Desandra’s eyes narrowed. “When I was twelve, my father didn’t like what I was saying, so he took a knife and sliced my tongue off. It took six months to grow back and as soon as I could speak, I told him to fuck off. I decided then that nobody would ever make me shut up. I won’t hold my tongue. I won’t shut my mouth.”

“Neither will I,” Ascanio said.

“If the two of you don’t knock it off right now, I’ll turn this car right around and send you both home,” I told them.

They clamped their mouths shut.

The street narrowed. A thick wooden pole thrust straight into the middle of the pavement supported a quarantine sign. Thick black letters on a white background read:

IM-1: INFECTIOUS MAGIC AREA

DO NOT ENTER

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

Under the sign, someone had drawn a skull with horns, just to hammer home the point.

We stopped at the sign. The street rolled on, the pavement puckering here and there. Chunks of glass thrust through the crumbling asphalt, some blue, some green, others translucent white, like the tips of subterranean icebergs. In the distance spires and sheets of glass jutted upward, enclosing what was once Inman Yard, Norfolk Southern’s train yard, into a massive glass glacier. Once we crossed the glass labyrinth, we’d officially be in the People’s territory.

“You have the freakiest shit in Atlanta,” Desandra said. “How did this happen?”

I dismounted. “It used to be a massive train yard, over sixty tracks. The city built a huge new train station just before the Shift, all glass and steel beams, very modern. When the magic hit, the trains collided and the station collapsed. Mounds of glass spilled everywhere, and then people started noticing it was fusing and growing, until over the years this happened.”

“It’s called the Glass Menagerie,” Robert said, and passed me the duct tape and the rags. I wrapped Cuddles’s front left hoof with a rag and duct-taped the whole thing.

“Is it dangerous?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” Ascanio said. “I killed a monster in there with Andrea. It was bigger than a house.”

Derek rolled his eyes.

“There’s shit in there nobody knows how to classify,” I said. “The College of Mages has been studying it for years, and they’re still not sure how the glass grows or spreads. That’s why the duct tape and the rags. Once we go through, we’ll dump them so we’re not dragging contamination all over the city.”

I finished taping Cuddles’s hooves, fixed the rags over my boots with tape, and passed the roll to Robert. He duct-taped his feet, and then the roll made its way to Desandra and to Derek and Ascanio.

Robert shifted from foot to foot.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I don’t like having things on my feet.” He shrugged.