“I’m here because I care more about my friends than I do about my clothes.” He dodged a fleck of ash drifting in his direction. “Just.”

It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her, so obviously it needed questioning.

“Even though I’m mean and hateful?”

“Stop saying that.” Kully sipped his coffee, gagged, and swapped cups. “Sure, you’re cynical and blunt and the angriest person I’ve ever met . . .” Something Susan would usually have taken as a compliment. “You’re petty, you’re grumpy, and you’re so sarcastic, it’s hard to know if you ever mean what you say . . .”

A truly uplifting pep talk.

“. . . but, Susan, I’ve only ever heard you be mean to people who deserve it. Besides, I kind of thought this anarchic rage vibe was your shtick. I’m your friend because of who you are—not in spite of that.”

“Thanks, Kully.” Susan bumped her cup to his, a small smile escaping from her lips. “I’m glad we’re mates.”

“Me, too. It’s good to know there’s someone who’d come looking for me if I went missing.” As soon as he said it, concern crept across his expression, weighing down the corners of his mouth and wrinkling his brow. “It’s been happening a lot you know.”

“What has?”

“Students disappearing for a few days before popping back up, the way Grace has.” He sipped his coffee and frowned at Susan. “Have you really not noticed? She was gone for a week—her boyfriend came to visit and couldn’t find her, and all her housemates were really worried. Turns out she’d just been doing yoga in some guy’s basement and forgot to come home.”

“Grace Latter, famously the hardest of partyers, forgot to come home because she was doing yoga?”

“Apparently so.”

“And we’re sure that’s not a euphemism?”

“Positive. It was your friend Daisy who set her up.”

Susan almost sucked the cigarette into her mouth, such was the force of her shocked gasp. I’m not to recruit any more members . . . that’s what Daisy had said. Was Grace one of those members?

Kully was saying something, but Susan’s vision had become a film reel, splicing together all the strange interactions she’d had with Daisy since she started going to yoga: the shifty way she’d stopped letting anyone come into her room, the breakfast incident . . . the locked door that had been shut every time Susan walked past it in the last twenty-four hours.

All of a sudden, it became very important that she find Daisy Wooton.

Vectra’s band was playing in a pub called the Obscure Breed of Sheep, and it cost thirteen pounds to get in.

“A pound per band!” the guy on the door had said, taking their money and stamping their hands. “A bargain.”