Glass Town was where investigations went to die. As an apprentice, Theo's mentor had taught it as fact. If a criminal went to Glass Town, you didn’t follow them in. Glass Town protected its own.

Thankfully, criminals didn’t usually stay there long. It was usually a pit stop before they ran for the next city, but even criminals who stayed in the city usually didn’t last long in the slums. At least jail had clean water and a warm bed.

Theo always assumed there would be a line to that. Surely, if somebody horrible enough went in, a detective would be a lesser evil.

That’s what took him to Glass Town the first time. Twenty-one, he still hadn’t learned much about how the world worked. He had gone down to Glass Town sure that, with a serial killer hiding among them, he’d be seen as the lesser of two evils.

It had felt like a nightmare, wandering down streets of corrupted glass that wound and twisted until he had no idea where he was. People watched him from doorways like he was some predator stalking the streets, and all his questions were met with terse answers.

Nobody said anything outwardly aggressive, but he realized he should have trusted his mentor, but he couldn’t understand it. No matter how much they mistrusted city detectives, wouldn’t they want to stop a murderer?

A week later, the killer’s body washed up downstream, and Theo understood. In three centuries of political neglect, a place would find a way to enforce its own sense of justice. Pickpockets and illegal vendors could disappear into the slums, but that man wouldn’t be the first killer to think they could take refuge only to wash up downstream days later.  Glass Town protected its own.

Alexander Clay was more protected than most. He was the type of man the higher ups in the city wished they had worse charges against than they did. Alexander Clay told people Saint’s Landing intentionally made sure people in Glass Town never got to leave. Alexander Clay told people the priests lived on everyone’s tax money, but protected some more than others. Alexander Clay held the hand of grieving parents and told them they deserved justice.

A lot of people got hired to put a bullet in Alexander Clay’s head.

Zemerial told him that a lot of people tried, but the humble speaker of the slums had at least three armed guards at any given moment, blended into the crowd. In other words, if James had gotten close, those guards had known her and let her walk in.

He felt out of the loop. Worse, he didn’t have time to get in the loop right now. If they wanted to submit the case Monday, Cam had to be able to go out and check properties tomorrow. The current case took priority. Still, he kept feeling shocked when James checked her paired glass for messages from Speaker Clay. She was genuinely waiting on a message, and he couldn’t imagine why she’d lie about the source. Had she just heard Clay’s name and paid off a few people to pretend to be Caspian’s team.

No, she wasn’t dumb. She had to know that he’d see through that. 

The message James was waiting on appeared as Theo was trying to decipher the handwriting on a three decade old electrical line record. Despite the entire team being in, the office had been pretty much silent as they slowly crossed out various lots. There were only twenty left, but all the easy locations had been eliminated. They needed any small piece of evidence. If they tried to check all twenty in person, they might raise enough suspicion to give the real culprits time to cover up.

“The speaker just contacted me,” James said, a half smile betraying her excitement. “There’s some conditions, but we’ve got a meeting.”

“Really?” Abigail asked. You could trust Abby to say that kind of thing out loud. It was one of his favorite things about her.

“What are the conditions?” Theo asked.

“First,” James said, looking at the glass, “only one of them is willing to meet, in case we’re lying about our intent. Second, no meeting until after the Handfellow couple is arrested. Third, they will only meet outside of town.”

He could see her discomfort as James reached the last point.

“Fourth, we have to attend with Flora Handfellow.”