The 3rd volume of John Allison's Steeple, subtitled "That's the Spirit!", covers a lot of ground, mixing between silly one-off adventures and stories that are setting things up for future developments. Billie is still a priestess in the local Satanist church, while Maggie is living in Billie's old place alongside the reverend, though I doubt Maggie is considered a curate.
After the two leads manage to keep a drunken enabler of a foul spirit from ruining Christmas with Mrs. Clovis (the reverend's housekeeper/caretaker), it's time for a crossover. Shelly Winters, who Esther helped get into publishing children's books in the pages of Giant Days, shows up in Tredregyn for a book signing and is abducted by creatures of the deep who regard one of her books as holy writ for the raising of their dark god. Shelly's emergency contact is Charlotte Grote, the top teen detective (ages 15-18) from Wicked Things, who teams up with the Billie and Reverend Penrose to locate Shelly.
Mostly, it's Charlotte being befuddled about what is going on with this town, which is a nice alternative perspective. Even Billie seemed to adapt rather quickly, although her levels of good cheer are probably acting like beer goggles. Although it's funny in itself that switching to Satanism hasn't altered her fundamental personality. She explains to Charlotte that her thing, so far as Satanism goes, is non-judgmental humanist community outreach and I think I just broke out in hives. Or maybe that's poison ivy.
It's all over relatively quickly and with no harm done, so long as the crap Shelly scribbled won't actually raise an elder god. Never can tell with those things. Guest stars having successfully survived and larked off to whatever story Allison next uses them in, he turns to the question of Billie's drained bank account. A prayer to Baphomet gets Tredregyn used as the setting for what seems very much like Midsomer Murders after a big and unexpected storm wrecks Devon. Certainly Midsomer Murders matches Penrose's description of all the priests being milksops or murderers, although with the history of religious conflict in England I'm hardly surprised. Either knuckle under to the shift in churches or getting to killin' in the name of your God, right?
In the midst of that, Penrose has to deal with some sort of shaggy creature laying eggs underneath the docks, while Maggie's father invites her home for a celebration. Of the two, the dad is a much bigger problem, and looks set to be one moving forward. He might serve as a focus to unite the disparate forces in town against him, except the Reverend Tom of the local Satanist church is making his own plans that will probably mess with Penrose but good.
It feels like Allison's building to Penrose realizing he's got to be an inspirational figure to the townsfolk, rather than skulking about in the shadows punching mermen. Essentially the lesson Robert Pattinson's version of Bruce Wayne had to learn in that recent The Batman movie. Either that or Penrose steps away from the church and Billie unites both churches with her as vicar/high priestess/whatever you'd call an Anglican Satanist.
Allison's writing is much better than that movie's, however. Certainly funnier. His pages almost always end with some gag or visual joke, and more of them land than not. Whether that's Billie leveraging her being announced as a "priestess to watch" in Sex Magick magazine, or the "sesh gremlin" disliking feeling judged when the girls rebuff his offer of another drink.
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