“Hey!” Elijah shouted stupidly.
Rob didn’t turn to look at Elijah, only stepped out of the way. But Elijah caught a glimpse of the amused smile on his profile just before the room went black.
He was still conscious. Or he’d lost consciousness only for a second. His head throbbed from Holly’s punch. He sensed Rob bending over him, and a levitator whose mind felt familiar. The one who’d come after him in Icarus. Violet.
“My gosh,” Rob said, “is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” Violet murmured. Elijah’s field of vision filled with her face, a beautiful girl with black eyes. She cried, “For God’s sake, Holly, whatever he did, does he deserve to die for it? You’re going to kill him!”
The direction of power had shifted in the room. Elijah sensed that the mind changers had let Holly go. When Violet moved out of the way, he saw Holly still sitting on the counter, horrified by what she’d done to him, confused about whether his affair with Kaylee was real.
It’s not, Elijah wanted to tell her, and I’m okay. But he changed his mind about calling to her.
Violet helped him sit up against the kitchen island. “Poor thing,” she cooed. “Did that mean old levitator hurt you?” She was thinking it was fun to invite new friends to the Res and turn them against each other. She watched his expression change as he received this message from her, and she smiled with satisfaction. Then she kissed him.
He drew back, then changed his mind and kissed her, deeply. He wove his fingers into her black hair and pulled until it hurt her. She chuckled against his lips, amused at his small show of resistance.
The door slammed. Elijah no longer sensed Holly’s despair. She was gone.
Violet sat back on her heels. “You’d better go after her. Can you stand? Man, she really coldcocked you.” Pouting, she stroked his injured eyebrow hard enough to make him wince. Then she stood and held out a hand to help him up. This was a levitator’s joke. Without ever touching his hand, she pushed him up from behind. “Good luck out there.”
He swung through the back door and tromped through the small circle of porch light, past the patch of gravel that served as a yard. The house was perched at the edge of a cliff—small wonder this lovely planned community had never sold—and Holly peered into the chasm, sequined dress glinting in the starlight. Elijah sensed other minds in the shadows, controlling his every move.
But nobody touched Holly’s mind now. They’d done their work on her for the moment. Now they allowed her to drown in her own confusion and guilt. Hearing his footsteps across the rocks, she whirled to face him, panicked that someone was coming for her. When she saw it was him, she rushed toward him for a hug.
He put up his hand. “Don’t touch me!” he shouted. He was not possessed, but that’s what it felt like with mind changers inside his head, telling him what to say.
She stopped short. She wished she could see his eyes, his pupils, but his face was in shadow.
“You think I’m sleeping with Kaylee?” he yelled at her, voice breaking. “After everything we’ve been through together, you’ve just gotten here and your new boyfriend makes you come and then convinces you to beat the fuck out of me?”
“I’m sorry!” she cried. “They made me. They changed my mind. Like they made you kiss Violet just now.”
She waited for him to acknowledge that kissing Violet had not been his choice. He wanted to acknowledge this, then changed his mind.
She started to panic. Either Rob had been right and she’d never had Elijah, or she was about to lose him because of something she’d done. She had no idea which. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand everything,” he spat at her. “I can read your mind, remember? I heard every filthy thing you wanted to do to Rob when he was standing between your legs in the kitchen.”
“Elijah!” She reached for him. “That was—”
“I told you not to touch me.” He stalked back to the house. Through her eyes he saw himself retreating toward the lights, limping a little. As the distance grew between them, her despair faded. He wanted to turn and run back to her and tell her he hadn’t meant any of it. Nate still controlled him from the shadows, willing him forward into the house.
Violet met him at the door. “Elijah! You’re white as a sheet. You’re shaking! Rob, they made him sick.”
Rob stood behind the kitchen island, eating a slice of cake. “Aw,” he said between bites, never looking up from his plate.
“I need a minute,” Elijah whispered to Violet. He focused on his nausea. He had to get to the bathroom.
“Sure.” She pointed through the den, toward the hallway where Kaylee had disappeared. He caught a flash of real concern for him from Violet, some vestige of the girl she used to be, before she shook her head to clear it.
Rob caught the flash too. He looked up from his cake.
Elijah rushed through the den, ignoring the questions in the minds of the couples making out there. He thought only of nausea. In the hallway he could hear Kaylee shrieking, “Isaac, please! Just let her go and I swear I’ll stay!” Her terror redoubled his nausea. He found the bathroom in the hall, closed and locked the door behind him, flicked on the light, and rushed to the far end where it would be hardest for them to read him.
Then he let go of the feigned nausea he’d drawn over his thoughts like camouflage. He had better let go of it if he was going to choke this horse pill down. He drew the huge pill out of his pocket and ran water in the sink to wash it down with. Out of the corner of his eye he noted dainty guest towels monogrammed with cursive Rs, as if this were a designer show house.
He cupped his hand under the faucet. The water gushed out of his hand and foamed around the drain like the Colorado churning at the bottom of Hoover Dam.
He glanced up at his reflection, his eyes looking unnaturally green against the green T-shirt Kaylee had picked out for him, his eyebrow split open and oozing blood from Holly’s blow. He didn’t want to let go of his power. But he’d brought Kaylee here, and the Res had caught her. He’d failed to protect Holly, and the Res had caught her too. He had gotten them into this, and he had to get them out. Disrupting the Res’s plans by removing his power from the equation was the only way he knew how.
Elijah wasn’t sure why his dad had taken his own life, but he wanted to believe his dad had done it to save his mom. Elijah didn’t have to do that to save Holly. But he was willing. And he would definitely give up the one thing in his life that had ever made him feel alive.
The pill was sweet. He tried to swallow quickly, before the Res got wise to him and knocked on the door. The pill was too big. It stuck in his throat. For a second he wondered whether Kaylee had been pulling one over on him, a joke to see if she could make him give up his own power, the sort of Res mind game that she herself had warned him about. Just when his involuntary reflexes took over and he was hacking it up, it went down.
The bathroom door opened. Rob looked up from toying with the key in the lock, and his face fell. “What did you do?” he shouted at Elijah. “What do you mean, ‘I win’?”
“I win,” Elijah repeated out loud. Rob was about to lunge across the room at him, so Elijah lunged first.
They hit the hall wall with a thud and a crack of Rob’s skull against the sheetrock. It hurt, Elijah read with satisfaction—and with pain, because when Rob hurt, Elijah felt it too.
But now Rob had leverage against the wall. He shoved Elijah away from him. While Elijah was off balance, Rob socked him in the eyebrow, exactly where Holly had hit him earlier—on purpose for maximum effect. Rob read that older pain.
Now the couples in the den crowded the hallway entrance to watch. Elijah expected any second to change his mind and let Rob beat the shit out of him. But apparently he and Rob were putting on too good a show. The frequent fights at the Res were left to run their natural course—until the very end.
Elijah turned to the shadowy face of Carter, who had thought this. “The very end?”
Ro
b punched Elijah in the ribs. Elijah doubled over with pain. Rob elbowed Elijah in the back of the head, just where Shane had hit him. Elijah reeled into the kitchen, sprawled on the marble tile floor, and slid to a stop in front of the broken pantry door.
Rob was running through the den toward him, bent on kicking him while he was down. Elijah reached through the broken door and pulled out a broom.
“Did I ever tell you lacrosse is for pussies?” Rob asked, rearing back with one foot in his cop-issue military boot.
Elijah timed his swing exactly as Rob’s foot was about to reach him. Even Elijah was surprised when the broom handle broke over Rob’s shin with the force of his blow. Dangermouse was angry.
With a groan, Rob fell to the floor and rolled back and forth, face red, gripping his shin. Elijah jumped up and slid a large white box from the island.
“Wait, that’s cake,” Holly called. She was sitting on the counter again. Nate lounged beside her in his cowboy hat, controlling her mind.
Elijah slammed the box down on Rob. It burst and harmlessly tossed white icing onto Rob’s uniform. Elijah glanced around the kitchen countertops for something else to throw. A paper towel holder. A ceramic cookie jar.
Holly hadn’t gotten the memo that spectators with power didn’t interfere in these fights. She lifted a large kitchen knife sticky with icing from the marble-topped island and floated it to Rob, who grabbed it as he stood. He ran for Elijah.
Elijah threw his arms up to protect his head. The point found its home with Rob’s first try. Elijah could hardly believe the pain in his arm, or the fact that he’d actually been stabbed.
As Rob withdrew the knife for another stab, he thought about what he was going to do to Holly later that night. With Elijah’s powers gone, he wouldn’t be as useful to the Res in manipulating Holly to help take over the casino. It would be harder to rein her in. An out-of-control levitator that strong would be a liability to the Res rather than an asset. So Rob would position his forearm across Holly’s slender neck and bear his weight down on her throat. She would put both hands around his arm and try to push him away, but mind changers would make her think he was too strong and heavy. She would gasp hoarsely.
Elijah punched Rob in the side of the head to knock that fantasy out of Rob’s brain.
Rob reached through the air to stab Elijah again. Elijah dodged an inch out of the way. The momentum of Rob’s stroke sent him sliding across the floor. He came to a stop against the cabinets, Holly’s high-heeled shoes hanging above him.
Elijah didn’t want Rob anywhere near Holly with that knife—not when Rob was already planning to kill her. He dove for Rob, hoping to knock the knife out of his hand. But they read each other’s minds, and neither of them could surprise the other. Rob held fast to the knife. Elijah gripped Rob’s arm. They rolled across the tile, muscles straining. Rob put all his weight on top of Elijah. Elijah’s bruised back would not help him dump Rob off. The point of the knife vibrated just above Elijah’s eye.
People crowded around them as if they were a Vegas boxing match. Elijah felt their adrenaline and their fear, their skin tingling and their heads throbbing with power.
“Rob, we don’t kill people like that,” a girl called. “We can’t let it look like a murder.”
“Rob, what are we going to do with the body?” a boy asked.
“Change Rob’s mind,” Carter said.
“I’m not fucking changing his fucking mind!” April shrieked. The mere suggestion that she might change Rob’s mind would propel Rob to get revenge on her later, and she was terrified.
The knife had almost reached Elijah’s eye. He kept Rob’s hands away with all his strength, but Rob literally had the upper hand and gravity on his side. Elijah could feel the blade against his lashes when he blinked. He could see the gleaming point shifting from orange to red in the light of the lava lamp, and beyond that, Holly’s shadowed face looking gravely down on him.
“Holly,” he gasped, “whose side are you on?”
Holly was on Rob’s.
A boom sounded behind them, and then a sharp crack. Rob howled in pain. Elijah felt Rob’s pain too. Rob’s hand was hit. Elijah rolled out from under him just as the knife came down.
Beyond the crowd, Shane edged into the room, his Glock pointed at Rob. “Your pistol,” he said. “Toss it.”
Grimacing, Rob unsnapped his holster, placed his gun carefully on the floor, and shoved it with his boot. It spun across the floor and hit the island.
Shane kept his own pistol extended as he scooped up Rob’s and pocketed it, then announced, “It doesn’t matter if you change my mind. My brother is outside, just out of your range, with a shotgun pointed at you. My dad and my uncle are behind him with rifles.”
In confirmation, several shots echoed outside. Bullets clattered against the rock exterior of the house. A window broke with a zing and a crashing of glass.
Shane walked up to April and holstered his pistol. “Oh, you want me to change my mind about keeping my gun out? Okay.” He backhanded her across the face. The sickening sound echoed off the hard surfaces of the appliances. She fell against Carter. Shane followed her down, shouting, “Where’s Kaylee?”
Everyone pointed toward the hallway.
“Fucking animals.” Shane stomped out of the kitchen.
Elijah monitored every mind in the deathly still crowd. Rob’s mind was loudest. He wanted to kill Shane. He’d wanted to kill Shane all week. He made a fist of his ruined hand so the pain seared through him, fueling his fury.
But the rest of them were more concerned for their own well-being. Elijah took a chance and rose painfully from the floor, his back throbbing, arm throbbing, eyebrow throbbing. None of the mind changers stopped him.
They’d abandoned their grip on Holly, too, but Holly didn’t realize it. He approached her slowly, expecting her to throw him across the room again. She watched him warily from the countertop, furious with him for making her think he loved her when he’d loved her sister all along. But she didn’t strike him.
He moved in until his hips bumped against her bare knees. He looked deep into her dark eyes. “All of that is a lie,” he growled. “Come with me.”
She didn’t believe him.
He slid both hands onto her knees. “I will be very angry with you if you don’t come with me.”
She didn’t trust him, but his pupils dilated to the edges of his green irises, which fascinated her.
He moved his hands up her thighs. “Come with me now, and you can always come back here later. They’ll be waiting for you. Right, everybody?” He looked over his shoulder.
They were gone. He looked over his other shoulder. Every member of the Res had disappeared, leaving behind only the rock music and the strobe lights and a black puddle of Rob’s blood in the corner.
Shane reappeared with Kaylee’s limp body over his shoulder. “Elijah. Get Holly and come on.” He ducked through the front doorway.
Elijah eased Holly off the counter. He thought she would resist him even now, but she grasped his hand and squeezed it as he pulled her out of the Res, into the hot night.
He held her hand tightly, afraid to let her go, as they hiked down the dirt road. Shane walked just ahead of them, Kaylee’s platinum-blond hair bobbing against the back of his tux jacket. Her arms hung limp at first, but as Elijah watched she started to move, and in his mind he could feel her struggling back to consciousness, a burning pain in her temple. The pill he’d swallowed was taking longer to kick in than he’d thought it would. Around them in the night, Frank Sinatra and Shane’s brother and uncle, all in tuxedos, walked backward down the road, long guns pointed at the front door of the Res, now shut against them. The crunching of gravel underfoot was the only sound.
“Put me down,” Kaylee murmured against Shane’s back. Gaining full consciousness, she shouted, “Shane! You pistol-whipped me and knocked me out, you bastard!”
Shane stopped, flipped Kaylee forward over his shoulder, and set her lightly do
wn on the gravel. “I’m sorry. We were standing in a room full of people with power and I had to move fast. I didn’t have time for you to argue with me or change my mind.”
A crack came from the Res. A zing sounded very close to Elijah’s head. A puff of dust rose from a boulder near him. Looking back, he saw Isaac walking toward them from the Res with Kaylee’s pistol extended, still firing.
He raced toward the Pontiac, towing Holly by the hand. Shane’s relatives passed them and hopped into Shane’s dad’s black Lincoln land yacht. The windows of the Lincoln lowered. Guns fired toward the Res as the car zoomed away. Elijah pushed Holly into the back of the Pontiac as Shane said inside his mind, You drive so I can cover us—only a whisper. Elijah’s power was evaporating quickly.
Elijah slipped behind the steering wheel. Shane pointed his gun at the Res. Elijah had doubted how dangerous the Res was, but Shane had not. He’d never talked much about his past. Elijah wondered where Shane had come from.
“Mississippi, I told you,” Shane said. “Drive!”
Elijah took off with a jerk of the clutch and a roar of the engine, eating the Lincoln’s dust. Shane kept the Res in his sights until it disappeared behind a cliff.
Elijah heard Kaylee whispering in the backseat. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw her hugging Holly. Blood trickled from Kaylee’s temple. She sucked in a breath. It came back out in sobs. She adjusted her hold on Holly, pulling her closer.
Shane didn’t look in the mirror. He stared straight ahead out the windshield at the dark night, reading Kaylee’s mind.
After a minute, Holly said quietly, “I was going to stay there at the Res, and be Rob’s ho, and to hell with all of you. I can’t quite shake it. I feel a little twinge of wanting to go back, even now.”
“It’s not your fault,” Kaylee said. “They ganged up on you.”
Hesitantly Holly put her hand on Kaylee’s knee. “Thank you for saving me, sis.”
“Thank Elijah,” Kaylee said. “I wasn’t going to save your ass. I told you not to leave my office, Pandora.”
Levitating Las Vegas Page 29