of a lot of places to fence a ninety-pound harp at three in the morning.
Still, though…
He stopped, and gave the harp a critical once-over. Taking the whole thing might be impractical, sure, but if he unwound a handful of strings, all real silver and easily pawned, even in the middle of the night…
The Avatar or Greed, all alone in the dark, lonely room, crouched beside the harp and quietly went to work.
And hey, who'd miss a couple little strings, right? It wasn't like anyone ever played the damn thing anymore.
They wouldn’t fetch enough to square him up with Akuzon (at this point, only a deluge of money pouring from the sky might come close), but that was fine. Akuzon could suck it. They'd probably freeze his account (again), but there were ways around that. He had Levi's password, after all, and that guy never read his statements as closely as he should.
They wouldn't fetch enough to bring Goldie back into the black, either, and Lucifer would almost definitely tear him a new one if he ever found out, but… whatever. Getting hung upside- down until his head started to swim and his toes went all numb was just part and parcel of being the Avatar of Greed.
And yeah, his obscene bar and restaurant tabs would have to wait, which meant he'd spend another month banned from… well, everywhere… and would have to mooch off if his brothers if he wanted to eat out.
And they'd call him good-for-nothing, and a loser, and a scumbag, and that was just how things were.
He was used to it.
Mammon carefully coiled up the first string, and weighed it in his hand to get a good idea of what it'd be worth. Considering the current stock market value for silver (which he knew off the top of his head, of course), he might get four, maybe five Grimm?
He looked over the harp again, and tallied up the numbers. He'd need twenty-five strings for his ninety-seven Grimm. The harp had forty-seven. More than enough.
Of course, twenty-five was more than just “a couple.” Enough that somebody might notice they were missing after all…
Mammon considered this for barely a second, then shrugged. And grinned. If that was gonna be the case, he might as well just take'em all! In for a dime, in for a dollar; if he was gonna get his ass whipped anyway, he might as well help himself!
Humming happily, he went to work, and started making a mental tally of all the bills that could wait until next month, and more importantly, the ones that couldn't.
If that gaming subscription expired, even for an hour, Levi'd be inconsolable. He’d always thought the online subscription had come free with the console.
Encyclopedia Demonica only sent a bill every six months, so if it didn't get paid right on time, Satan's prized collection would end up with a massive hole in it. He'd actually bought the subscription himself, back when he was first trying to learn everything there was to know about the Devildom, but had been forced to cancel it when he'd fallen on tougher times. That the books kept showing up anyway, he'd attributed to a clerical error in Demonica's bookkeeping department.
Asmo often gushed about being so irresistibly gorgeous that SinCoture mailed him all their monthly sample kits so they could reap the rewards of having him model their product on Devilgram.
Once a month, when all of Belphie's pillows showed back up his door freshly dry-cleaned, he just assumed that the bill went directly to RAD.
Beel had never stopped to wonder about where his Dessert of the Month came from, but on the fourteenth of every month, he'd be standing outside his door with stars in his eyes, bouncing on his toes while he waited for the delivery man.
Lucifer always made a point of thanking Diavolo for the tiny, carefully packaged box of ink wells and quills and top-grade parchment that arrived at his door every month.
And Diavolo, the only one who knew where they'd really come from, always smiled and told him it was No problem, he was happy to do it.
So Akuzon could wait, and Goldie could suffer in the red for one more month, and the Avatar of Greed would spend the next month dodging creditors, and insults, and Lucifer, because no matter how many schemes he had on the go or how many tables he waited or how many valuables he ‘borrowed' when nobody was looking…
…there was never enough to go around.
And it sucked.