Elijah drove Shane’s Pontiac toward UNLV, his confusion increasing the farther he got from Holly. Furious as he was with her, he was left wanting desperately to get near her again, and—oh—also fearing death when she squashed his throat like a bug.
And on top of all this, he had to drive? He’d spent a good portion of his time in the last four years on this campus, yet he’d never driven, never parked. Even on a summer morning, he knew Shane’s grad student parking sticker wouldn’t get him anywhere near the fine arts building. Fuck this. He pulled into the space reserved for the dean of fine arts. If the car got towed, Shane deserved it.
After staring at the glove compartment for a moment, Elijah grabbed the Glock. He didn’t load it. But if Shane didn’t have a mind-reading ability, he wouldn’t know whether the gun was loaded. One way or the other, Elijah would have his answer.
The fine arts building was quiet and hollow with most students gone for the summer. An office provided the gentle voices of secretaries, but Elijah preferred not to announce his presence. Outside the office door, a bulletin board listed practice room reservations. He found “Tuesday, 11 a.m., Sligh, S” and hurried in search of the room, watching the numbers on the plaques beside the doors.
In a desolate corner of the building he found it. A tangle of electric guitar music wafted into the hall through the half-closed door. Elijah had thought Holly’s plan to interrupt her dad’s act was asking for trouble, but she was right about the element of surprise. Elijah pointed his gun in front of him. Took one last deep breath. Kicked the door open.
Shane sat in the tiny windowless room with four tween girls, two on each side of him. All of them held electric guitars in their laps with small amps at their feet. Shane stared up at Elijah with wide eyes, and two of the girls let out squeals.
Elijah blocked out their fright. He concentrated on Shane, examined Shane’s mind for any inkling that he knew about Elijah’s power. But Shane’s thoughts focused on the four girls. He needed to calm them and simultaneously get Elijah away from them.
Without taking his eyes off Elijah, Shane said, “Ladies, this is my friend Mr. Brown, who is an expert in drama.”
“Oh!” The girls cooed and sighed their relief and mentally compared who was more dreamy: Mr. Brown the drama instructor or Mr. Sligh the music instructor.
“I need to talk to Mr. Brown alone for just a moment,” Shane said, standing up and placing his guitar on its stand, watching Elijah all the while. “Practice that last riff, and I’ll be right back.” He walked past Elijah and out the door.
Elijah followed Shane down the hall, farther into the labyrinthine building. Elijah took a quick glance behind them to make sure the corridor was empty. As Shane drew even with the entrance to another hall, Elijah grabbed him and forced him around the corner. Backing him against the cement-block wall, he pressed his forearm over Shane’s throat and the gun to Shane’s forehead.
Shane inhaled sharply through his nose. “You’re welcome for the gun.”
“Good point,” Elijah growled. “Why did you let a mentally ill person borrow your gun and your car to kidnap a girl and drive to Colorado?”
“Because you asked me,” Shane said carefully. Elijah searched Shane’s mind, but he couldn’t find any incriminating evidence. Shane was thinking that he did not want to get shot, but better him than the four tween girls back in the practice room.
“Doesn’t Holly have the same disease as you?” Shane asked. “Isn’t she on the same drug? I figured if it made sense to you, it probably made sense to her.”
“You know I’m on medication because I’m crazy,” Elijah insisted. “You know my medication has run out. Yet you allow me to borrow your car and your gun just because I ask politely? What kind of idiot does that? One who’s in cahoots with the casino.”
“Ca— What?” Shane felt around for something to say and hit on this: “One who has faith in his best friend. One who’s always known something was wrong with his friend, and someday his friend would find a way to make it right. Get the fuck off me! I am just a fucking nice person, okay?”
“I’m not buying it.” Elijah pressed his arm harder across Shane’s throat. “Didn’t you find my requests a little strange?”
Shane squirmed under the pressure and cleared his throat. “My dad is a Frank Sinatra impersonator. You don’t scratch the surface of strange.”
Elijah looked deep into Shane’s eyes, trying in vain to read beyond Shane’s superficial thoughts. “Who are you?” Elijah asked.
Shane met Elijah’s steady gaze. “The best friend you will ever have. But when you ask me to help you blow up the Stratosphere you are shit out of luck, if this is the thanks I get.” He coughed. “One of my students is going to wander back here and freak out and tell her mom, and I’ll never teach another lesson. Let’s talk about this later.”
Elijah was beginning to doubt himself. He’d been so sure Shane was in on the conspiracy. Shane had been too helpful about Elijah’s entire quest. There had to be something else there, and Elijah was determined to find it. He asked some leading questions, hoping the information he wanted would pop into Shane’s head, where Elijah could snap it up. “Have you been trying to control me?”
“Yes,” Shane said. “That’s why I loaned you my gun.” His mind was still filled with hiding Elijah’s meltdown from the girls.
“What about them?” Elijah asked, nodding in the direction of the classroom. “Do those girls have magical power?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shane said. “They’re way too young.”
“What did you say?” Elijah exclaimed, pressing his arm across Shane’s throat until his arm trembled and Shane turned white.
“It’s a joke,” Shane croaked. He put one hand on Elijah’s forearm and pulled.
Elijah resisted. “Why exactly are you so paranoid? Why do you carry a gun, anyway?”
“Because I’m from Mississippi!”
Elijah sighed. He’d been dead wrong. He let Shane take the gun from him, and he backed up a step. “I’m sorry, man. I—”
“Later,” Shane repeated, straightening against the wall. He glowered at the gun.
“Okay,” Elijah said uncertainly. Shane had been loyal to him throughout this ordeal. Elijah didn’t want to leave things this way between them, but he had another tree to bark up. “I’ll see you at home.” He started down the corridor.
“Oh, and Elijah?” Shane called.
Before Elijah could turn, he felt a splitting pain in the back of his head, worse than anything he’d felt trying to read ten minds at once. His face hit the cold tile floor. He rolled onto his back. Shane stood over him, still gripping the gun by the barrel and wielding the butt as a weapon.
“Don’t ever interrupt my class again.” Shane threw the gun down on Elijah’s chest. His face was impassive and his mind yielded nothing but anger as he stepped over Elijah and walked away, a tall figure silhouetted against the sunlight glowing through the windows at the end of the hall.
15
Holly saw one flash of her dad’s body dropping on the far side of the pole. She leaped forward and had a vague impression of knocking both her mom and the temporary fence out of the way with her power in her effort to catch her dad, like a baseball player pursuing a hit into left field.
His hand had hit the asphalt already. She heard the smack. But she caught the rest of him. He hovered facedown an inch from the ground, cradling his hand. A wave of guilt washed over her that she might have broken her dad’s hand. Gently she released him from her power.
But he didn’t move. He continued to hover. He must have saved himself at the same instant Holly caught him. He sank the last inch.
The audience wasn’t fooled. They’d seen magicians’ acts before. They knew that the ploy of the trick going wrong and the magician barely escaping death was just another ruse Peter Starr pulled from his pocket occasionally for variety. But this performance was convincing, and they appreciated it. The applause was thunderous.
r /> “Show’s over, folks!” the black-suited goons shouted. Holly looked around and saw that her mom was talking to one of them. Several of them parted the crowd on either side of the pole and directed the spectators through the large doors back into the casino—down the corridors and past the slot machines where they might gamble again, rather than into the street from which Holly had entered. Voices escalated to a fever pitch as the crowd discussed at what point they’d realized it was all a trick and where the wires had been hidden this time.
Now Holly herself was surrounded by more of the black-suited goons. Several of them put out their hands to grab her. She created a force field around herself. They couldn’t reach through it. She clopped forward to the tall metal pole, walking as one unit with the goons. Her dad sat with his back against it, cradling his hand in his lap, his face red. Her mom knelt in front of him.
“Dad,” Holly said breathlessly. “I’m so sorry.”
Her dad wrinkled his brow and squeezed his eyes shut, as if he was in so much pain that he couldn’t speak.
Her mom spoke for him. “It’s a little late now! You haven’t learned a thing out gallivanting with Elijah Brown. Until you do, shut that power down!”
“I wouldn’t have gallivanted with Elijah Brown,” Holly said indignantly, “if you’d told me what was going on. Or if you’d told me anything in the past seven years!”
Holly’s mom straightened and whirled to face her. “We didn’t tell you because you would have acted exactly like this!”
Holly felt her heart in her throat. She’d been so angry at her parents, but what if she really was the one to blame? Would she have hurt her dad if they’d allowed her to have power when she was fourteen? Would she have hurt him on purpose?
Her mom didn’t care enough anymore to wait while Holly worked out this conundrum in her head. Disheveled now with her tiara hanging off one side of her bouffant hairdo, she bent in front of Holly’s dad again. “Here comes the limo, sweetie,” she said softly. Her sequined booty rose as she helped him stand.
Holly reached out with her power and gave her dad an additional very gentle boost underneath. He stood instantly and glared at her. He and her mom made their feeble way past the pole, away from the casino.
“Where are you going?” Holly cried, half apologetic, half exasperated.
“To the hospital, unless you know someone with magical powers of healing,” her mom spat as if this were a ridiculous idea. Magical powers, ha! The casino’s black limo sped across the asphalt and screeched to a halt in front of them. Holly’s parents slipped into the backseat. Almost as an afterthought, Holly’s mom leaned out the door and called, “Come with us.”
Holly wanted to. Even if her dad did glare at her, she wanted to sit beside him while the doctor examined his hand. But she still didn’t trust her parents. They might drug her or worse, especially now that she’d hurt her dad.
As a test, she considered easing the limo onto its side, just as she’d tumbled the SUV around the parking lot in Icarus the night before. Her mom’s earnest gaze didn’t change. She wasn’t a mind reader.
Then Holly said, “No, I’m not going with you.” She waited, but she didn’t suddenly decide going with her parents was a good idea. Her mom wasn’t a mind changer, either.
“Come on, sweetie,” her mom said almost kindly, but unable to disguise the edge in her voice. “Your father is in pain. We’ve got to go and we can’t leave you here.”
“I’ll go into the casino and talk to Mr. Diamond,” Holly said. The casino was clearly behind this conspiracy. If her parents were out of commission for the moment, she should go straight to the source.
Her mom nodded vigorously. “Yes. Go see Mr. Diamond. He’ll explain everything.” A goon stepped in front of Holly and shut the limo door.
Holly watched the limo speed across the pavement, clunk down the curb into the street, and disappear into traffic on the Strip. The usual noise of Vegas at 11 a.m. settled around her: cars swishing by on the side street, the casino’s enormous air conditioners grinding behind her. The normalcy of the sounds belied the fact that she was surrounded by six black-suited goons who were staring at her, kept at a careful distance by her power, waiting for her next move.
She turned on her high heel and crossed the pavement, toward the casino. She snatched up her purse as she passed her lawn chair, marveling that no one had stolen it—but maybe even pickpockets understood it wasn’t wise to steal from a girl who could inflate plastic palm trees with her mind and break her dad’s hand. She clopped all the way inside the casino and down the corridor to the employee elevator. The portrait of Mr. Diamond stared at her inside. The goons crowded in around her. Too late she realized she should have stopped them from coming with her. Telekinetic power took practice.
“Forty, please,” she said to the goon nearest the elevator buttons. She felt the elevator jerk into movement upward. She turned to the goon on her left. He stared at her, his face not a foot from hers. She mustered the most evil expression in her repertoire, which, granted, probably wasn’t all that threatening. He stared blandly back at her. He was probably reading her mind.
The doors slid open. The goons parted for her. Maybe it was a trap. Molten lava would rush down the hall at her! But that was ridiculous. Mr. Diamond’s office was at the end of the hall, and Kaylee would never allow molten lava around the big man. The penthouse was up here too. Kaylee would not allow lava near the penthouse if it was rented by celebrities.
Holly stepped off the elevator as if she had no misgivings, and she turned for Mr. Diamond’s office. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched the elevator doors sliding shut. No goons had stayed with her.
Kaylee walked out of her office next to Mr. Diamond’s, her business suit immaculate as usual, her golden hair shining like an angel’s in the sunlight streaming through the corridor windows. Kaylee’s expression was confident, her stride sure. Holly had met her match.
Bursting into Mr. Diamond’s office to confront him, which had been Holly’s imperative next step, suddenly seemed like the world’s worst idea.
“Oh, yeah?” Holly exclaimed. “Is that all you’ve got? Why didn’t you change my mind and stop me from breaking my dad’s hand?” Her voice started low with defiance and pitched into the shrillness of a little girl caught and guilty. She cringed.
“You’re not my only concern this morning.” Kaylee nodded to her office door, urging Holly inside.
Holly hesitated. There could still be lava. Or piranhas. Normally she would have sworn Kaylee would not do that to her. But the landmarks of Holly’s life had been shaken from their foundations, and her moral compass spun in the air in front of her.
“No tricks.” Kaylee pulled back her silk cuff. “Nothing up my sleeve.”
“Make me,” Holly said petulantly.
Kaylee huffed out her disapproval. “You asked for it.”
Instantly, going into Kaylee’s office seemed like a good idea. Holly skipped past Kaylee into the room, sat in the chair for guests in front of Kaylee’s desk, and crossed her legs primly. She knew Kaylee had changed her mind—she knew it—but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. A good idea was a good idea.
Kaylee closed the door behind them and rounded her desk. “As I was saying—”
With her power, Holly jerked open all of the blinds at once, exposing Kaylee to the dazzling late-morning sunlight.
Kaylee jumped and closed her eyes. “I hate levitators,” she grumbled. Then she opened her blue eyes and looked at Holly. “No offense.”
Holly shrugged. “None taken.”
Kaylee sat down and gestured to the bank of monitors mounted on the wall beside her desk, each displaying a feed from a different security camera. “Elijah’s mom just sensed an intruder, and some of our other mind readers felt it too. It’s the fifth time in the past couple of weeks. I was headed downstairs to stop you from trashing Peter’s show when I was called back to deal with this. And, of course”—she waved her hand out th
e window—“Elijah’s on the loose.” She pressed her lips together, barely suppressing a smile. “So, you spent the past two nights getting down and dirty with Elijah Brown?”
Holly felt her face light up, and she started to tell Kaylee she wished they’d gotten down and dirty. But then she remembered she’d threatened to hurt Elijah when they parted ways. That probably meant they’d broken up. And then she thought about what Kaylee had just said: Elijah is on the loose.
Like Elijah was a fugitive, and Kaylee intended to capture him.
The Kaylee she would have gushed to about her wild ride with Elijah was gone, replaced by the head of security at the casino, even more powerful and dangerous than Holly had imagined, leaning toward her across a wide and imposing desk. Holly couldn’t reveal anything she knew about Elijah and put him in danger.
“Not the whole two nights,” she fumbled.
“It’s okay.” Kaylee leaned back in her chair. “I understand completely. Elijah is hot. Last winter when we remodeled the bar next to the high-limit slots, we had to put up extra barriers around the construction site because women were staring at him rather than gambling. And, of course, he’s a mind reader. You’ve probably figured that out already.” She turned to watch one of the monitors.
Holly picked up every single object on Kaylee’s desk, every paper and pen, even the computer screen and keyboard, and moved them all with her mind until they crowded in the air just behind Kaylee’s head, seeming as insulted as Holly was that Kaylee didn’t give her full attention to this conversation. “What are you looking for?” Holly asked.
Kaylee glanced over at Holly and jumped again, startled by the computer screen so close to her face. She leaned around it to say, “Somebody I know. Look, Holly, mind readers are dangerous. It’s not just that they read your mind. They use what they find in your mind to manipulate you. As long as they know what you want, they can be your perfect employee or your perfect friend or your perfect boyfriend, until you trust them with your life. And then they can do whatever they want with you.”