Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(17)

“Ellen’s telling stories,” Hannah said.

“I’m not.” The second time Ellen spoke, she sounded less hesitant. Still, she spoke into her plate, afraid, Matt thought, to face the table, and especially her father, who watched her with an expression darkened by the beers he’d drunk. “You saw him, too. You both did.”

Claire took Ellen’s wrist.

“Girls.” Corbin’s tone changed, and they turned toward him like iron filings when a magnet drew close. “Let Ellen talk.”

Ellen paled, and Matthew wondered not for the first time, and not for the first time stopped himself from wondering, what life was like inside the Rafferty house.

“Tell me,” Rafferty repeated.

“There’s a prayer,” Ellen said. “We all know it. We all dreamed it. And I used it.” Rafferty leaned toward his daughter, his brows knit tight, the blade of his jaw unsheathed. “I didn’t ask for anything,” she said. “I never would have, but I was scared for you.”

“Ellen.” Claire’s voice, sharp, a shutoff. “This isn’t the time.”

“Two months back you weren’t home, hadn’t been since the day before. The second night we decided, all of us, that we should look.”

Sandy laughed, and Ellen fell silent. The glare Corbin shot Sandy was vicious, though not so vicious as the one with which she answered him. Corbin turned back to his daughter. “Go on.”

“We started early and went to the addresses on your matchbooks. No one had seen you. We got lost. The streets kept turning around.” Which meant they’d been in the Pleasure Quarter, Matt thought, though Ellen wouldn’t say as much: the Pleasure Quarter, where the city’s shattered-glass grid tangled to a briar patch of nameless avenues—the paths of long-dead cows codified by concrete. Playground, the market boys called it, the kids without stall or family who carried and carted for tips: walk in flush with soul, walk out empty save for memories of red light that dulls tears and washes flaws from skin. Matt imagined three Rafferty girls wandering through that maze at night. A sphinx smile darted across Hannah’s lips.

But Ellen was still talking: “I said we should try the prayer, ask for help. Hannah and Claire didn’t want to. It was my idea.”

Thankful eye flicks from sister to sister, which Matt recognized only because the Adorne household of his boyhood communicated in the same code, five siblings united against the Old Man.

“You prayed,” Matt said, because Corbin would have said worse.

Ellen looked up from her plate. “I cut myself, bled, and prayed. Then the statue came.”

Left and right down the table, all sat in their own silence: sisters scared, Corbin in rage-tinted wonder, Ray eager, Sandy skeptical, Lil awed either by the story or the equally fantastical occasion of the Rafferty girls speaking. Ellen sounded drunk on memory. “He looked like the stories say, with eyes like jewels and wings of stone. He gathered us up. His arms were thin, but he was strong. Not like a person. Strong like an arch.” Those last words broke the spell she had cast upon herself, and her fear returned. She glanced to her father, and back down. “He flew us home. Fast, over the rooftops, and high. They can fly, even here, so they must be right with God, mustn’t they? He said if you weren’t back by morning we should get the Blacksuits. He said if we were ever in danger, we should call him again. He looked worried for us. Then he left. You came back”—this to her father—“when we were all asleep. You were sick the next day. That’s all.”

“Is this true?” Corbin asked. The other two girls had sat very still through the telling.

“It’s true,” Claire said at last.

“But—” Hannah started. Claire looked at her but didn’t speak. She stopped.

“It’s true,” Claire repeated.

“And you all say they’re not a problem. They’ve been under my roof. They’ve touched my girls.”

“Sounds like they did you a favor.”

“What they’ve done, Sforza, is beside the point. What they might do, matters. Stone Men are traitors, butchers. So, my daughters can call them. Let’s call them to the square tonight. Let’s have it out face-to-face. No more shadows, no more tall tales.”

Ray shrugged. “Doubt we’ll see anything.”

“You call my girls liars.” Corbin’s voice tightened to breaking.

“It sounds like a story, is all. And even if they call, who’s to say the Stone Men come? But I’ll watch. The boy can make the morning runs tomorrow.”

“Hells, I won’t miss this,” his son said around a mouthful of burger.

“Then we’ll both be tired on deliveries, and so be it when we crash and suffer grievous death.”

“You’re tempting fate,” Sandy said. “This is a damn fool enterprise and I’ll not lend it my support.”

“But you’ll come if we do it.” Corbin’s teeth were thin and white. “Just to watch, of course.”

Matt drank. He realized everyone was looking at him. He crossed his arms and leaned back. “It’s their choice.”

“Excuse me?”

“The girls,” Matt said. “We do this only if your girls want to.”

Ellen looked to her father first, then Claire, then nodded. Matt had seen that expression on young soldiers in the Schtumpfeter Museum’s God Wars paintings—kids sent to do and die on distant sand. He felt he’d done something wrong, and the tightness around Sandy Sforza’s mouth, the sharp lines in her brow, suggested she agreed.