Levitating Las Vegas (14 page)

“Is that all?” she shrieked. “Is that all you want from me?”

He glanced over at her. Her dark eyes were wild, and the Strip glowed through the window, shining in her curls. The enormous billboard advertising her dad’s magic act with her likeness crept up behind her and flashed past her shoulders.

She was relieved Elijah didn’t plan to kill her. She was touched that he said he wanted to save her. But she didn’t trust him. And there was something dark and ugly and twisted in her head too, something very unbecoming a pretty twenty-one-year-old innocent: disappointment.
I’m driving to Colorado to get some
echoed in her mind.

“Is that all you wanted?” she repeated.

He eyed her, careful not to let his glance dip to her cleavage. He honestly didn’t know what to say.

“Then why did you threaten me with a gun on a freaking public bus?” she demanded, shaking the gun for emphasis.

“It’s not loaded, but it’s not a toy. Put it in the glove compartment.”

She punched the button on the dashboard in front of her, dropped the gun out of sight behind the folded maps, blinked at the box of bullets, and slammed the glove compartment shut.

He cringed. Rob blowing a hole in the ceiling had left him gun-shy for a lifetime.

Then Holly turned back to Elijah expectantly and folded her arms across her breasts again, showing him not her discomfort but her anger.

“I wanted you to come with me,” he said, “but I needed enough time to explain it to you. I knew I wouldn’t get the chance. I couldn’t risk people overhearing us in the casino or on the bus when we’ve got one foot in the loony bin already.”

“
We?
” she demanded. “That would be
you
. You’re the one who pointed a gun at me and kidnapped me. Do you realize you did something crazy to prevent yourself from being crazy?”

“The irony of this does not escape me.” Neither did the fact that he never would have attempted such a stunt if not for his imagined superpower.

His comment made his case. She recognized this Elijah as the one she’d bantered with on the bus, and she relaxed a little. “You really think they have our medicine up there?”

“We’ll know in ten hours. When’s the last time you went on a road trip to save your own sanity? It’ll be fun.”

She laughed and quickly pressed her lips together to quell it. Looking around the car, she asked, “Is Shane okay?”

Elijah nodded. “I didn’t steal his car. He knows where we’re going.” Then, because his stomach still rumbled sympathetically with hers, he reached behind his seat with one hand, fished around for the small cooler, and placed it on her bare thighs.

“What’s this?” she asked. “If it’s Shane’s head, I’m going to be really mad at you.”

“Dinner,” Elijah said.

She unzipped the top of the cooler. His mouth watered with hers, and his brain sensed the aromas of garlic and ginger as she opened the plastic container of Chinese food. Or maybe he actually smelled the food from across the car. He couldn’t tell his sensations and hers apart. She dug in with the plastic fork he’d brought. The flavors exploded in his mind.

“Where’d you get this?” she squealed her approval with her mouth full.

“I made it,” he said.

She drew an imaginary chart in her head and titled it
Elijah
. Under
Pro
she wrote
Great cook
and
Funny
and, after a pause,
So hot
. Under
Con
she scribbled,
COMPLETE NUTCASE
. She laughed at herself, both in her mind and in real life beside him in the car, a warm, husky sound through a savory mouthful.

She ate. He drove, the lights of Vegas melting back into the scrubby desert from which they’d sprung in the 1940s, the bare mountains in the distance outlined by starlight, and he listened to her thoughts. She would go with him to Icarus. He was right: Better that they both went off their rockers outside Vegas, where she was less likely to be recognized. She didn’t want to do something crazy and ruin her chances at her own magic act. By the time they made it back to town or called Kaylee to rescue them, surely the pharmacy would have their medicine, and these dark days would be over.

Then her thoughts spun in different directions, ricocheting at random angles. But her attraction to him—that colored everything else in her mind. He constantly chided himself that his entire hallucination of mind reading was a symptom of MAD, some self-aggrandizing delusion. It was the wishful thinking of the teenage boy he’d been, jilted for a prom date with a girl who’d been too good for him, and wanting to prove she’d been wrong:
Someday she’ll be sorry
. Now his someday had arrived.

He knew full well that the two storylines progressed in parallel: his delusional adventure story about saving himself and Holly, and what was really happening. He had no way of knowing which was which, or what borders they shared. He could only assume that what he processed as reading her mind was actually information he gained by some other method, like talking to her, or reading her body language, or subconsciously capitalizing on four years of college psychology classes. He could only work with the information he had.

She dropped the fork and empty container back into the cooler, zipped it, and tossed it into the backseat. She wanted to thank him for a delicious homemade dinner, except as a general rule she did not thank her kidnappers. She was still kind of mad at him. Instead she said, “Your plan is to drive to Icarus, Colorado, and go to the drug factory that makes Mentafixol.”

Candy company,
he almost corrected her. That would sound crazy, so he just nodded.

“You have the address?”

“I looked it up on the web. It’s on the main street of the town.” He’d broken out in a cold sweat at his computer when he saw that the address he’d pulled from the pharmacy clerk’s mind was a real place. But if the candy company actually made his medicine, he’d probably remembered the address from a pill bottle, back in the heady days when his pills were at his fingertips. And if the candy company
didn’t
make his medicine, he’d unknowingly remembered the address from some gift catalog in his mother’s apartment.

The upside was, he’d also seen on the web that the candy company was famous for its fudge. If in fact he’d imagined the entire connection between the candy company and Mentafixol, when they arrived, perhaps he could buy Holly some fudge to placate her—especially if she was crazy by then, too.

“I doubt we can walk up to a drug factory and ask for drugs, even with a prescription,” Holly reasoned. She’d been working through the scenario as she talked. Now an awful possibility occurred to her, and her heart thumped harder again. “You’re not thinking of
holding up the drug factory
?” She folded one leg and braced the toe of her glittering shoe against the glove compartment in case he dove for the gun.

“I’m thinking of casing the joint,” he admitted. “All I know for sure is that we need that drug, there’s none in Vegas, and I suspect there’s lots in Icarus. Beyond that, we’ll play it by ear.”

She decided to humor him. He seemed honestly intent on “saving” her, and she could at least return the favor by keeping him out of trouble. She kicked off her high heels and cranked down the window. She stretched her long legs in front her and put her bare feet out the window, wiggling her toes in the roaring wind. Her pink toenail polish twinkled in the streetlights over the interstate. “So, now that we’re finally being honest with each other . . .” she began.

He winced internally and tried not to show it on his face. He really hated deceiving her about how crazy he’d gone. He wished he were rescuing her for real.

“. . . what does it feel like to be off Mentafixol completely?” she asked. “In case our field trip to the drug factory doesn’t work, I want to know what I’m in for tomorrow afternoon.”

He didn’t want to scare her about what she was in for. He didn’t want to terrify her by revealing his current state of mind, sending her skittering into a convenience store the first time they stopped for gas, seeking the protection of the clerk and the panic button and the shotgun behind the counter. But he didn’t want to lie to her, either. He told her as much of the truth as he could. “I feel like something’s going to happen.”

As he spoke, a rock song she loved whispered through the radio. He dialed up the volume. Sure enough, as if he could really read minds, she relaxed into the seat and lost herself in the beat of the music. The song made the midnight drive through the desert more bearable. She was embarrassed that she’d asked him on a date and he’d responded by kidnapping her. She was humiliated that he’d probably been charming on the bus only so he could stay close to her and pull a gun on her, not because he’d been coming on to her. But to the background noise of this song, she could pretend that it was a normal crush gone bad, and that she wasn’t teetering on the edge of madness herself.

Elijah relaxed too, finally. His head filled with how much she loved this song, especially the cool part coming up. He liked the song himself. Tune after tune they both liked came on Vegas’s best alt-rock station. The weight of the last few days didn’t lift from his shoulders, exactly, but underneath that burden he was at least able to enjoy listening to Holly’s colorful mind.

The rest would wait until tomorrow.

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 Bumfuck, 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.