Kaylee blocked Jasmine very hard. She couldn’t think about Mr. Diamond.
“You and Mr. Diamond thought you were strengthening us when you took Elijah and Holly off Mentafixol, but you played right into Isaac’s hand. He must have people reading you, me, Peter, any of the guards. He knew which kids were about to come into their power, and now the Res wants them before they’re loyal to us.”
This was very, very, very bad. Kaylee thought this and simultaneously tried to block the thought from Jasmine. The only way to survive the Res was to stop caring about people. But if Elijah and Holly were in love, there was no telling what an experienced mind reader could coerce them into doing for him by threatening one of them and then the other. She had to keep Holly out of there.
“Ms. Michaels?” called a security guard who’d stepped inside the casino doors. “You’d better come see this.”
What now? Kaylee thought, and Jasmine offered a bitter laugh of agreement. They both hurried through the burned casino air, past the tangle of employees blocking the doors, and into the fresh hot breeze and bright sunlight outside. The security guard pointed down the block. They jogged toward the cross street, where another security guard pointed them around the corner of the massive building. There on the sidewalk that continued back to the paved space where Peter had performed his impossible feat of physical stamina that morning, another crowd had gathered, pointing up at the fortieth floor.
A dark, jagged shape in the otherwise mirrored surface of the casino marked the place where Holly had broken Kaylee’s office window. Just below this, Holly descended slowly, holding herself up with her power but pantomiming a difficult and heart-pounding struggle down a flimsy white rope.
“Oh my God,” Kaylee exclaimed, losing her cool, “is that Kleenex she’s supposed to be climbing down? And she’s carrying her purse. I have got to talk to her about presentation.”
“What’d you do,” Jasmine asked, “change her mind about following you out the door of your office? Too specific.”
Kaylee glared at Jasmine.
Jasmine winked at Kaylee. “You want me to help you collect her?”
Kaylee glanced around at the sidewalk clogged with pedestrians in the early afternoon. Everyone who passed this corner looked down the alley, saw the crowd forming under Holly, and headed in that direction.
“We can’t worry about her right now,” Kaylee said, “not while we’re in public. She’ll just make another mess. We need to get the casino reopened before the news crews get out here. Besides, I know where she’s going.”
“To Elijah’s house,” Jasmine said slowly. “You’ll post a couple of guards on the street to alert you if the Res comes by, so you’ll know she’s safe. Once you get things cleaned up at the casino, you’ll go there yourself and take both of them into custody. Indefinitely.”
Kaylee was shocked that Jasmine had been able to lift this from her. She’d thought she was keeping a tight lid on her plans. She must be stressed and tired and losing her edge.
She shifted her attention from her own shortcomings to damage control. “No, of course not.” She put a hand on the shoulder of Jasmine’s dealer uniform jacket. “That’s your fear talking.”
Jasmine didn’t buy it. “I agreed to let Mr. Diamond put Elijah on Mentafixol to protect him from himself. I never agreed to let you or anybody lock him up. You can’t do that, Kaylee! I won’t let you!”
Kaylee changed Jasmine’s mind.
Then she pointed to a couple of guards with half power and motioned them over. With one hand on Jasmine’s back, she said, “This is delicate.”
The guards nodded.
“Be nice, but lock her up just in case. Don’t let her out until you hear from me. And for God’s sake don’t let her talk you out of it.”
As they walked away, Jasmine looked over her shoulder at Kaylee, tears in her eyes. This was the awful thing about changing the mind of a mind reader. Other people with power might guess, but Jasmine knew exactly what Kaylee had done to her.
Suddenly Kaylee sensed a tall presence inches from her shoulder. She glanced up into Shane’s blue eyes. Her heart thumped beneath her silk blouse. She’d never let him get this close to her. The mess with Jasmine had distracted her, damn it!
Shane set down his guitar case on the sidewalk and gazed up at Holly, who had made it down to the thirty-fifth floor or so. She faked losing her grip on the “rope,” and the crowd gasped underneath her.
“She’s good,” Shane drawled. “I can’t see the safety cables at all. It looks like she’s really doing something dangerous. But—is that Kleenex?” He glanced down at Kaylee again.
Kaylee had a hard afternoon ahead of her, and her head felt heavy with responsibility. But for a split second, she indulged in the fantasy that this man cared about her. They were both young, about the same age, running loose in Vegas. Between her clout and her power, she could get them into the best clubs any time she chose. They could have a terrific fling together. She could feel, for the first time, like she was twenty-two.
When she pictured fingering the slicked-back strands of his blond hair, she almost thought she saw his pupils dilate in the bright sunlight. This was her imagination. She was losing it.
He smiled. “You look tired. Rough day at the casino? Maybe I can help.”
She laughed at the idea. “When I need your help, Mr. Sligh, I’ll ask for it.”
He opened his mouth to say something else.
She changed his mind.
He closed his mouth. But he continued to stare at her, a knowing look that intensified the euphoric prickling sensation racing through her.
Without another word to him, she turned away and headed back inside. She had a lot of phone calls to make. Rounding up Elijah and Holly would take every available hand—including Peter Starr.
17
Elijah was checking the chicken in the oven when the hair on his arms stood up. He jerked backward, thinking he’d set himself on fire. Only then did he begin to sense Holly’s desperation and her hope that Shane’s car parked in the driveway meant Elijah was home.
He slammed the oven door shut, dashed across the kitchen, rounded the counter into the living room, leaped over the sofa, tripped, sprawled on the floor, picked himself up, and jerked open the front door just as she was raising her finger to ring the bell.
He registered only a fleeting glimpse of her, long hair tangled, green glittering eye makeup eerily smeared to her hairline, before he backed her against the stucco wall of the porch and kissed her.
Her mouth yielded for his. He dipped his tongue deep inside. Cradling the back of her head with one hand to protect her from the stucco, he put his other hand on her bare flat stomach. Her skin jumped under his touch. She moved her head to one side, trying to break the kiss. She needed to tell him everything that had happened to her at the casino, everything she’d found out from Kaylee—and it all came at him in a rush of images.
He didn’t want this information from Holly right now, no matter how important. He held her head more firmly and kissed her more deeply.
“Mm,” she groaned against his lips. She needed to tell him they were in danger. They needed to leave town right now. They could kiss later.
This time he broke the kiss and looked into her dark eyes full of worry and pain, framed by false lashes. “That just doesn’t make sense, Holly,” he said gently. “My mom wouldn’t let the casino lock me up.”
“I know what I know,” Holly breathed. “Come on. Let’s go. We’ll figure it out later.” She grasped his hand on her belly and stepped toward the sidewalk, pulling him along—pushing him from behind with her power too, already so accustomed to having it that she only half realized she was using it.
“Holly,” he said with enough force that she stopped and looked back at him. “My mom said it wasn’t safe to leave.”
Holly gazed pleadingly up at him, her face drawn and waiflike under the heavy makeup and grime. She wanted to believe him. She needed him to know wh
at to do, because she sure didn’t. But Kaylee had told her that mind readers would say anything to get their way.
He put both hands over her lips, then on her cheeks, then on either side of her jaw, framing her face. “You have to believe me.” He felt guilty for lying about lying, or at least for leaving out a pertinent piece of information—that his mom had said it wasn’t safe for Holly to leave, but that Elijah himself should book it. He wasn’t a manipulative ass of a mind reader if it was for Holly’s own good. Was he?
“I believe you.” She didn’t believe him, not completely. Everything else Kaylee had told her made too much sense for her description of mind readers to be inaccurate. But Holly desperately wanted to believe him. “We both have a lot of anger. That anger has to go somewhere. We can’t use it against each other. We’re too powerful for that, and we can do a lot of damage.”
“We already have.” He tilted her head forward, kissed her forehead, and looked into her eyes again. “I shouldn’t have done that to you, Holly. When you’re close to me like this, I know everything you think. I wish I could turn it off. I can’t. But I promise you I won’t make you feel that way again.”
She gave a small nod, her wide eyes never leaving his. She still wasn’t sure she should trust him, and she wasn’t sure she cared. He could betray her and use her, as long as he would touch her.
He pulled her by the hand through the open door, into the house.
A buzzer split the silence. Elijah dropped Holly’s hand and jogged through the living room. When she rounded the corner, she saw him pulling something out of the oven, and she smelled food. She skipped forward and ooohed her approval at the two places set at the kitchen table, the plates heaped with chicken casserole and roasted vegetables. As she watched, Elijah plucked rolls from the baking sheet he held with a towel and tossed a couple onto each plate.
“Dude.” She slid into a chair in front of one of the plates. Five minutes and one serving later, she came up for breath long enough to ask, “Do you have powers I don’t know about? Instant gourmet food? Oh, God.”
He rose, reached to the counter for the casserole dish, and spooned second helpings of chicken and vegetables onto her plate. “It’s been cooking for an hour. I couldn’t find you at the casino, and I hoped you might stop by here.”
Five minutes and the second serving later, she wiped the corners of her mouth daintily with her napkin, as if the whole meal had been a polite enterprise. Not. “I was hungry.”
He offered her a basket with the few remaining rolls. “Sitting at the casino talking to my mom, it came over me all of a sudden, this terrible hunger. I thought I was going to pass out.”
“Really!” Holly said through a mouthful of bread.
“On the way here, I stopped at that café, the one where I kidnapped you?” he said casually.
“Uh-huh?” she said in the same tone.
“I ate two of those muffins you were lusting after.”
“Mmmmmmuffin,” she said. “I’ve never had one. Were they good?”
He looked apologetic, as if they had been very good and he was afraid to tell her.
She stuck out her bottom lip.
He reached behind him to the cabinet, brought out a bakery box, and solemnly slid it across the table to her.
She peeked inside. Two chocolate muffins. She grinned her gratitude at him. He smiled back. She peeled back the glittering paper and took a big bite of muffin. Mmmmm.
“We can’t know what the future holds for us,” he said. “But I hope yours is full of muffins.”
Holly held up one finger until she’d chewed and swallowed. “Kaylee warned me about mind readers. You know exactly what to say to make a girl fall in love with you.”
Almost as soon as it was out of her mouth, she realized what she’d said. She glanced up at him guiltily. He frowned at her.
They’d had a huge fight just that morning. Now their relationship was too good and too tentative to mess up with a clumsy statement like that. It was true—if he did tell her he loved her, how would she ever know whether he was sincere?—but she hadn’t meant to bring this up.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I know,” he responded with no expression in his voice.
Nervously she pulled at the muffin paper. Most girls probably would be put off their food by an awkward silence like this, or would pretend to be. Holly was not most girls. She was still hungry. She finished the first muffin and half-heartedly offered the second to Elijah. He shook his head no. She ate it in silence, then put the papers back in the bakery box and nipped up the crumbs with her fingers.
“Full?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I can ever be full,” she admitted. “Satisfied, for now.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s too bad.”
Was this innuendo? She didn’t have enough experience to know for certain, but she hoped for the best. She scraped back her chair, rounded the table to him, and slipped onto his lap. She ran her fingers back through his hair and—
“Oh God, how did you get this huge knot on the back of your head?” She touched it gingerly.
He winced. “That? My best friend pistol-whipped me.”
Holly nodded. “Your talk with Shane didn’t go well? And when you accused him of having magical powers, he thought you were crazy?”
“Basically,” Elijah said.
“Poor baby,” she cooed.
“It’s stopped bleeding,” he said. “The show must go on. Where were we?”
She gently kissed his hair. “Are we going to make out at the kitchen table, or is there a bedroom?”
The serious look he gave her sent chills along her arms.
He moved under her. She slipped off his lap and let him stand, then looked way up at him. It wasn’t often that he stood so close to her and she realized how tall he was.
He chuckled. “You make me feel like a million bucks, you know that?”
She let loose an embarrassed giggle. “Why? You knew you were tall.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was glorious.”
She snorted.
Shaking his head, he pulled her by the hand across the living room, into the hall, past the fateful bathroom. In his bedroom he closed the blinds against the midafternoon desert sun, plunging the room into shadow. The sunlight squeezing through at the edges of the windows backlit his wavy brown hair. He sat on the bed and kicked off his shoes. Then he patted the covers beside him.
She sat down and bent to take off her shoes.
“Could you leave those on?”
She paused. This request was kinky, like a fourteen-year-old boy’s wet dream.
“I plead the fifth.” But his voice was so kind that the kinky request began to seem almost sweet.
She let him ease her back onto the bed. Her eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness and she couldn’t make out his expression at all as he leaned over and kissed her.
She cleared her mind. Because she didn’t want him to see the turmoil in it. And because she needed to enjoy this moment with him, which was all she knew she had.
He rubbed the tip of his nose against hers and rested his forehead on hers. “Don’t be scared, Holly,” he whispered. “The world is more open now, not more closed.”
She choked on her words as she whispered back, “I can’t believe what they put us through for so long.”
The stubble on his chin whispered across her skin as he said hoarsely, “Seven years asleep has been worth it for these three days with you.”
He watched her for a second longer. No matter what happened, she would always remember him just like this: a mess of sandy brown hair, kind green eyes, straight nose in a shadowy face, his lips twisted into a quizzical bow.
They kissed for a long time in the darkness. Slowly his body melted and settled into hers, his tongue exploring deep inside her mouth, his knee tucked between her thighs, his chest rising and falling against hers as they breathed together.
She thought of undressin
g him. Surprised, he looked down and watched her long and perfect pink nails sliding down his faded T-shirt. She was so beautiful. He would never get used to her.
She rolled him onto his back and straddled him. Then she grabbed the hem of his T-shirt on either side, lifted it up, and smoothed her small hands up his bare chest. Just as in Shane’s car that morning, her admiration for his body would have embarrassed him except that it gave her pleasure and heated her blood. His blood heated with hers.
“Your turn,” he said, running his fingers underneath the cups of her bikini top. She shuddered at his touch. Slowly, seductively, she unhooked the top and pulled it off, exposing her perfect breasts. Then, without turning around, she tossed the top over her shoulder. It rang a small basketball goal in the corner of his room.
“Score!” he exclaimed.
“Only if you have a condom,” she deadpanned. She winked at him. The extra drama provided by her false eyelashes set his skin on fire.
“I do.” He propped himself up on his elbows and looked into her eyes, searching for a bead on whether she really wanted to do this. She gazed steadily back at him. She was sure. She was scared, but she was sure.
To prove it, she unbuttoned his jeans and pulled his waistband until he helped her take his jeans and boxers off. He tugged her bikini bottoms down her thighs. All their clothes discarded, she eased on top of him again and massaged his hard length first with her hand, then with her power.
“Oh my Lord,” he breathed. Every second he thought his euphoria was too good to withstand, and every second he felt even better.
She felt the same way. As he watched her in the dim light, her pupils dilated, her brown eyes turning black.
He twisted underneath her and leaned over to peer into the top drawer of his nightstand. Reaching in carefully—Shane’s Glock was in there too, loaded now—he pulled out a condom packet. As he tore it open, he explained, “I bought them when we stopped for gas in St. George. I had high hopes for this day, and things are finally looking up, despite the argument, and the head trauma, and the escape from the fortieth floor.”
Levitating Las Vegas Page 24