Tara thanks her, and Maryann squeezes her hard, looking into her eyes with ultimate love. "I'm sure you'd do the same for me." And maybe she will. Maryann puts her hands on the sides of Tara's head, like a mother to a daughter, and the temperature in the room says it's no longer appropriate, that it's time for Tara to move on:

"Go. Flourish. And don't every say no to yourself. Okay?" Tara smiles, and walks away, rolling her eyes at the diva/guru vibe that just now started to come apart. But it's the medium, not the message, that's wrong: like any good philosophy, it's precisely one-half of the truth. At its extremity, asceticism is violence. That's true. But at its extremity, so is abundance. Alone in the kitchen, Maryann goes hollow. The triumph and the tragedy of gods is that they are one thing, all the time. They don't change because they don't have to. The triumph and the tragedy of us is that we do.

Jason eats his breakfast and fights theology with Luke and the intensely delicious Dirk: "I don't know who Lazarus was, but he sure as hell was not the first vampire. Everybody knows it was Dracula!" Luke explains that in the Bible, Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. Which, Jason points out, means Jesus made the first vampire. And for that matter, maybe it was Jesus instead: "He rose from the dead too! And he told people, 'Hey, y'all, drink my blood. It'll give you special powers.'" Dirk shakes his head as Luke protests, and says they're both wrong: being a vampire is the mark of Cain, his punishment for bringing the first evil into the world by killing his brother. Luke protests that the firster evil was Eve eating the apple, hence "Evil," which is hilarious and also kind of deadly serious. Ask Jessica's dad if he doesn't sort of think that's true. Or her second one. Life is a palindrome; now death is too.

But Jason's tasted a few apples in his time: "That wasn't evil, that was just skirting the rules. Evil is making the premedicated choice to be a dick." Heh. The PA summons him to meet Reverend Steve outside, but Luke can't decide to gloat about this latest thing. "There's one thing you can count on: God will make sure evil gets punished." Jason tosses over his shoulder as he's leaving, "Yeah? Then explain Europe to me." They stare.