Levitating Las Vegas(46)
Author: Jennifer Echols

She remembered their mission and prompted the man, “But you do make Mentafixol?”

“Oh, yeah, we make it.” The man placed the bag on a scale. “It’s the only pill we make. We manufacture it in small batches on special order for one clinic in Las Vegas that treats a very rare condition called MAD, which stands for mental addled dysphoria.”

“Mental adolescent dysfunction,” Holly and Elijah said together. They were careful not to look at each other, and Holly hoped the candy man hadn’t noticed their enthusiasm.

“Why do you make it up here?” Holly asked. “You’re a long way from Vegas. Is the clinic that asks for it trying to keep it a secret?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the man. “We’re just convenient. We have the altitude necessary for the chemical reaction. We have the molybdenum. Did you know that the town of Icarus was founded in the nineteenth century as a molybdenum mining camp?” He leaned forward, bushy white brows high, and shook the bag at Holly.

She took the bag from him and popped a candy into her mouth.

“All of us in town work as molybdenum miners when you tourists go home,” the man said. “Here in the shop, we make the molybdenum cores of Mentafixol. Then we just dump them into the coating drum for a hard candy shell and a nice paraffin polish.”

Holly glanced over at Elijah for direction. He watched the candy man with an intense look in his green eyes—an expression Holly had come to recognize over the past day without even knowing she was recognizing it, his mind-reading expression. “Don’t you think it’s kind of unusual for a candy company to be asked to make a prescription drug?” he asked. “Don’t you ever get inspected by the FDA?”

“I have had that thought.” The man pointed at Elijah. “I don’t want you to think I haven’t. I’ve even called the clinic to ask them about it. And every time I do, they send somebody all the way up here to discuss it with me right away. Lately it’s been a little blond girl. Something in the way she describes it to me makes so much sense that I change my mind about complaining.”

Elijah nodded like it was all becoming clear. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “We’re here for the parade.”

“I can see that,” the candy man said, eyeing Holly. “You were with the gorillas.”

“Yes,” Holly lied, cheering him with a flourish of the piece of candy in her fingers. She put it in her mouth.

“But while we’re here,” Elijah said, “we wanted to check on the Mentafixol. We have friends at the clinic, and the clinic has run out of medicine.”

“You don’t say!” the man said. “Let me go look at that ticket.” He turned and moved to the shelves behind him.

Elijah leaned down to Holly and whispered, “The blonde is Kaylee.”

“The blonde is . . .” Holly repeated with her mouth full, not understanding. Then, slowly, she understood. Kaylee was the “little blond girl” who kept the candy company from asking too many questions about Mentafixol. The chocolate turned to sand in Holly’s mouth. She swallowed the dry mouthful. “How do you know?”

“I can see her in his mind.” Elijah straightened and resumed his intense look as the man returned to the register.

“Yep, the clinic asked us to halt shipment,” the man said. “And I can’t give you any. It has to go through the clinic. But you know who else in Vegas would have some?”

“Who?” Elijah asked in a tone that told Holly he already knew.

“That blonde,” the man said. “She always takes boxes and boxes back with her, plus we make her a few big horse pills and even some injectables out of the same stuff. God knows what she does with those. You want me to dig up her card?”

Elijah squinted at the man. Now Holly did wish she could read Elijah’s mind, because she had no idea what the next step in his plan was. If he’d been fishing for a way to get the man to fork over some Mentafixol, he’d run out of options.

She concentrated on the box that the man had turned to stare at on the shelves behind the counter a moment before. She thought about sliding it out from the boxes around it.

It moved into midair.

Elijah blinked. “You’ve been so helpful,” he said quickly to the man. “Let me pay you for”—he cut his eyes sideways at Holly’s bag of candy—“that.”

Holly floated the box of Mentafixol up to the ceiling.

As the man bent to peer at the cash register, Elijah widened his eyes at Holly, then gestured with his head at the crowded café tables, warning her to cut out the levitation or they would get caught.

Holly didn’t understand how anybody who happened to see what she was doing could possibly link her with a floating box of pharmaceuticals. She shrugged. “I’m a magician.”

Elijah paid, and Holly took him by the hand. She led him across the shop, then opened the door by backing him against it. “Thank you for the candy,” she whispered. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. Electricity shot through her, but for once she wasn’t fully vested in the attentions of Elijah. She let her lips linger on his while she coaxed the box a few feet downward, under the doorjamb, and outdoors. Then she rubbed the tip of her nose against Elijah’s and pulled him free of the shop, down the sidewalk, to Shane’s car, with the neat white box floating in the air in front of them all the way.

12

Elijah started the Catalina with an erk and meant to speed away from the candy store before the old man dashed after them and snatched his Mentafixol back. But Elijah hadn’t driven ten feet before he had to brake hard for a group of men hiking down the street. They weren’t in costume for the parade but were decked out in Western wear like real cowboys. They might actually have been molybdenum miners.

“They put us on Mentafixol to keep us from using our power,” Holly murmured, one pink fingernail tracing patterns on the box on the seat between them.

“Apparently,” Elijah said. He was trying to get his brain around the situation himself. He could read minds. It was real. After twenty-one years as a fatherless nobody, he had more power than he knew what to do with.

The concept just wouldn’t sink in. He had no room in his head for his own thoughts because Holly’s black anger pushed them out.

“And they told us we were crazy so we’d take the Mentafixol.” Her words came faster and faster to keep up with the darkness swirling in her mind. “That’s what my dad meant when he said he’d reveal all the secrets of his magic act to me after his impossible feat of physical stamina tomorrow. He knew I was coming off Mentafixol. The secret is that there’s no trick to it. He has power just like me. That’s how he levitates with no wires. And he’s only number four on the list of the ten biggest mysteries of Las Vegas? Seems like he could pull out all the stops and at least make it to number two.”