Shane walked up to April and holstered his pistol. “Oh, you want me to change my mind about keeping my gun out? Okay.” He backhanded her across the face. The sickening sound echoed off the hard surfaces of the appliances. She fell against Carter. Shane followed her down, shouting, “Where’s Kaylee?”
Everyone pointed toward the hallway.
“Fucking animals.” Shane stomped out of the kitchen.
Elijah monitored every mind in the deathly still crowd. Rob’s mind was loudest. He wanted to kill Shane. He’d wanted to kill Shane all week. He made a fist of his ruined hand so the pain seared through him, fueling his fury.
But the rest of them were more concerned for their own well-being. Elijah took a chance and rose painfully from the floor, his back throbbing, arm throbbing, eyebrow throbbing. None of the mind changers stopped him.
They’d abandoned their grip on Holly, too, but Holly didn’t realize it. He approached her slowly, expecting her to throw him across the room again. She watched him warily from the countertop, furious with him for making her think he loved her when he’d loved her sister all along. But she didn’t strike him.
He moved in until his h*ps bumped against her bare knees. He looked deep into her dark eyes. “All of that is a lie,” he growled. “Come with me.”
She didn’t believe him.
He slid both hands onto her knees. “I will be very angry with you if you don’t come with me.”
She didn’t trust him, but his pupils dilated to the edges of his green irises, which fascinated her.
He moved his hands up her thighs. “Come with me now, and you can always come back here later. They’ll be waiting for you. Right, everybody?” He looked over his shoulder.
They were gone. He looked over his other shoulder. Every member of the Res had disappeared, leaving behind only the rock music and the strobe lights and a black puddle of Rob’s blood in the corner.
Shane reappeared with Kaylee’s limp body over his shoulder. “Elijah. Get Holly and come on.” He ducked through the front doorway.
Elijah eased Holly off the counter. He thought she would resist him even now, but she grasped his hand and squeezed it as he pulled her out of the Res, into the hot night.
He held her hand tightly, afraid to let her go, as they hiked down the dirt road. Shane walked just ahead of them, Kaylee’s platinum-blond hair bobbing against the back of his tux jacket. Her arms hung limp at first, but as Elijah watched she started to move, and in his mind he could feel her struggling back to consciousness, a burning pain in her temple. The pill he’d swallowed was taking longer to kick in than he’d thought it would. Around them in the night, Frank Sinatra and Shane’s brother and uncle, all in tuxedos, walked backward down the road, long guns pointed at the front door of the Res, now shut against them. The crunching of gravel underfoot was the only sound.
“Put me down,” Kaylee murmured against Shane’s back. Gaining full consciousness, she shouted, “Shane! You pistol-whipped me and knocked me out, you bastard!”
Shane stopped, flipped Kaylee forward over his shoulder, and set her lightly down on the gravel. “I’m sorry. We were standing in a room full of people with power and I had to move fast. I didn’t have time for you to argue with me or change my mind.”
A crack came from the Res. A zing sounded very close to Elijah’s head. A puff of dust rose from a boulder near him. Looking back, he saw Isaac walking toward them from the Res with Kaylee’s pistol extended, still firing.
He raced toward the Pontiac, towing Holly by the hand. Shane’s relatives passed them and hopped into Shane’s dad’s black Lincoln land yacht. The windows of the Lincoln lowered. Guns fired toward the Res as the car zoomed away. Elijah pushed Holly into the back of the Pontiac as Shane said inside his mind, You drive so I can cover us—only a whisper. Elijah’s power was evaporating quickly.
Elijah slipped behind the steering wheel. Shane pointed his gun at the Res. Elijah had doubted how dangerous the Res was, but Shane had not. He’d never talked much about his past. Elijah wondered where Shane had come from.
“Mississippi, I told you,” Shane said. “Drive!”
Elijah took off with a jerk of the clutch and a roar of the engine, eating the Lincoln’s dust. Shane kept the Res in his sights until it disappeared behind a cliff.
Elijah heard Kaylee whispering in the backseat. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw her hugging Holly. Blood trickled from Kaylee’s temple. She sucked in a breath. It came back out in sobs. She adjusted her hold on Holly, pulling her closer.
Shane didn’t look in the mirror. He stared straight ahead out the windshield at the dark night, reading Kaylee’s mind.
After a minute, Holly said quietly, “I was going to stay there at the Res, and be Rob’s ho, and to hell with all of you. I can’t quite shake it. I feel a little twinge of wanting to go back, even now.”
“It’s not your fault,” Kaylee said. “They ganged up on you.”
Hesitantly Holly put her hand on Kaylee’s knee. “Thank you for saving me, sis.”
“Thank Elijah,” Kaylee said. “I wasn’t going to save your ass. I told you not to leave my office, Pandora.”
“You told me not to leave by the door.” Holly leaned forward over the seat and kissed Elijah’s cheek. “Thank you for saving me, Elijah.”
“Any time,” Elijah croaked. His throat was still sore from swallowing the pill, and he was beginning to feel dizzy.
Holly bounced into the backseat again. She was sorry. She was very, very sorry for what she’d done to Elijah, but they would have to discuss it when they were alone. In the meantime, she needed to thank Shane.
“You’re welcome,” Shane said.
“Shane!” she protested. “Why didn’t you tell Elijah you were a mind reader a day ago, or a week ago, or, hey, a year ago, instead of acting all creepy about it and whacking him in the head?”
“Is that how you say hello?” Kaylee grumbled.
“I whacked him in the head because he interrupted my class,” Shane said defensively. “And how do you read minds without being creepy? I would honestly like to know.”
“I can’t believe I’ve had a whole family of mind readers working at the casino under my nose,” Kaylee burst out. “Do you realize how desperately I’ve needed you the past few weeks? Well, of course you do. You know everything.”
“We didn’t want to get involved,” Shane said. “We’re not interested in this Hatfield and McCoy shit you’ve got going on.”
“Obviously you are,” Kaylee snapped, “or you wouldn’t be at the casino in the first place. Here’s how it works. The casino gives you protection, a job, and all the money you can discreetly spend. In exchange, when we call, you answer.”
“One,” Shane held out a finger, “you do not give me all the money I can spend. I know for a fact I make less than Marilyn Monroe, and he opens for my act.”
“When he tells you his salary,” Kaylee muttered, “he’s probably counting his tips.”
“And two,” Shane held out another finger, “there was nothing in the employment paperwork that said mind readers were supposed to sign in at the front office.”
“Please,” Kaylee said. “You read minds. You knew exactly what was going on at the casino the minute you walked in the door.”
“If I did, I sure as hell didn’t get it from you. You’ve got your mind closed tighter than a nun’s eyes at a nudist camp.”
He sounded awfully bitter as he said this. Elijah wondered how long it would be before Shane and Kaylee went to bed together.
Shane glared across the front seat at him. “Oh, you’re funny.” He settled farther down in the passenger seat with a frustrated sigh.
Something was wrong. Elijah was judging Shane’s emotions by his body language and the tone of his voice, like a college graduate with a BA in psychology. Elijah’s power had been shrinking and moving farther away from him toward a vanishing point on the dark horizon. It was about to disappear. Elijah could hardly read Shane’s mind at all.
Shane turned sharply to Elijah. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not feeling well,” Elijah understated.
Shane stared at him a moment, then looked over the seat at Kaylee. “He took a pill to save Holly from the Res. What was it? You gave him more of that Mentafixol shit?”
“He did what?” Holly exclaimed.
Keeping one eye on the road, Elijah watched Kaylee in the rearview mirror. Everything around him was fading from view, escaping gravity and floating slowly up like balloons in the darkness, but he had to concentrate. He was desperate to hear whether her story to Shane about the pill would be the same story she’d fed Elijah.
She formed one thumb and finger into a circle. “A bolus. He’ll lose his power soon.”
“Kaylee!” Shane roared. “What the f—”
A car horn filled Elijah’s ears. After a while someone pushed back on his shoulder. The horn stopped. Now he could see the steering wheel, and he realized he’d slumped forward against it and leaned on the horn. He could see, he could hear Holly cooing worriedly in his ear, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t feel what she was thinking. His power was gone.
20
“Oh God, what have I done?” Holly bent over Elijah outside the open driver’s door of the car. “Oh God, oh God, Elijah, what have I done to you? Why are his eyes open? Can he hear me?”
Shane knelt next to her. “He’s conscious. He can hear you. He just can’t move.”
“Is it going to kill him?” Holly cried.
“No.” Kaylee knelt on Holly’s other side and peered at Elijah. “It will just take his power away.”
“Get it out of him!” Shane exclaimed.
“Ahhhhhh,” Kaylee stalled, sounding unsure for the first time since Holly had met her. “How? Induce vomiting?”
“Not while he’s in this state,” Shane said. “Holly, you’re going to have to get it out.”
“I don’t want to hurt him,” Holly sobbed. That is, she didn’t want to hurt him again. She touched the long stab wound on his triceps, white icing crusted around it.
“You have to,” Kaylee said. “Shane’s right, for once. It’s either that or he’ll lose his power forever. Help me, Shane.”
Holly scooted out of the way while Kaylee and Shane rolled Elijah onto his stomach and turned his head to the side. Holly put her hand on his back—gingerly, because she must have caused him some serious damage slamming him through the pantry door—and visualized the large pill. Gently she moved it from his stomach up his esophagus to his throat, where it lodged. He made a strangled noise, his first sound since he went blank.
“He can’t cough, Holly,” came Kaylee’s voice. “Pull it out before he chokes.”
Holly gently pulled with her power. The pill popped into his mouth. Holly slipped her fingers between his lips and swept the pill out. “There now,” she whispered to him. “This is not our finest moment, but it’s over.”
“Give me that.” Shane grabbed the wet pill from her.
“Ew,” Holly and Kaylee said at the same time.
He reared back and pitched the pill like a baseball. It disappeared into the darkness, but Holly heard it hit a rock on the nearest barren hill.
“You have no business giving that shit to people,” he yelled at Kaylee. “How could you screw up this so-called withdrawal so bad?”
Holly gathered up Elijah and held his head in her lap. She stroked his messy brown hair while Shane and Kaylee hollered at each other overhead.
“And your idea of helping was to pack Elijah off to Icarus with your car and your gun and your blessings?” Kaylee asked.
“I gave him what he asked for. You’re not supposed to mess with somebody coming off Mentafixol, right?” Shane said sarcastically. “And I figured better there than here.”
“Right,” Kaylee said. “Out of your hair.”
“Away from Rob,” Shane said.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Holly sobbed. “Elijah is all that matters.”
“You’re right,” Kaylee said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Shane leveraged his shoulder under Elijah’s belly and stood, groaning under the weight. He folded Elijah’s limp body through the open door of the car. Holly started to step through the opening after him.
“Not you, girlfriend,” Kaylee said.
“I’m going with Elijah!” Holly exclaimed.
Kaylee shook her head. “We’ll drive back, but you need to hike, like you’ve finally pulled yourself out of the Colorado River.”
“Ohhhh,” Holly said. “How did I survive the fall into the river from my invisible tightrope?”
“Magic,” said Kaylee. “There’s a truck stop about a mile from here. They’ll recognize you. I’ll bet you’re all over the news.”
“You are,” Shane said. “They’ve been interviewing your distraught parents.”
“Poor Mom!” Holly exclaimed.
“I’ll call her in a minute and tell her you’re okay,” Kaylee said. “The truck stop will call the police. The police will arrest you—”
“What?” Holly did not like this plan anymore.
“—because it was highly illegal for you to walk an imaginary tightrope across Hoover Dam without a permit. Just go with the police. When the reporters shout questions at you as the cuffs are put on you, like how you survived and why you don’t have any cuts or bruises, just smile and look beautiful and tell the reporters it’s magic.”