But as they turned purposefully toward the stairs, they were met with what appeared to be a wall of wavering zombies.

“Hey . . .” One of them raised an arm and pointed at the open closet. “Are you trying to steal all our stuff?”

“You handed all this stuff over to Zoise,” Esther pointed out. “So, technically, we’d be stealing from . . . them? It? Her? Him?”

None of the Brethren looked like they knew the answer, either.

“Esther!” Susan let out in exasperation. “We’re not stealing anything. Go back to gobbling your cookies . . .” She shooed them back, but with no Elise there to replenish the supply of tea and cookies, the acolytes were coming to their senses. And they weren’t happy about finding the intruders. Casting a desperate glance at her friends, Susan saw Daisy set her jaw resolutely.

Raising her hands in the air, she touched thumb to fingers to make the Zign of Zoise.

“Esther, get to the lectern, Susan—the stairs. We’ve got this.”

“What, exactly, am I doing?” Esther made for the lectern on which rested an inconceivably huge volume with ZOISE lettered on the front in gold leaf.

“Read from the book!” Daisy said, edging close, the Brethren focusing on them now that Susan had escaped up the stairs. “Jasper starts our meditating sessions that way. It should calm them down.”

“Right . . .” Esther hauled open the front cover, confused at the title page inside.

“Esther . . .” Daisy sounded unnerved. “They’re getting very close.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Anything! Look—some of the pages have tabs on them!”

“Yeah . . .” Esther flipped through to those pages. “That’s not much help. This is . . . Daisy. This is just three of Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks glued together with a bit of leather stuck around the outside. Look.” She hefted the book into her arms and held it up for Daisy—and the rest of the Brethren—to see. “Did any of you actually listen to what Jasper was saying?”

There was a pause then, the crowd’s mood shifting from accusatory to curious as they pressed in to have a closer look at a recipe for chocolate pear pudding.

The shower was still on. The adrenaline rush of freeing Daisy had altered the space-time continuum—Susan had emerged from the crate at 20:20 hours, and it was only 20:36. Still . . . for all Esther’s predictions of Elise needing to shower for a week, Susan needed to pick up the pace.