“Wow,” I said. My astonishment was not faked.

“We aren’t finished setting up here,” he said modestly. “We have to change our location a lot to avoid discovery. You know how it is. So, there’s still some stuff we need to unpack.” He pointed over to a cardboard box in the corner. I couldn’t see all of its contents, but I did make out a black feather boa and a glow-in-the-dark plastic skull. On the side of the box, black marker succinctly declared: TEMPLE STUFF.

I counted the chairs. Fifteen. “How many members do you have?” I asked.

“About a dozen. A little less than that that are truly active.” He sat down in one of the chairs and gestured for me to do the same.

“And how long have you been meeting?”

“Oh, about a year now.”

I smiled, turning on the charm in an effort to not sound like an investigative reporter. “I’ve heard about some of the things you’ve done. Pretty impressive. Like the Bibles and the, um, spray paint.”

He beamed at the praise. “You heard about that? Cool. We do as the Angel of Darkness directs us.”

“What other things have you been directed to do?”

“Well, there was the one time this Methodist church was having an ice cream social. We broke in beforehand and left all their ice cream outside the freezer to melt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then, this other time, we went to the petting zoo and hung pentagram collars on all the goats. We also painted their horns red and black. Let me tell you, that wasn’t easy. They don’t like to stand still.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, and then we made all the TVs show Rosemary’s Baby.”

“Uh—TVs?”

“Yeah, I work at Circuit City, and we have these big walls of TVs, so I synced them all up. My boss never suspected who did it.”

On and on the litany went. About ten minutes later, I interrupted, unable to listen to any more. “Look, Evan, this is really amazing stuff you’ve been doing. I mean, this is stuff my people in Seattle would never, ever dream of doing in a million years.”

“Really?” he asked happily.

“Really,” I said flatly. “But, although it makes a big statement, wouldn’t it be more in line with the, uh, Angel’s purposes to work on securing souls for him?”

“Her,” corrected Evan.

“Her. Right.” Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, whatever. There were lots of names for what humans regarded as the supreme entity of evil, and I’d heard tons over the years. Considering the popular idea of Lucifer being a fallen angel, this “Angel of Darkness” thing didn’t surprise me, but the female part did. “Sorry,” I told him. “We know the Angel as male.”

“It’s okay,” he replied. “The Angel is all things to all people.”

“Right. So, anyway, I mean, the ultimate goal is to convert as many people to her as possible, right? To lead them down the left-hand path. It doesn’t seem like melting ice cream would do that—not that that isn’t cool,” I added hastily. “I’m just wondering if you should be more focused on leading people into temptation instead.”