“Jonathan.” Her response was a lot less enthused than his. “I’m afraid this seat’s taken.”

“Yes, by me and the lads. You’ll have to find somewhere else. Sorry and all that.”

He did not look sorry. But he would be. Jonathan’s lack of manners was just the last straw in the haystack piling up on Daisy’s back—Granny’s inquisition, her friends’ duplicity on the shopping front . . . the creeping fear that she no longer had a place waiting for her with Zoise.

Daisy had had enough.

“I will be sitting here.” Daisy leaned forward across the table, raising one hand high into the air and pressing all her fingers to the tip of her thumb to make an eye shape. Silently, from all around the room, people started standing up and walking over to where Daisy was, until a quiet, disparate herd gathered to stare at Jonathan.

“Please move,” Daisy said, and the Brethren whom she’d summoned crossed their arms and looked at Jonathan.

A minute later, he’d left the canteen entirely.

“What just happened?” Esther whispered to Susan as they watched a load of people they’d never seen Daisy talk to return to their seats.

“I don’t know, Esther, but let’s not anger them.”

The two of them walked meekly over and sat with Daisy.

Daisy’s behavior had awoken Susan’s dormant investigative instincts. What had happened at breakfast was not normal, and Susan had the uneasy sensation that she had taken her eye off the ball. First the McGraw-inspired insomnia, now Esther sucking up so much of her attention with the Vectra obsession . . . Susan realized with shame that it had been far too long since she’d last seen Daisy’s willowy figure standing in the doorway to number 13, offering a cup of tea and sitting on Susan’s bed, peaceably flipping through a magazine or reading up on something for her course or chatting gently and unobtrusively about her professors.

Almost as soon as she realized this, Susan realized that she missed it. Where Esther jostled, Daisy soothed. No wonder she was left feeling so prickly about the ridiculous Vectra situation . . .

Susan paused, a cushion of air between the knuckles of her raised fist and the door of number 11. Leaning in a little closer, she tried to catch the sounds beyond, which were murmured voices, pan pipes, and what was either whale song or the cry of a woman in labor.

Enya’s creative direction had certainly taken a turn for the worse.

Following updated protocol, Susan knocked three times, and the music stopped.

“What is it?” Daisy called.

“It’s Susan. I’m a who, not a what.” Susan twisted the handle. “Er . . . Daisy—have you locked your room?”

“I must have done it by accident.”