Levitating Las Vegas(78)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Elijah tried to slow his own breathing, and he pictured window blinds drawn down over his own thoughts. “What did you do with Holly?” he asked Rob.

Rob waved through an archway to the kitchen, where Holly sat on the countertop in her silver sequined minidress, between the stainless steel refrigerator and the microwave. Her thick mascara had run down her cheeks, and her dark hair had dried in strange waves. Scowling at him, she looked like a different person.

“You can have her,” Rob said.

Elijah took a quick step toward Holly before he heard what Rob had said. Then he stopped and faced Rob again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, go ahead,” Rob said. “Nobody’s going to change your mind, Elijah. Take my girlfriend and run if you want.”

“My girlfriend,” Elijah corrected him.

Rob smiled. “Remember you stole her from me. And now I’ve won her back.”

It was a trick. Elijah knew this, but he couldn’t very well take Rob’s word for it. He walked through the archway, toward Holly, with his hand out to her.

He hadn’t even reached the island in the center of the kitchen when she knocked him backward. He flew through the air for a split second, flailing to find a hold on something, and came to a gut-wrenching stop with a searing pain in his back. The sky was falling. It took him a moment to realize he’d broken a door with his body and now sat on the floor of the pantry with cans of kidney beans rolling into his lap.

“What did Rob do to you?” he yelled at her, outraged through the pain.

Her mind told him. Holly was no good at blocking, if she even tried. He saw what Rob had done to her and what Rob had made her think about Elijah and Kaylee. He felt what she’d felt.

Rob stepped in front of the closet, obscuring Elijah’s view of Holly. He said quietly, “I don’t think she wants to go with you, Dangermouse. For some reason she thinks you’ve been cheating on her with Kaylee. But you’re welcome to leave without her. Or you can stay. Either one. We have cake.”

Rob crossed the kitchen and eased his uniformed hips between Holly’s knees. She’d been watching Elijah with no expression on her face. Now she closed her eyes and opened her mouth for Rob’s kiss.

Elijah looked around him at the lovely suburban house from hell, high ceilings shadowy, reflecting the colored glow of lava lamps and plug-in strobes. He heard an angry shout from Kaylee down the dark hall. Her voice quickly cut off, and the throbbing music filled the space where her voice had been. He recognized April straddling Carter on a sofa in the den. Several other couples made out in corners, seeming oblivious to him. They didn’t ignore him, though. The secrets of their minds were shuttered tight, but they were hyperaware of Elijah’s position on the floor and his thoughts about Holly.

Despair and nausea pretty much covered it. Holly had had perhaps an hour’s head start on him at the Res, and in that hour, Rob and his friends had convinced her to throw Elijah across the room. What would they put in her head before the night was over? What would Rob make her do for him? Elijah couldn’t leave her, anymore than he could leave the eerily silent Kaylee in the back room.

He had to get them out of there.

He jumped up from the floor, and immediately regretted it. His entire back would be bruised from the force of breaking the door, and lengths of jagged wood poked and scraped him as he moved. He felt like a hunchback monster as he crossed the kitchen, a voyeur as he stood behind Rob, watching him make out with Holly.

“Hey!” Elijah shouted stupidly.

Rob didn’t turn to look at Elijah, only stepped out of the way. But Elijah caught a glimpse of the amused smile on his profile just before the room went black.

He was still conscious. Or he’d lost consciousness only for a second. His head throbbed from Holly’s punch. He sensed Rob bending over him, and a levitator whose mind felt familiar. The one who’d come after him in Icarus. Violet.

“My gosh,” Rob said, “is he okay?”

“I don’t know,” Violet murmured. Elijah’s field of vision filled with her face, a beautiful girl with black eyes. She cried, “For God’s sake, Holly, whatever he did, does he deserve to die for it? You’re going to kill him!”

The direction of power had shifted in the room. Elijah sensed that the mind changers had let Holly go. When Violet moved out of the way, he saw Holly still sitting on the counter, horrified by what she’d done to him, confused about whether his affair with Kaylee was real.

It’s not, Elijah wanted to tell her, and I’m okay. But he changed his mind about calling to her.

Violet helped him sit up against the kitchen island. “Poor thing,” she cooed. “Did that mean old levitator hurt you?” She was thinking it was fun to invite new friends to the Res and turn them against each other. She watched his expression change as he received this message from her, and she smiled with satisfaction. Then she kissed him.

He drew back, then changed his mind and kissed her, deeply. He wove his fingers into her black hair and pulled until it hurt her. She chuckled against his lips, amused at his small show of resistance.

The door slammed. Elijah no longer sensed Holly’s despair. She was gone.

Violet sat back on her heels. “You’d better go after her. Can you stand? Man, she really coldcocked you.” Pouting, she stroked his injured eyebrow hard enough to make him wince. Then she stood and held out a hand to help him up. This was a levitator’s joke. Without ever touching his hand, she pushed him up from behind. “Good luck out there.”

He swung through the back door and tromped through the small circle of porch light, past the patch of gravel that served as a yard. The house was perched at the edge of a cliff—small wonder this lovely planned community had never sold—and Holly peered into the chasm, sequined dress glinting in the starlight. Elijah sensed other minds in the shadows, controlling his every move.

But nobody touched Holly’s mind now. They’d done their work on her for the moment. Now they allowed her to drown in her own confusion and guilt. Hearing his footsteps across the rocks, she whirled to face him, panicked that someone was coming for her. When she saw it was him, she rushed toward him for a hug.

He put up his hand. “Don’t touch me!” he shouted. He was not possessed, but that’s what it felt like with mind changers inside his head, telling him what to say.

She stopped short. She wished she could see his eyes, his pupils, but his face was in shadow.