Clean bathrooms. Cafeteria. Dozens of deserted corners, galleries, hallways, and back stairs where you could hide for hours, maybe even days. Outdoor courtyards for flying exercise. Huge mega-galleries with two-story-high ceilings that would be great for indoor flying. In an emergency, weapons would be available in the hall of medieval armor. The educational center had computers and books, and the gift shop had cool stuff for the younger kids — puzzles, games, arts and crafts …

Fang interrupted my reverie. “So what’s the plan?”

“Stay in pairs,” I directed. “Nudge and Angel, Gazzy and Iggy —”

“And Fang and Max,” Iggy finished in a mocking singsongy voice.

I ignored him. “Meet back here at the ticket desk in an hour and a half. And come with answers to these questions.” I pulled out a piece of paper I’d jotted notes on earlier in the day. “Okay. Each of you should tell us something you learned about history, about yourself, and about one or more of us.”

The flock looked at me blankly.

“We only have an hour and a half to practically discover, like, the meaning of life?” Fang asked.

“Why not? We’ve had to do harder stuff to survive,” I pointed out. “And besides — you never know. Someday we might have only a few seconds to figure out the meaning of life.”

Chapter 23

23

FOR SOMEONE WHO WAS way more interested in NASCAR less than an hour ago, Fang sure seemed to be getting into the art museum. I mean way into.

“Were you, like, Indiana Jones or something in a former life?” I quipped as Fang dragged me through the fifth or sixth hall of ancient artifacts.

“Maybe,” Fang said in a faraway voice as he gazed at a birdlike ritual mask made by the — I squinted at the placard — Senufo tribe. We’d been through the Egyptian, Greek/Etruscan, Roman, pre-Columbian, and Native American collections, and now we were into African art.

“Aren’t you sick of broken pots and hatchets yet?” I asked him.

“What’s your hurry?” Fang turned and looked me in the eye. “Or d’you think that if you can’t save the world with it, it’s not worth your time?”

“Look, I have to find answers to my own questions or I lose leader credibility. And I haven’t found them here. I’m thinking maybe a da Vinci would be useful. He was pretty smart, from what I’ve heard.”

“Don’t think so much, Max. This is supposed to be about feeling stuff, not finding answers, right?”

Did I hear him correctly? Fang talking about feeling

stuff?

Maybe there was something special about this place.

I knew Nudge and Angel had started off in the historicgarments gallery, and I figured they’d never leave a room full of eighteenth-century court dresses and Victorian ball gowns. So I was kind of surprised when we crossed paths near the Impressionist room.