“I don’t know.”

“What are we sitting on?”

He looked down at the turquoise surface under our feet. “Magic glass.”

“What do we know about it?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Exactly. We don’t know what makes it grow and we don’t know what would make it stop.”

“So anything they take out of that rail car could sprout glass,” Ascanio said.

“Precisely. They’re going to sell whatever they reclaim and they won’t tell the buyer where they got it. And when another Glass Menagerie sprouts someplace, it will be too late.”

“Shouldn’t we do something about it?”

I held up my empty hand. “No badge. We can report it when we get out of here and see if PAD wants to do something about it.” Besides, it wasn’t our job to report it and I was pretty much done with acts of civic responsibility. It wasn’t my problem.

“They have to know that what they’re doing is illegal,” I said. “And this area is dangerous, so they should have more than three bruisers walking about with oversized knives. They have some security we’re not seeing. Be ready for a surprise.”

Ascanio’s eyes lit up with an eerie ruby glow. “Can I shift now?”

“Not yet.” Shifting took a lot of energy. Change your shape twice in rapid succession, and you would have to have some downtime. I needed Ascanio fresh and full of energy, which meant once he shifted, he’d have to stay that way.

We jumped off the ledge and walked down the road straight into the guard. He saw my face and drew back.

“What in the bloody hell are you?”

“Andrea Nash,” I said. “This is my associate, Robin of Loxley.”

Ascanio saluted with the bow. Thankfully no Latin spilled out.

“I’m investigating a murder on behalf of the Pack. I need to talk to Kyle.”

The man stared at me. This was clearly outside of his normal duties.

“You got some sort of ID on you?”

I handed him my ID—a miniature copy of my PI license endorsed by the Georgia Secretary of State with my picture on it.

“How do I know it’s you?” he asked.

“Why would I lie?”

He mulled it over. “Okay, you’ve got something that says you’re from the Pack?”

Ascanio coughed a bit.

I swept the hand from my forehead to my chin, indicating my face. “Do I look like I need to prove I’m from the Pack?”

The guard pondered me. “Okay, fine. Come with me.”

We followed him to the tent. It looked bigger close up, almost forty feet tall. Inside, a middle-aged man pored over some charts next to a taller, thinner man with acne scars on his narrow face. Both wore hardhats.