Mister Impossible (Dreamer Trilogy #2)(6)
Ronan said, “This place is looking at me. What is that reek?”
“?‘The West Virginia Museum of Living History provides an immersive experience through sight, sound, and smell.’?” Hennessy had found a brochure and she narrated it as she stepped around boxes and furniture pulled out into the hall. “?‘Over five hundred unique scents are piped into diverse’—Diverse? Really?—‘scenarios. Students fall back through time in a one-of-a-kind outing they’re sure to remember!’?”
“Give me a hand,” said Bryde.
He had already dragged two mannequins into the hall and was going back for a third. He stood them shoulder to shoulder in the hall. He didn’t have to explain what he was doing. In the dim light, the mannequins looked convincingly and confusingly vital, at least enough to give an intruder pause. A sham army.
Ronan was beginning to understand that Bryde’s first instinct was always to play with his enemies’ heads. He would fight if he must, but he always preferred having his opponents defeat themselves.
“You just gonna stand there?” Ronan asked Hennessy as he and Bryde dragged out a snazzy executive in a three-piece suit, a wartime housewife in a flowered dress, and three cadets in dusty uniforms.
“I can’t touch bad art.” Hennessy gestured to a sailor with unevenly painted eyes. “It will rub off on me. What a way to lose my powers.”
Without malice, Bryde observed, “If I had the same policy about dreamers, you wouldn’t be here.”
Ronan made a sizzling sound as he touched a train conductor’s cheek. “That burned so hot this guy’s face melted. In fact—”
“?‘The West Virginia Museum of Living History is also’?”—Hennessy raised her voice to drown Ronan out, the brochure held in front of her face—“?‘available for overnight birthday parties and weekend home-school outings. Discounts available for groups over three.’ Shit. If only we had one more dreamer, the money we would save. We could put it toward Ronan Lynch’s college fund. Not for going to college; for when he burns one down and insurance doesn’t cover it. Bryde, love, any chance we can pick up a hitchhiker? Another dreamer who will fail you less than I? For a family fun pack?”
Bryde stepped away from the mannequins, dusting off his hands. “Do you want another?”
Ronan didn’t care to think about this. It gave him the same vibe he used to get back at the Barns some nights, when he got trapped in one particular train of thought, where he imagined he and Adam had been together a very long time and then Ronan died of old age or bad choices and Adam found someone else and later they all three were reunited in the afterlife, and rather than getting to spend the rest of eternity together, Adam had to split his time between Ronan and this stupid usurper he’d fallen in love with as a widower, which completely ruined the point of Heaven. And that was before Ronan even got to worrying if Adam made it to the afterlife at all, with his agnostic tendencies.
“Three’s a good number,” Ronan growled, shooting Hennessy a dark look as they headed deeper into the museum. “Burrito’s built for three.”
“You can fit two more people in the backseat,” Hennessy said.
“Not if the person in the backseat’s lying down.”
“Good point. If you’re spooning, you could probably stack four or five people back there. Two more in the trunk.”
“Dreamers!” Bryde said, silencing them.
He stood at the double doors at the end of the mannequin-filled hall, his hands upon the door handles. All that was truly visible of him in the darkness was that tawny tousle of hair, his pale neck, and the light stripe down each of his gray jacket’s sleeves. It made him look a bit like a stick figure or a skeleton, the bare minimum required to appear human.
As he pushed open the doors, warm light poured into the hallway.
The space on the other side was as large as a gymnasium. The roof had collapsed long ago. The golden evening found its way down through the jagged hole as a striving tree covered with creeper found its way up through it. The dust dazzled in the light. Everything smelled like real life, not one of five hundred scents piped in.
“Yes,” Bryde said, as if answering a question.
It was like a cathedral to ruination. Pigeons burst up from the shadows with a puff of sound. Ronan fell back in surprise; Hennessy threw a reflexive hand over her head. Bryde didn’t flinch, watching them vanish through the roof. Chainsaw threw herself after them with a joyful ark, ark, ark, sounding enormous and menacing.
“Balls,” Ronan hissed, annoyed to have been startled.
“Tits,” added Hennessy.
As they stepped farther in, another batch of birds burst from a pollen-coated carriage, knocking a mannequin onto its face.
“See how it’s become a museum to something entirely different,” Bryde said. “Look how honest it is now.”
Because of all the leaf litter and undergrowth, it was difficult to say what the exhibit had originally been, although an ivy-covered vintage firetruck a few yards away from the carriage suggested a street scene. Bryde loved the memory of human effort.
“How many years did it take for this to happen?” Bryde asked aloud. He laid his palm flat against the trunk of the big tree and gazed up through the split roof. “How many years did this have to be untouched before a tree could grow again? How many more years will it take before this place disappears entirely? Will it ever? Or will a post-museum forever be a museum to humans? When we dream something, how long will it last? This is why we do not dream something absolute, something infinite; we are not so egotistical as to assume it will always be wanted or needed. We have to think of what will become of our dreams after we are gone. Our legacy.”