“We’ve seen,” an unsteady voice began, then stopped. Matt looked over in time to see Claire Rafferty draw her hand back from Ellen’s shoulder. Ellen’s pale cheeks colored red, and she returned her gaze to at her plate, as if she’d never spoken.

“Girls,” Corbin said in the voice he adopted while trying to sound nice, or at least less angry. It rarely worked. “What have you seen?”

“Nothing,” Claire answered, cold. “Father.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“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.