No way was Esther about to hand over her phone.

She glanced down at the tray of steaming mugs and the plate of warm cookies.

That could work.

When the doorbell rang, Daisy had already taken several steps along her meditative path. The herbal tea had seeped through her system, slowing her pulse, lulling her body into a slow and steady thrum of relaxed anticipation.

Slow is the air in my lungs, the beat of my heart, the blood in my veins.

Arteries, Susan would have corrected her. That’s what’s taking the oxygenated blood from your heart.

Daisy shook her head to clear it, but there was too much disturbance in the room. People milling about by the bottom of the stairs—or, rather, those still capable of milling. There was a tangled heap of robes and smoke in a corner, where some of the other Brethren had transcended from the waking plane to commune with their dreams.

Daisy gave up and opened her eyes to see Jasper rapping on the glass doors at the back of the studio that led out onto the garden.

What now?

When Daisy had first joined the Brethren, she’d seen Jasper as some kind of pied piper, leading the lost into a warm and welcoming cave. Forty-eight hours of living in his cave, and she was starting to think he was nothing more than a charismatic child. All the decisions, the planning, the preparation was Elise.

Elise was the taskmaster, Jasper the spin doctor, and together they had wrung every ounce of energy from Daisy’s aura.

“Sister Daisy!” Jasper banged on the window again. “A little help here. Can you unlock these? We’ve a delivery that’s too big to fit through the front.”

Dragging herself down from a higher plane and across the room, tripping over casually placed limbs and heaps of robes, Daisy unlatched the doors and pulled them wide to admit two delivery men as they wrestled a huge wooden crate into the middle of the room. The two were mismatched in height and—judging by the tilt of the box—in strength. It couldn’t have been easy, negotiating their way in the dark with those Danube Delivery caps pulled down so low over their eyes.

The same logo was stenciled in red across the crate, and Daisy wondered what was inside. There were a lot of deliveries sent to the house—groceries ordered by grateful acolytes and the occasional case of wine, Blu-rays, games, and other essentials. It seemed Elise only had to add something to the chalkboard in the kitchen and it would magically appear at the door.

But Daisy couldn’t think of anything on there that would necessitate such a big crate. It looked as if it could house a washing machine.