Levitating Las Vegas

10




Holly welcomed the dawn. Now that she could see in the first sunlight, she had something to occupy her mind besides the impending doom of herself and Elijah. As he sped the car along a winding mountain highway, she spied pinecones and rocks on the shoulder ahead of them and tried to lift them with her mind, just as she’d willed Elijah’s gun to come to her the night before.

Nothing happened, of course. The gun had slipped out of Elijah’s pants when they hit a bump in the road. Her telekinetic power was in her imagination. But as the Mentafixol continued to wear off, exercising her imagined mental muscle gave her skin a euphoric sparkling sensation, just like old times.

At the intersection with the even narrower highway that would finally take them up to Icarus, Elijah stopped at a gas station and bought her a soda—not diet but a real one with full sugar—and a candy bar, her favorite kind. She wondered how he’d known. For the final leg of the drive, she nibbled candy, sipped Coke, and braced her bare feet on the glove compartment to keep herself from sliding into him when he rounded sharp curves. As the tires spun pebbles into the air and over cliffs, she pretended she was moving them herself, and wished she could. It seemed pedestrian, but the sparkles and the sharp morning sunlight on her skin made it ecstasy.

Midmorning, the paved highway petered out into a dirt road and wound around the lip of a cliff and into a tunnel carved from the solid rock of the mountain. He slowed the car as darkness fell on them like a rock slide. He flipped the windshield wipers on before finding the headlights.

Holly tried to breathe normally. Nothing was wrong. It was just a tunnel, and not a very long one. She could see the end, a semicircle of light straight ahead. She panted anyway. She couldn’t move anything in here. She couldn’t move anything anyway—her power was her delusion, stronger and stronger as the Mentafixol wore off—but even if she’d been able to levitate, she would have been no match for this mountain. She sensed the whole huge weight of it above her.

“Hey.” Elijah slid his hand from the gearshift onto her knee. Electricity surged up her thigh. “Keep your eyes on the light.”

She did. She focused on that faraway exit, holding her breath as the light came closer and loomed larger. She thought she might pass out before they reached it. Her whole body sparkled from Elijah’s touch and Mentafixol withdrawal and lack of oxygen.

“And here we are,” Elijah said. When the car broke free from the shadows of the tunnel, he kept his hand on her knee, even rubbed his thumb gently across her skin, giving her something to concentrate on besides her disorientation.

As the sunlight hit her full in the face, Holly gasped her relief and squinted toward Icarus. Elijah had told her its claim to fame was that it was one of the highest towns in North America, making it a minor tourist attraction. He hadn’t mentioned that the entire town seemed to be one long street lined with historic buildings, or that this street was perched on the very edge of the cliff, as if to say towns and tourists and drug seekers had no business here. From this distance, it didn’t look real. It resembled a model for movie special effects. Godzilla would step carefully over the nearest mountain peak and stomp toward them any second.

She managed to say, “Pretty.”

“Very.” He piloted the car up the street and paused at an inexplicable traffic light, gazing up at the quaint two-story buildings emblazoned up top with the year they were built, Holly assumed: 1878, 1880. They passed the town hall, a bar, a grocery store, another bar, a fire station, still another bar, a hotel with a whole three stories and a restaurant, lots of gift shops, and a bar, as they cruised down the deserted road. A few cars were parked along the sides, but not a soul appeared on the wooden sidewalks in the brilliant summer morning.

He drove almost to the end of the street and stopped the car in front of an adorable two-story wooden Victorian, all gingerbread and lace, with a sign out front painted in careful cursive: TWO MILE HIGH CANDY CO. Holly turned to look at Elijah in question, but he gazed past her at the house. She looked where he was looking. The windows were dark. A hand-printed sign on white paper took up one pane of glass in the door.

“It’s closed,” he breathed.

“Is this the factory where Mentafixol is made?” Holly asked. She hoped he only meant to buy her another candy bar. If he thought their medicine was made at a candy store—wow, he was crazy.

In answer, he killed the motor without putting the car in gear. It lurched forward in one final burp before dying. Before, he’d saved her from a quick stop before by throwing his arm in front of her. This time he didn’t notice. She caught herself with both hands on the glove compartment before her seat belt snapped her backward. He bailed out of the car and jogged past the front bumper and up the sidewalk.

She stared after him, fighting the urge to scream. She hadn’t really believed there was a factory in Bumf*ck, Colorado, that made her psychoactive drug, had she? But Elijah had seemed so sincere. He obviously believed the story himself. She had wanted to believe him.

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 withdraw 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.”

As soon as she made this last comment, Kaylee regretted it. She’d never been on Mentafixol, and she regarded the entire charade of scaring the bejeezus out of fourteen-year-olds as draconian. But it was better than the alternative of the Res. She knew this firsthand.

“Freaked out or not, nobody actually drives up to Icarus to steal pills,” Peter maintained. “I always said that kid was as crazy as his father.”

“Crazy like a fox,” Kaylee murmured, not without admiration.

Peter wiped his hand over his face. “He’s a mind reader, Kaylee.”

All the window blinds simultaneously slid downward, blocking out the sun, shrinking the blocks of light on Kaylee’s desk until she sank into shadow. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the light, she couldn’t see without it.

“He will drag her into some sex game,” Peter whispered. “He will crush her before he even knows he can.”

Kaylee sighed. “You’re being a little melodramatic, aren’t you, Peter? Just because Holly and Elijah are together, you assume they’re having sex?”

“They’re feeling their power for the first time since they were teenagers,” Peter grumbled. “You remember how that is, when you’re first exploring.”

Kaylee was having enough trouble withdrawing them without Peter obsessing over every detail. She was tempted to change his mind about worrying over Holly and Elijah’s relationship. He wouldn’t feel a thing. But sooner or later, he’d realize what she’d done, and he’d come back angry. With Mr. Diamond gone, she had a hard road ahead. She needed every ally she could get.

“No one’s warned her,” Peter went on. He opened his fingers and closed them gracefully one by one, a magician’s gesture, as if drawing Kaylee’s attention to an invisible crystal ball in front of him. “She won’t be able to defend herself.”

Kaylee glanced at her watch for effect. “She will in another few hours.”

As Kaylee had hoped, Peter relaxed in his chair, a smug smile on his face at her acknowledgment of the incredible strength of levitators.

But in reality, Kaylee knew Peter’s concerns were dead-on. She wasn’t sure how Holly would fare in a battle versus Elijah. The nice guy Holly had grown up with would be gone very soon. Power changed mind readers into controlling monsters. They were the engine that drove the sadism of the Res. She knew this from spending years as Isaac’s bitch.

She snapped her attention to her computer again, as if it were full of important information about casino business that she needed to attend to. “Look, you’ve tried to keep Holly out of a relationship with Elijah since they were fourteen. You were right to think they would compare notes on their powers and deduce that they’d been had. But you’re wrong to worry he’ll be bad for her now. Yes, he’ll manipulate her. And when she figures that out, she’ll hurt him and get away from him. She’s your daughter, after all.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, unconvinced. Kaylee didn’t blame him.

She stood, signaling that the interview was over. “There’s nothing we can do, Peter. Holly and Elijah are bound to figure out the Mentafixol situation this afternoon. When they do, they’ll head back. I’ll know when that happens.” She would know only because the hotel room security deposit would be removed from Elijah’s debit card, but she didn’t share this with Peter. “Go home. You have that death-defying feat to perform tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” he sighed.

She rounded her desk and put her hand on his back, comforting him at the same time she guided him toward the door. “Get some rest. Be prepared for Holly to come back into town soon, and for her to want to have a long talk with you.” She opened the door for him and blinked in the bright light from the hallway. “Be prepared for her to be angry.”