Ethan said.
âAlthough Cindyâs ice cream really is fabulous.â
âYou donât have to explain the park to me. I grew up here.â
âI know. I graduated with you.â
âOkay,â Ethan said, clearly not remembering her, which was not strange, considering what an outcast sheâd been. âUh, sure.â
âI mostly stayed in the art room and the library. You didnât know me.â
âOkay,â Ethan said. âSo you do this for a living, fix amusement parks? Or is this something youâre just doing for Ray?â
He sounded suspicious, the way he said âRayâ sounded like âBatty Branniganâ to Mab, and she steeled herself for whatever insult was coming next.
âBecause Iâd think after growing up around here,â he said, âthe last thing youâd want to work on would be an amusement park. Didnât you get sick of this place as a kid?â
âI was never here as a kid,â Mab said. âI wasnât allowed to come anywhere near here. I could hear the music at night during the summer, we didnât live that far away. And I could see the lights from our attic window.â She swallowed, the yearning for lights coming back to her as if thirty years ago were yesterday, and then smiled tightly at him. âI never got to come here, but I did all my college art history work on carnivals and amusement parks and gypsy wagons, and I did my thesis on carnival art, so. . . . no, this is not something Iâm doing for Ray.â
âOh,â Ethan said. âSo this means a lot to you, being in Dreamland.â
âNo, itâs just a job,â Mab lied.
âRight.â Ethan looked uncomfortable, and Mab would have changed the subject, but he beat her to it. âWhatâs it mean to your uncle?â
âWhat?â
âHeâs here a lot. Whatâs he want with Dreamland?â
âI have no idea,â Mab said. âCan I go back to work now?â
âIs there something here he wants?â Ethan said, not moving. âOr is he just coming here now because he couldnât when he was a kid?â
âHe came all the time when he was a kid,â Mab said. âHe had his get-out-of-town epiphany here when he was fifteen.â
âWhat?â Ethan scowled at her, as if she was being obscure.
âMy mother said Ray came here one Halloween night and the next morning, he started doing everything he could to get out of Parkersburg.â Of course, Mab thought, being a Brannigan in Parkersburg was enough reason to do everything you could to get out of Parkersburg.
âFifteen,â Ethan said. âWhat happened?â
âI donât know. He left the day after he graduated high school three years later and didnât come back, so I donât know him very well.â The pause after that stretched out, so she added, âI was two when he left. We hadnât bonded.â
âHeâs back now.â
âYes, he is. I have to work now.â
âHave you ever seen guys dressed in black running around here at night? Black ops?â
âNo. But I wouldnât, not unless they ran me down. I concentrate on my work. Which I should get back to.â
âSomebody with high-tech equipment was in the park last night. Thatâs whoââ
âHigh tech?â Mab said, interested now. âHigh enough to animate an iron statue?â
ââshot me.â
âBecause that would be helpful. Frankly, the hallucination thing seems far-fetched, but I know what I saw, and I couldnât have seen that, so that left me with hallucinations, which is so unlike me, Iâm a very calm person, and then you saw clown footprints, but if itâs Men in Black animating statues . . .â Then the rest of what heâd said sank in. âYou got shot?â She surveyed him doubtfully. âYou look okay.â
âIt was a