Levitating Las Vegas(81)
Author: Jennifer Echols

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?”