Levitating Las Vegas(59)
Author: Jennifer Echols

When Kaylee had started describing Holly’s experience with Elijah, Holly’s heart sank. But by the time Kaylee stopped, Holly had regained a little hope. “He didn’t try to be a perfect anything,” she said self-righteously. “He did the opposite of what I wanted.”

“To get a rise out of you, so he could feel you using your power.” Kaylee nodded. “He hasn’t been able to read minds long enough. He hasn’t learned to be subtle. Either way, he made you very angry, and you escaped from his grip the only way you knew how. What did you do to him, Holly? Did you break his hand, like you broke your father’s?”

“No!” Holly shouted, beginning to panic.

Kaylee held her fingers to her porcelain neck. “Did you press his carotid artery until he passed out? That’s your dad’s favorite trick. Did you force all the air out of his lungs until he thought he would suffocate?”

Holly’s jaw dropped, and along with it everything she’d been levitating next to Kaylee. Pencils clattered on the desktop. Kaylee jerked her rolling chair toward the bank of camera monitors just in time to avoid being hit by the computer screen, which tumbled across the rich Oriental carpet and fell on its face.

Kaylee never took her eyes off Holly. “You did something to get away from him. That’s why you’re here right now, and he’s not.”

She said this with such vehemence that Holly wondered whether Kaylee had some very personal experience with mind readers.

And then Kaylee said, “Your parents were right to keep you two apart when you were fourteen.”

Holly picked up the computer screen with her mind and slammed it against the far wall. It left a lighter-colored mark in the dark wood paneling and fell to the carpet in a jumble of electronics. “Were they right to drug us, too?” Holly demanded. “What the hell is Mentafixol, anyway? If it’s just a sedative, why go to the trouble of having it made in the mountains and shipped here?”

Adding to Holly’s frustration, Kaylee didn’t react to the smashed computer. She turned back to the bank of camera monitors. “Mentafixol isn’t a sedative,” she said. “All the powers we know about are caused by genetic variations in the brain. Mentafixol contains molybdenum, which is necessary for brain function but slows some processes at high doses.”

Holly put her hands in her hair. “You’ve been slowing down my brain on purpose?”

“Yes, but high molybdenum levels are protective against cancer and impotency, so look on the bright side.”

Holly sank back into her chair with a sigh. “Why’d you just cut off the pill like that, rather than being honest with us? You could have saved us fourteen hundred miles and a whole lot of gas.”

“It works best this way,” Kaylee said. “People are horrified at the loss of the drug, and they hide their powers. Two days later, after the drug has cleared their system, we call them in to speak with Mr. Diamond. He explains the situation and offers them jobs. They’re so relieved to find out they’re not insane, they forget they’ve been drugged since they were teenagers. They immediately accept and come to work for the casino.”

Holly rubbed her aching head. “Unless they don’t take no for an answer from the casino pharmacy and go on a wild goose chase for Mentafixol.”

“Elijah inherited power from both parents,” Kaylee said. “He’s awfully strong. We should have predicted he would fly off the handle like that. But if we’d seen it coming, I’m not sure we would have done anything differently.” She rolled her chair closer to her desk and spread out her hands toward Holly, seeming earnest for the first time.

“What would the alternative be?” Kaylee asked. “We could lock him up while he came off the drug, which would make him angrier and more resistant. The thinking is that if you get arrested, you’ll be that much more grateful to us for bailing you out, so you’ll be more compliant when we ask you to join us. Certainly more compliant that you would have been if we’d locked you up in a room. And if you got in any real trouble with the law, surely the rest of us combining our power could get you out of it. I can’t tell you how many lawsuits against the casino I’ve gotten dismissed just by sitting in the courtroom and toying with the judge. We only hope you don’t kill anybody while you’re out on your field trip. Especially each other.”

Holly nodded. “I can’t imagine why we would be angry or resistant. Kaylee, you had no right to drug us for seven years!”

“Yes, we did. Men with telekinesis or mind-changing ability, women with telepathy—they can settle into a trade, like your father, and Elijah’s mom, without causing too much trouble. We tread more carefully around male mind readers and female mind changers and levitators, because they’re so strong. What if you’d constructed your own magic act to compete with your father? It would have been catastrophic when you were fourteen. You would have tried tricks that were too hard just to outdo him. You would have wound up dead, possibly blowing the casino’s cover and threatening the lives of all our people along the way.”

Twelve hours ago, Holly would have sworn this wasn’t true. After her mishap with her dad that morning, she wasn’t so sure.

But she did know one thing: Kaylee had no right to play God, because she didn’t know what it felt like to be manipulated this way. “You were never drugged,” Holly said.

“No,” Kaylee admitted. “By fifteen I was at the Res. I finally escaped last year, and Mr. Diamond took me in. He chose me to lead his security team. That was right before you and I met.”

“Which wasn’t an accident,” Holly said sadly, heart sinking. “Mr. Diamond set us up to be friends so you could watch me. We were never really close. At least, not on your end.”

Kaylee’s eyes flickered. Holly thought she caught the tiniest glimmer of real feeling there.

But no. Stone-cold Kaylee didn’t even bother to deny their friendship had been a lie. She turned back to peer at the camera monitors yet again.

Holly asked, “What’s the Res?”

Kaylee nodded at the monitors. “The Res is what I’m looking for. If the casino is a safe haven for people with power, the Res is hell.” She looked over at Holly. “And very appealing to teenagers, which is the reason the casino started drugging young people in the first place.”

“Does the Res drug people like the casino does?” Holly asked. “Because if not, it does sound pretty appealing in comparison.”