And now . . . waiting to go crazy here, with him, was better than waiting to go crazy on the velvet couch in the casino dressing room, under the watchful eye of her parents. Elijah needed her.
She slipped her shoes on and hurried after him, the sun strong on her bare back. In the shade of the wide front porch, she stood beside him and read the sign. REOPENING AFTER THE PARADE.
They looked at each other.
They looked one way down the street, toward the quiet historic town.
They looked the other way up the street. A few more storefronts led to a dead end at a mountain that towered frighteningly close over them, bright orange against the blue sky.
“A parade?” she mused. “Is it a holiday?”
“Not in America. We missed Flag Day.”
“Maybe they celebrate the country of their ancestors. France? Bastille Day isn’t for another three and a half weeks.” She tried the doorknob—locked—and then rang the doorbell, which chimed forlornly inside the shop. “Allons enfants de la Patrie.” She placed her forehead on the wooden window frame so she could see inside beyond the glare of reflected sunlight. Chocolates beckoned her from a display case, and café tables and chairs awaited her arrival, but no aproned and paper-hatted attendant appeared to let them in. “Le jour de gloire est arrivé,” she said, straightening. “But maybe not for a few hours. We’ll come back when the parade is over.”
Elijah’s low voice escalated into panic. “We don’t even know when the parade is, so we don’t know when to come back.”
“It’s not this morning or we’d see them lining up for it already,” she said soothingly. “It can’t be tonight or there’d be no point in them opening the store afterward. It must be this afternoon.”
“That won’t do us any good,” he said breathlessly. “It will be a few hours shy of two days off the pill for you. At that point off the pill, I was already completely insane. That means two of us insane, Holly. What will I do without you to keep me sane? God damn it!” He reared back with one foot to kick the door.
Just what they needed—to look crazy when they were going crazy, and to get arrested for attacking a candy shop. Holly surged forward to stop him.
His foot paused in midair.
She remained standing next to him. She hadn’t actually moved toward him to block his foot from the door. She’d only blocked him with her mind. Sparkles swirled around her limbs like golden candy sprinkles spilling from the store.
This hadn’t really happened. She’d only imagined it. Elijah had stopped himself.
His sneaker still hovered inches from the door. Without looking at her, slowly he lowered his foot to the floor of the porch.
She ran her eye up and down him. His arms were folded tightly across his red T-shirt as if he was cold in the warm morning, his strong biceps stretching the cotton. The light brown waves of his hair quirked into odd shapes in the breeze. His green eyes were wild and worried, still scanning the storefront for a way in. He was insane and adorable, and so vulnerable after ten hours of machismo.
“There’s nothing else we can do right now,” she said. “We’ll wait until this afternoon and hope for the best. You’re tired. When’s the last time you slept?”
He cut his eyes briefly at her before returning them to the store. “I guess it’s been over twenty-four hours,” he admitted. “And I didn’t sleep very well then.”
“Come here,” she said. He didn’t move, and this time she didn’t rely on her pretend power. She physically pulled him toward her by his hips until he stumbled a step forward. She slid her hands around to his back and rubbed up and down slowly through his T-shirt. He was so stiff under her hands that she half expected him to pull away. He never unfolded his arms. But he let her rub his back, and finally he put his chin down on her shoulder.
“Why don’t we go to that hotel down the street?” she asked, her voice muffled by his chest. “They’ll be able to give us specifics on the parade, and then we’ll rest up until the time comes.”
Now he pulled away from her, but only a few inches. He unfolded his arms and slid his hands down her forearms to her elbows, so they embraced each other equally. He looked deep into her eyes and said nothing.
She couldn’t read his expression. He didn’t seem horrified at the prospect of sharing a room, but he didn’t seem too eager, either. His face was a blank. Puzzled, she pulled one hand free and placed her fingertips on the center of his shirt.
His heart raced under her touch.
Good. As long as his heart beat as fast as hers did when they stood this close, they were still alive, and human, and they couldn’t be too far gone.
Elijah walked more slowly as he approached the elaborately carved front desk at the Victorian hotel. He hadn’t thought this through. He’d made a big withdrawal before he left Vegas, so he had plenty of money in his pockets. He was a very good kidnapper in that regard. He could pay for this room in cash. But he would have to give them his debit card anyway for the security deposit. If the police were tracking him, he would be as good as caught.
The alternative was to take Holly to the run-down motel he’d noticed across from the gas station at the last intersection before the long and winding highway to Icarus. They wouldn’t insist on seeing his debit card. But he couldn’t take Holly there. It was too far, and she was too good for that.
A few minutes later, he stepped on the elevator, pressed the button for the third floor, and stood close to Holly—a little closer than necessary. “Good news,” he said.
She clapped her hands. “I’m a good news kind of girl.”
“The parade is at three. It’s actually the practice parade they hold on the summer solstice, the autumnal equinox, and the winter solstice. Their annual St. Patrick’s Day parade is the real blowout.”
The doors slid open. She backed into the hallway as she asked him, “Today’s the longest day of the year?”
He passed her and led the way down the hall to their room. “Feels like it already, and it’s only 11 a.m.” He winced as soon as he said this, because he knew by now how it would sound to her.
Sure enough, he felt her disappointment that he wasn’t having fun with her. She’d hoped something would happen between them in the hotel room, but now she told herself: come on. What a thing to dwell on at a time like this, when he was suffering. As he stopped at their door and slid the key card into the lock, she reached out to rub his back again.
Elijah stilled, bracing himself for the touch that would mean he really could read minds.
Her warm hand stroked his back through his shirt.
He jumped.
“You’re so nervous,” she said. “Relax. We’ll get some sleep, we’ll go back to the ohmyGod weird-ass candy store that makes pharmaceuticals, and we’ll get the Mentafixol. Everything will be fine. There’s no reason to be tense.” But as she pushed open the door and flicked on the light, she was wishing they did have something to be nervous about, and he would make a move on her—oh! Wait. Maybe he would, after all. There was only one bed.
“They gave me a king without asking,” he explained. He was careful not to characterize this as good news or bad news so he wouldn’t hurt her imaginary feelings or her real ones. It was the truth, as far as it went. The hotel clerk had taken one look at Elijah’s showgirl and booked him a king, though he could see on the computer that there was still a double room available. Elijah simply hadn’t corrected him. “Do want me to ask if we can change? Or I can get you a room to yourself.”
“This is fine with me if it’s okay with you.” Holly rounded the bed and paused in the bathroom doorway. The king bed was a good sign. She hoped he was lying about not asking for it. Clearly he wasn’t going to make a move on her in the next fifteen minutes, though. He watched her hungrily like a lean wolf who hadn’t eaten in a week, but he swayed a little like he hadn’t slept either. She backed into the bathroom and closed the door.
Elijah kicked off his shoes, stretched out on the bed, and clicked the
TV on with the remote. He tried to listen to the news rather than her thoughts, but it was no use. He assumed she was removing her makeup, because she was thinking it was awfully heavy. And she was glad she’d brought remover in her purse, but she should have brought a hacksaw.
Finally she opened the door and stood in the doorway with her hands half shielding her face. “Don’t look.”
“What?” Elijah exclaimed. “You don’t look bad. You look beautiful without makeup. Just different.”
“Ha-ha.” She stepped to the bed, crawled right over his outstretched legs, and slid beneath the sheets.
He expected some discussion of him sleeping on the floor, or building a wall of pillows between them. But she wasn’t prudish like that, and besides, she seemed to trust him for some reason. Her eyes were already closed. She was wondering how well her parents would be able to adjust their act without her tomorrow morning—her dad was scheduled to perform an impossible feat of physical stamina—and whether they’d actually be relieved when she didn’t show up, because she’d been dropping a lot of glittery golden hoops the past few nights while she watched the audience for Elijah.
He settled into a comfortable position, cushioned in the pillows on his own half of the bed. There was no way he would be able to sleep with her curled beside him, her chest smooth and bare, her bikini top peeking from the covers and sparkling in the lamplight. He wished she’d gone with him to the prom when they were fourteen, and that they’d given each other comfort in the face of MAD during those high school years. Instead, he’d stayed away from girls. His imagined mind-reading abilities told him Holly was as inexperienced as he was. But that must be wrong. She was a beautiful girl, and kind. Surely she’d had a serious boyfriend before. He only wished it had been him.
As his eyes roamed her bare face, her confusion of the past night and morning flattened into a gray buzzing static. He’d learned over the last few days living with Shane that this was how the earliest stage of sleep sounded when he was reading someone’s mind. He clicked off the lamp on his bedside table, lowered the TV volume to a whisper, and turned on his side. He watched her for a long time.
“Where is Holly?” Rob barked.
Kaylee stopped her brisk walk across the casino floor and glanced toward the nearest security camera to remind Rob that they were being watched by the goons who’d beaten him up several nights before. Anger snapped in his eyes under lids still red and swollen from the fight.
She could have changed his mind and kept him from approaching her. Clearly he’d been watching her work a cheater at one of the poker tables, and he’d been waiting here among the slot machines for her return to the elevators. She didn’t have time for him this morning, between the usual trouble at the casino and the big trouble Holly and Elijah were trying to find. In fact, she was running late for a meeting with Holly’s dad.
But this confrontation with Rob was useful to her. It told her Rob hadn’t followed Holly to Colorado. She’d worried all night about Holly’s disappearance. But if Rob was here, she was almost glad Holly and Elijah had skipped town.
She closed the step between herself and Rob and looked up at his handsome face marred by bruises. “Holly is away from you,” she said, “and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Now get out of my casino.” She wanted to say a lot more, but Rob had planned this visit and staked her out. He might be wearing a wire so he could taunt her into saying something incriminating to embarrass the Starrs and the casino.
This type of encounter was old hat to her. People often had a beef with a casino employee and tried to drag the casino into their personal business. But this time was different because Holly was involved. And because Rob’s eyes didn’t flicker. He kept staring down at Kaylee, smiling smugly, a cut on his lip turning his confident grin sinister.
She changed his mind—staying in the casino was not a good idea—and resented the delicious prickles that washed over her as she used her power. She didn’t want to associate Rob with the euphoria her power induced in her.
He glanced at her breasts. Then he turned quickly and headed for the door across the casino floor.
She eyed him for the long minute it took him to transverse the floor packed with slot machines. She didn’t think it was possible for someone without power to resist a mind changer, but Rob’s defiance in the face of the goons and his cheeky peek at her breasts just now unnerved her. She wanted to make sure he was gone. Finally he pushed through the revolving glass door and into the sunny morning.
Satisfied, she rode the elevator up to her office and nodded to the guards she’d posted outside. In the dark room, flickering with movement from the bank of security camera monitors behind her desk, Peter Starr née Stuckenschneider jumped up from one of the chairs she reserved for guests and suspects. She waited until she’d closed and locked the door behind her before she approached him for a hug. The less people understood about how well they knew each other, the safer she and Peter and their relatives would stay. “Don’t worry,” she said into his shoulder.
He moved her to arm’s length, frowning at her. “Don’t worry!” he exclaimed. “You’ve taken my daughter off Mentafixol and you tell me not to worry?”
Good point. Kaylee gestured to the chair and retreated behind her desk. She tapped on her computer and pretended to be calling up some data. Peter would be soothed if he thought she was tracking Holly in some high-tech manner. “I know where she is.”
“Where?” he asked sharply.
Kaylee tapped on the keyboard, as if she needed to call up that screen before answering, when actually she was opening her music download account. “Icarus.” She knew this because Elijah had used his debit card issued by the casino employee credit union, not because she was tracking him by satellite.
“Colorado?” Peter exclaimed. “Where Mentafixol is made? What the hell is she doing up there?”
Kaylee looked Peter dead in the eye as she told him, “She’s with Elijah.” Kaylee didn’t add that she knew this only because of Holly’s bizarre text message last night. She didn’t have the resources or the manpower to keep better tabs on them. But Peter didn’t need to know that. Nobody did.
“You see?” Peter’s nostrils flared, and he nodded with satisfaction and fury. “I told you not to take Holly and Elijah off Mentafixol at the same time.”
“You put them on Mentafixol at the same time,” Kaylee pointed out. “You had the same guy pose as a doctor to both of them. He called in both their prescriptions to the casino pharmacy. There was no way I could end the Mentafixol shipment for Holly without ending it for Elijah too, or without shifting one of their prescriptions somewhere else and making them suspicious. They’re not fourteen anymore. You can’t fool them like you used to.”
“I didn’t arrange all that in the first place,” Peter said quietly. “Mr. Diamond was responsible. They happened to discover their power within a few hours of each other, and Mr. Diamond thought this was the best way to handle it.”
“There you go.” Kaylee gestured with one hand as if Peter’s comment proved her point. “Mr. Diamond knows best.” People with power worshipped Mr. Diamond for providing them a safe haven, and Kaylee wasn’t above playing that card.
“Kaylee, that’s really what I came here to talk to you about.” Peter made a visible effort to collect himself and have a calm, informative discussion with Kaylee, as if he’d practiced what to say to her beforehand. He uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “Of all the young people you could take off Mentafixol to help protect us from the Res, why Holly? Why not Skye’s kid, or Alvin’s kid?”
“We discussed this a couple of weeks ago,” Kaylee said. “Those boys are only sixteen. The Res will eat them for breakfast. I need them as strong as I can get them.”
“Then, my God! There are lots of older kids. Both of Paxton’s daughters.”
“They’re mind changers,” Kaylee said patiently. “I don’t need what I’ve already got. If the Res keeps sending scouts in here to scope us out, I’ll withdra
w as many people as I have to. But it takes time and care, as you understand, and first I need the best.”
Peter nodded along, but he looked pained. “I know you’re learning the ropes from Mr. Diamond. I know you have to take over the withdrawals sooner or later. But why does Holly have to be your guinea pig? Especially when you’re trying to keep track of Elijah Brown too?”
Kaylee tilted her head to one side as if she were considering this carefully, then constructed a true statement, sort of. “I’m following Mr. Diamond’s instructions.” The instructions he’d left for her in his binder.
This seemed to satisfy Peter for the time being. “What are Holly and that kid doing in Icarus?”
“My guess is—”
“Your guess!” Peter roared. “You didn’t have them followed?”
The blinds over the enormous windows on either side of Kaylee’s desk suddenly raked open behind her, startling her with the noise and the bright sunlight. She jumped in her desk chair.
And immediately felt humiliated that she’d jumped. She said slowly, “I hate levitators.”
Peter closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. “I’m sorry. I just—”
“We never follow the people we’re withdrawing,” Kaylee interrupted him. “You know that. If we followed them, Elijah would sense us. He’d get paranoid, they’d think we were out to get them, and they’d both run straight to the Res for protection the first time one of those Goth creeps approached them.”
“But that’s for normal withdrawals,” Peter said. “That’s when they stay in town while they’re discovering their power. They just get really drunk and sloppy and do a few lines of coke to compensate, the levitators turn over a couple of police cars, and they’re grateful when the casino bails them out of jail. They don’t usually run off to Icarus, of all places!”
Kaylee nodded. “I was with Holly a few nights ago when Elijah asked her to share one of her last pills. He’s been nagging the pharmacy, too. He and Holly both still believe they’re mentally ill. They must have figured out where the pills are made, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to go and get more. Congratulations on freaking them out completely when they were kids.”
Levitating Las Vegas Page 15