She laughed nervously, watching him put the condom on. He tried to put her at ease and felt a little like a dentist making small talk over the sound of the drill. “Seriously, did you ring that goal on purpose?”
“If I said no, I wouldn’t be a very good magician,” she joked, but he hadn’t taken her mind off what was about to happen. She watched his hands. Her breath came light and fast.
Slowly he rolled on top of her. Even more slowly he slid into her. She wrapped him in her power. His body was ablaze with his power and hers, her arousal and his own.
He grabbed both her hands and set his forehead against hers as he stroked inside her. “They were right to keep us apart,” he whispered.
She giggled between gasps of pleasure. “If we’d figured this out, they wouldn’t have been able to keep me away from you.”
“No. And I would not have done my homework.”
His joke didn’t get the laugh from her that he’d wanted. Instead, she thought of the night seven years ago when he first asked her out, and her parents said no and took away her power. Her homework had been reading Romeo and Juliet. She was afraid her story with Elijah would end the same way.
“Baby, don’t go there,” he coaxed her, brushing her curls away from her face. “We’ll be okay. We have each other’s backs now. They won’t be able to tear us apart again.”
He braced himself above her and stroked her harder, trying to get her mind off everything but their bodies and their power. It didn’t work. She felt as euphoric as before, but she was thinking hard about their future together. If they did survive, she wondered what the sex would be like when they were older and their power began to fade. She bet it would still be excellent. Power was delicious, but she had wanted him before, when he was only smart and funny and kind, with his hair in his eyes.
“I love you, too.” He kissed her mouth and thrust into her until they both were high.
Afterward he knitted his fingers into her thick hair and kissed her again, a long and thorough kiss of appreciation. He trailed more kisses high across her cheekbone and toward her hairline, following the smear of glittering makeup.
“I’m so sorry about this morning,” she said huskily.
“Me too,” he said between kisses.
“Powers make everything so complicated. We always have to remember why we liked each other in the first place in high school.”
“Yeah.” He wound one of her long curls around his finger.
“I wish this hadn’t happened,” she said, “and we could just lie here, and do it, and talk about rock bands, and the casino, and our lame parents, and the awful food in the high school cafeteria.”
He laughed. The high school cafeteria food had been truly awful. But he didn’t understand the rest of what she was saying. “Really? You wish this hadn’t happened? You wish you didn’t have power?”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t want to go back to thinking I was crazy. Having power is definitely better than that. But the Res or the casino or both are about to pin us like insects on a board. I wish I could go back to fourteen and start over. You could ask me to the prom, and I could go, and I would never float up to my parents’ living room chandelier.” She shuddered as he moved one finger along her collarbone. “How about you? Wouldn’t you rather start over?”
He shook his head against the pillow. “I always felt like half a person. Now I feel whole. You deserve a whole man.”
Her brows went down. She believed he loved his power, but she didn’t believe the reason had anything to do with her.
Then she remembered he could read her mind. Her dark eyes widened. She had screwed up everything again.
“No, you didn’t,” he grumbled. “Come here.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her on top of him.
She nestled against him with her head on his hot chest, listening to his heart. She wanted them to stay just like this, but something was about to change. They’d freed themselves from the drug, they’d escaped from the casino, they’d found each other in all this—and it was too good to be true. It couldn’t possibly last. Kaylee would lock them both up. Apart. Holly squeezed her eyes shut and felt tears forming at the corners as she listened to his heart beating.
It sped up. He felt it, and he felt Holly feel it. “God, Holly,” he said through gritted teeth, “don’t think stuff like that.”
“Oh, Elijah, I’m so sorry.” She pictured glitter and fairies to counteract the voice of doom inside her head.
He laughed.
She rolled away from him. “I’ll go in the other room.”
“No.” He caught her hand and drew her back. “Stay with me.”
With one more apologetic look, she settled on the bed again. She lay on her side, one slender arm curved under her head. Elijah took her other hand and held it on his chest, rubbing her palm softly with his thumb. She didn’t have an arm left to hold him, so she used her power to wrap him in a physical sensation of being held, strong at first, fading by degrees as the static grew louder and she fell asleep.
Her lips were parted, her eyelids heavy under the dark false lashes and swirls of eye shadow in green and silver and black. She looked like she would open her eyes any second and perform feats to the delight and amazement of the crowd, not like she was warm and comfortable and totally gone in her boyfriend’s bed.
He watched her, really studied the heavily made showgirl compared with the fresh-scrubbed girl he knew was underneath, and felt possessive and glad he was one of the few people who ever saw her that way anymore, because she was his. His. She was safe in light sleep, in the calm before her dark and dangerous dreams, and he relaxed.
He woke in a panic. Eight people were coming for him and Holly. One of them was Kaylee. She thought they could handle Holly now that they knew what to expect. But mind readers were always volatile, and the security guards were terrified of Elijah.
The feeling was mutual. Elijah scrambled out from under Holly’s nude body and jerked open the bedside table drawer to grab Shane’s Glock.
Suddenly he changed his mind.
“Elijah, what is it?” Holly shrieked.
The bedroom door burst open and banged against the wall, off its hinges. One woman and five men in casino security uniforms reached for Holly, dragging her from Elijah while she screamed. Elijah’s muscles tensed to fight for her, but he changed his mind about that, too. He caught one last look at her face, eyes wide with black anger and fear, before the guards muscled her out of the room. He hadn’t made a single move to help her.
And then he knew why. Kaylee stood in the doorway. She concentrated hard on willing Elijah away from Holly and away from the gun in the drawer. Their eyes met, and they stared each other down. Elijah knew if she lost her concentration on him for a fraction of a second, he would sense it, and he could reach for the drawer.
Mr. Starr, decked out in a sequined bodysuit and cape, his right hand in a cast, pushed his way past Kaylee into the room. Now Elijah sensed a wall between himself and the bedside table. There was no way he could get the gun now, with mind control and telekinesis against him. He sat paralyzed on the bed, hating himself, sensing the lust of the guards shoving Holly naked down the hall in front of them, her terror, all fading as they walked out of his range. His head throbbed.
“What the fuck did you do to my daughter?” Mr. Starr screamed hoarsely at Elijah.
“What did I do to her?” Elijah repeated. He resented that Mr. Starr’s opinion of him had entered his mind. Elijah had raped his daughter, defiled his daughter, made her think she wanted it, because under normal circumstances his daughter would never have voluntarily spread her legs for this mind-reading fuckup.
Carefully controlling his rage, Elijah cleared his throat. “At least I didn’t drug her for seven years.”
“You—” Mr. Starr began. In his fury, face bright red, he sputtered to a stop.
Suddenly Elijah decided to put some clothes on. Simultaneously he sensed that Kaylee was changing his mind, making h
im put his clothes on. Holly was God knew where by now with five strange men and she didn’t have any clothes on. That knowledge did nothing to diminish the urgency of Elijah’s task. Getting dressed was his number one priority. Without much concern that he was showing his naked ass to the people standing in the doorway, one of them his girlfriend’s father and the other his girlfriend’s roommate, he rolled off the bed and found his jeans on the floor. Then his T-shirt—no, he should go to his dresser and pull out the green one, because it made his eyes look prettier.
He turned around and glared at Kaylee for putting that idea in his head.
She shrugged and grinned at him in embarrassment. “Sorry.”
He pulled the shirt on and looked in his closet for shoes. He should put on running shoes but—no, the flip-flops would be better. What did he need to run away from these kind people for? Kaylee giggled in his mind.
With a sigh, which was all he could manage in protest under Kaylee’s power, he preceded them out of the room and walked down the hall, into the living room.
The six guards who’d taken Holly were draped backward across the chairs and sofa, unconscious.
“Oh God,” Kaylee murmured. “I never thought she could do something like this. Or would do something like this. Tia?” She bent over the female guard, whom Elijah knew as one of his mom’s dealers. “Did you read anything off Holly? Where is she going?”
“A nightclub,” the guard groaned. “That crazy tranny club. And then Hoover Dam.”
Elijah dashed to the open front doorway and stopped there—an invisible power blocked his way—but he arrived just in time to see Holly, naked save for her high heels, slam the door of Shane’s car. Uh-oh—Elijah’s fingers found Shane’s car keys in his jeans pocket. But Holly didn’t need keys. She lifted the car an inch into the air and sped down the street.
“You go, girl,” he whispered.
His hand flew to the sudden excruciating pain in his neck.
“Peter, for God’s sake, let him go,” he heard Kaylee saying as the hot Vegas afternoon in front of him faded to black. “We need him conscious to help us track Holly down. Let him go or I’ll make you.”
Elijah’s last sensation was of falling to the floor.
Holly muscled Shane’s car through the side streets of Vegas at maximum speed without breaking the law. It would not do to get pulled over—not when she was missing the car keys and was lifting and propelling the chassis with her mind. Not when she was nude. She wished her hair were longer by a foot or two so it would cover her completely, Lady Godiva–style.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have the power to grow her own hair to fabulous lengths instantly, and she needed coverage. Her hands shook on the steering wheel, but she was trying very hard to think logically through what she was about to do. Kaylee had Elijah in custody by now, and she wanted Holly too. Holly would have liked to think Kaylee would let them out of captivity after she solved her bigger problems, as she’d said in her office. But who knew how long that would be? Another seven years?
Hell no.
So Holly was headed to Hoover Dam to stage her own impossible feat of physical stamina. Tourists would watch her. News crews would film her. The publicity would give her a platform. She would be in the public eye, the ultimate threat to the casino and the Res. She would report all of them and have them nabbed by a mysterious government agency, never to be seen again, if they didn’t leave her alone and let Elijah go.
If they’d feared she would overshadow her dad’s magic act at the casino when she was fourteen, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
But public relations in Vegas walked a fine line between X-rated and family friendly. Clips of her performance of derring-do would not be shown on the local TV news if she was naked.
She rounded the last residential block and set Shane’s car down in the back parking lot of Glitterati, just where Rob’s cop car had been that awful night. A few other cars told her some staff members were here to ready the club for opening. She crouched behind the wheel, eyes on the back door, working up her courage to streak. One, two, three.
She dashed across the asphalt in her high heels, the hot wind streaming cheekily across her bare buttocks. She jerked open the door, stepped inside, and slammed it behind her. In Vegas, jovial naked seemed less suspicious than skulking nakedly about. She called down the corridor and into the club, “Cher! Diana! Marilyn! It’s Holly Starr. I need a favor!”
“In here.”
Holly dove in the direction of the voice, through an open doorway. She almost backed out of the room again in alarm because she didn’t recognize Marilyn Monroe at first glance. He was hunched over a computer in the corner of the dressing room, only half done up. His makeup was finished and his hair was pasted back, but he hadn’t put his blond wig on, or his padded bra. He wore only boxers decorated with cat-eye sunglasses and lipsticks and stars from Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. But the most surprising thing of all was that when he spoke, he used his man voice. “Why, Miss Starr.”
“Hey,” Holly said, waving casually, keeping the other arm plastered over her nipples. “Whatcha doing?”
“I was just googling ‘perfect ten.’ ”
Holly felt her cheeks coloring. “Oh, ha-ha, you’re sweet.” She edged over to a costume rack against the wall. With one arm still pressed to her breasts, she raked through the hangers with her other hand. She pulled out a low-cut silver sequined minidress. “Would you mind terribly if I borrowed this? And I can’t promise I’ll return it completely intact, but if I don’t, I’ll pay you back, I swear.”
Marilyn waved her concerns away. “Oh, honey, don’t worry. It’s vintage, and the lining is ripped.”
“Thanks.” Holly turned her back—which didn’t really work for her modesty, she realized belatedly, because her bottom was also naked—and wriggled into the dress.
“The way we party around Vegas, I’ve heard of a lot of bad days after,” Marilyn called, “but this takes the cake.”
“Yeah, I’ve had better.” Holly skittered across the floor toward Marilyn and turned her back again. “Zip, please.”
Marilyn’s warm fingers pressed the edges of the dress together, zipped it up, and fumbled with the clasp at the neck. Holly relaxed a little under the familiar and friendly hands of a fellow showgirl.
“There. Beautiful.” Marilyn patted Holly’s ass. “How about some underwear?”
“Oh, no thanks,” Holly said.
Marilyn’s nostrils flared. “See, you people are all the same. Trannies are dirty, right? You could never borrow underwear from a tranny.”
“I would not borrow underwear from my own mother,” Holly said honestly. She leaned forward to kiss Marilyn’s cheek—possibly the last time she would touch another human being alive. She thought she could fake walking a tightrope across the canyon at Hoover Dam, but it would have been better if she’d had time to work up to this stunt. “Wish me luck.”
Marilyn’s voice softened at Holly’s touch. “Sure, hon. Where are you off to? Big performance?”
“Turn on the local news in about forty-five minutes.”
“Really?” Marilyn asked. “You’re going to flash Channel 13?”
“I sincerely hope not. Bye, and thanks!” Holly clopped out of Glitterati and toward Shane’s car, newly confident in her formfitting spangled dress, ready to put on a show.
18
Holly had been a beautiful baby. By that time Lanie had already dyed her own hair blond. She said she looked more like a showgirl that way. Whoever heard of a brunette magician’s assistant? But Peter had liked Lanie’s hair brown, and when Holly was born with a mass of brown curls, it was like having the old Lanie back again in miniature. They took every Monday off from the show and had a picnic at Lake Mead. Lanie was afraid of keeping baby Holly out in the sun too long. She slathered Holly in sunscreen. Her excuse was that they had to think of Holly’s future career, and a career as a high-profile magician started with tight and supple skin. They couldn’t risk sun da
mage. Of course, Lanie wasn’t nearly as concerned about appearances as she let on. That was just for show, to keep up the casino act. Peter knew what the fuss was really about. She was overprotective of Holly, always thinking of the first baby she had lost.
But he was content to let Holly sit on the beach as long as she wanted. She was fascinated by the large-grained sand worn from the surrounding mountains, tiny rocks every color of the rainbow. She would scoop up a handful, examine it sticking to her fingers, and wash it off by waving her fat hand in the inch of water lapping at her baby toes. Strange that such sand, like a billion gemstones, could come from the dun-colored mountains. Strange that he’d likewise found Lanie among the monsters at the Res, a powerless farm girl drawn in by magic. He’d rescued her and built a beautiful life with her under Mr. Diamond’s protection and created this beautiful baby.
And now the Brown kid would be the death of Holly. He’d known it ever since the night Holly got her power and then this kid got his and stormed into Mr. Diamond’s office. The kid would have torn the place down if Peter hadn’t taken him out. Peter had never said this to Mr. Diamond or Jasmine Brown—though they’d probably read it from him anyway—but he’d always hoped this kid would do himself in like his fucked-up father, before he got his paws on Holly.
“Thanks a lot.” Elijah’s face was stuck to the black leather seat of the limo. He pushed himself off with shaky forearms and sat up, head throbbing with Mr. Starr’s vitriol in his head. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Starr sat directly across from him, staring him down, eyes glittering like the sequins on his magician get-up, deliberately waking him with his hatred.
Next to him sat Kaylee typing furiously on a laptop. She glanced at Elijah. “You okay?”
“I’m perfect, Kaylee. Thanks for asking.”
She shut the laptop. The limo bumped into the back parking lot at Glitterati and parked across the spaces. She left one foot in the car and stepped outside onto the asphalt with the other high-heeled shoe, blocking Elijah’s way if he had chosen to escape, which of course he didn’t. He’d been thinking about it, but then he changed his mind. She looked back at Mr. Starr. “Don’t hurt him.”