“Of course she is.”

The Crier kept writing. Matt wanted to break the woman’s pencil.

Sandy looked like she’d just torn off a bandage over a burn. “Look, I heard the same voice as Ellen, in my dreams. Most women in the Quarter have. But do you think this works like Craft, you just wave your hands and make things happen? The Stone Men didn’t come for a prayer, they came because your girls needed them. It’s wrong to draw them out like this.”

“The Stone Men don’t get to come into my family whenever they think it’s right. They don’t own our city.”

He roared that last, and Ellen flinched.

“You think,” Sandy said, “maybe they’re cutting in on your business?”

“What the hells is that supposed to mean?”

“You scared Ellen might call the Stone Men down on you someday?”

Rafferty stopped as if someone had nailed his feet to the ground. Only his head turned toward Sandy. “What did you say?”

“I said it’s disgraceful the way you treat those girls, shout them scared of their own damn shadows.” She stepped into the open space, toward him. “I say you’re scared they might call the Stone Men on you. I say stop this now and let these people go home.”

“I did this for us.”

“You do everything for you, Corbin. Let it go.”

Corbin Rafferty’s eyes went wide as an angry horse’s, and showed as much white, and he grew very still. Folk at the crowd’s edge turned away.

Rafferty’s shoulders slumped.

Sandy relaxed, too. But the girls did not, and neither did Matt, because he’d seen Corbin Rafferty drunk, had seen him fight, and knew his tell: that moment of slack before he moved snake-quick with a bottle or a nearby chair. Or with that cane, which he swung up and around, toward Sandy—

But the cane never fell, because Matt ran forward and grabbed Rafferty’s arm. Rafferty twisted fast and vicious, pulled free, and struck Matt in the side of the head. He stumbled back, ears ringing and wetness on his temple and his cheek. Matt smelled Corbin’s whiskey, saw his white teeth flash as the cane came down; he put his hand in its way, but the cane knocked down his arm, then struck the side of his head. Matt barreled forward. His shoulder took Rafferty in the stomach but the man squirmed like a hooked eel and Matt couldn’t hold him. The audience roared and Sandy joined the fray and somewhere a large beast or a small man snarled, and Ellen’s prayer rolled on like a river, or else that was the blood throbbing in his, Matt’s, ears.

There came a crash and a splintering sound, followed by a hush.

Even the Crier’s pencil stopped scratching.

Matt forced himself to his feet.