Levitating Las Vegas (15 page)

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.