He had that light tone he often used, but I could hear the disappointment too. It was still a mystery to me as to why he’d be so into helping find Jerome. It was a mystery best solved with coffee, I decided, and while the pot brewed, I rummaged for my own breakfast. I unearthed Pop-Tarts and again wondered about weight gain.

“Um, Georgina . . .”

“If you’re asking if you can feed her anything else, the answer is no.”

“You need to come see this.” His voice was deadly earnest. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I hurried back into the living room. Roman pointed at the TV.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned.

The Army of Darkness had struck again. We were watching a Seattle station, but apparently, this north-of-the-border escapade had been deemed newsworthy. The prank had actually taken place over in Victoria, a city on an island just west of Vancouver but still in British Columbia. There were some very famous and very beautiful gardens there, and the Army had apparently broken in at night and done their best to clip a pentagram into a huge expanse of bushes. They’d enhanced it with spray paint.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. The pentagram job was bad, but the group had been savvy enough to get out of there without being caught. One shot of a courtyard there showed where they’d spray-painted: all hail the angel of darkness.

“Glad to see they haven’t lost their touch,” Roman said wryly.

I sank down onto the couch beside him, my mind spinning. Why? Why now? I’d toyed with the theory that the Army’s activities had been an absurdly elaborate distraction to take everyone’s attention away from Seattle. By that reasoning, their shenanigans should have stopped once Jerome was summoned. Yet here they were again. Had they acted on their own, just for the fun of it? Had Blake discovered a spray-paint sale? Or had Grace directed them again—and if so, why?

Most of their other activities had lined up with some other significant part of the seal’s creation or Jerome’s summoning. Without wasting another moment, I picked up my cell and called Cedric. I actually got through to him rather than Kristin.

“What?” he demanded when he answered.

“This is Georgina. I just saw the news.”

“Look, I do not have the time for you. In fact, you’re the last person I want to talk to right now, seeing as how none of this would have happened if you’d done your job in the first place.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but listen . . . was anything important going on today?”

His voice was incredulous. “What, you mean aside from those idiots embarrassing me again?”

“No, I mean . . . any events or, I don’t know . . . just anything important, um, demonically . . .”