Once everyone had welcomed Reggie, Jasper took over.

“The Yogic Brethren of Zoise is all about finding inner calm by alternating between meditation and intense stretching. Take everything at your own pace. The important thing is to stay hydrated. Has Elise given you plenty of tea?”

Reggie held up his empty cup, and almost instantly one of the other Brothers emerged to fill it up.

“And so our circle grows. Zoise thanks you, Sister Daisy. Step forward and receive your bounty. You are now a . . .” Jasper pulled a tangle of belts out of the pocket of his gown, frowned briefly at the pink belt that Daisy had acquired the week before, and selected a bright yellow belt. “You are now a Yellow Sister.”

But rather than thread the belt through the loops as he had with so many of the other Brethren, Jasper handed the belt over for Daisy to do herself, adding in a low voice, “You’re the most dedicated of the Brethren, Daisy. No one’s made it up to silver yet, but if that’s what you want, you’re going to have to sacrifice a little more of yourself. Zoise has other needs. Perhaps you could help restock the kitchen shelves—we’re running a bit low on ingredients. Or can you reinstall Windows 10 on a laptop?”

Daisy shook her head. “I use Apple.”

Jasper sighed. “Think on it, Daisy. What more can you give to Zoise? What sacrifice are you willing to make for your family?”

It was impossible to say anything right—unless the person saying it was Vectra. Even if Susan agreed with her, she still ended up wrong. So far she’d had been wrong about:

Her favorite ale.

Who was the best Mr. Darcy.

What flavor a white jellybean was.

Where the North started.

Whether you could get a ginger female cat. (WHICH YOU COULD, BECAUSE TIBBLES, WHO LIVED NEXT DOOR TO MRS. DOHERTY, WAS BOTH OF THOSE THINGS . . . but when Susan reached for her phone to show Vectra a picture, Vectra had shown such derision for people who used their phones to settle an argument that Susan had been distracted by thoughts of smashing the phone repeatedly into Vectra’s face and settling things that way.)

“None of these people are very funny, are they?” Esther said as the last stand-up left the stage, giving up halfway through his set and leaving the audience with a blissful twenty minutes before the next.

Vectra nodded. “I’ve seen black holes that sucked less.”

“See a lot of those, do you?” Susan was three drinks down and had stopped trying to be nice.

“Sarcasm. How droll.”

Susan’s rage was so intense that suppressing it must have caused her to black out, because the next thing she knew, she was tipping the contents of her purse out onto the bar and praying for enough change to buy a double shot.

“I don’t think they take this here.”