Levitating Las Vegas (26 page)

If they’d feared she would overshadow her dad’s magic act at the casino when she was fourteen, they hadn’t seen anything yet.

But public relations in Vegas walked a fine line between X-rated and family friendly. Clips of her performance of derring-do would not be shown on the local TV news if she was naked.

She rounded the last residential block and set Shane’s car down in the back parking lot of Glitterati, just where Rob’s cop car had been that awful night. A few other cars told her some staff members were here to ready the club for opening. She crouched behind the wheel, eyes on the back door, working up her courage to streak. One, two, three.

She dashed across the asphalt in her high heels, the hot wind streaming cheekily across her bare buttocks. She jerked open the door, stepped inside, and slammed it behind her. In Vegas, jovial naked seemed less suspicious than skulking nakedly about. She called down the corridor and into the club, “Cher! Diana! Marilyn! It’s Holly Starr. I need a favor!”

“In here.”

Holly dove in the direction of the voice, through an open doorway. She almost backed out of the room again in alarm because she didn’t recognize Marilyn Monroe at first glance. He was hunched over a computer in the corner of the dressing room, only half done up. His makeup was finished and his hair was pasted back, but he hadn’t put his blond wig on, or his padded bra. He wore only boxers decorated with cat-eye sunglasses and lipsticks and stars from Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. But the most surprising thing of all was that when he spoke, he used his man voice. “Why, Miss Starr.”

“Hey,” Holly said, waving casually, keeping the other arm plastered over her nipples. “Whatcha doing?”

“I was just googling ‘perfect ten.’ ”

Holly felt her cheeks coloring. “Oh, ha-ha, you’re sweet.” She edged over to a costume rack against the wall. With one arm still pressed to her breasts, she raked through the hangers with her other hand. She pulled out a low-cut silver sequined minidress. “Would you mind terribly if I borrowed this? And I can’t promise I’ll return it completely intact, but if I don’t, I’ll pay you back, I swear.”

Marilyn waved her concerns away. “Oh, honey, don’t worry. It’s vintage, and the lining is ripped.”

“Thanks.” Holly turned her back—which didn’t really work for her modesty, she realized belatedly, because her bottom was also naked—and wriggled into the dress.

“The way we party around Vegas, I’ve heard of a lot of bad days after,” Marilyn called, “but this takes the cake.”

“Yeah, I’ve had better.” Holly skittered across the floor toward Marilyn and turned her back again. “Zip, please.”

Marilyn’s warm fingers pressed the edges of the dress together, zipped it up, and fumbled with the clasp at the neck. Holly relaxed a little under the familiar and friendly hands of a fellow showgirl.

“There. Beautiful.” Marilyn patted Holly’s ass. “How about some underwear?”

“Oh, no thanks,” Holly said.

Marilyn’s nostrils flared. “See, you people are all the same. Trannies are dirty, right? You could never borrow underwear from a tranny.”

“I would not borrow underwear from my own mother,” Holly said honestly. She leaned forward to kiss Marilyn’s cheek—possibly the last time she would touch another human being alive. She
thought
she could fake walking a tightrope across the canyon at Hoover Dam, but it would have been better if she’d had time to work up to this stunt. “Wish me luck.”

Marilyn’s voice softened at Holly’s touch. “Sure, hon. Where are you off to? Big performance?”

“Turn on the local news in about forty-five minutes.”

“Really?” Marilyn asked. “You’re going to flash Channel 13?”

“I sincerely hope not. Bye, and thanks!” Holly clopped out of Glitterati and toward Shane’s car, newly confident in her formfitting spangled dress, ready to put on a show.

18

Holly had been a beautiful baby. By that time Lanie had already dyed her own hair blond. She said she looked more like a showgirl that way. Whoever heard of a brunette magician’s assistant? But Peter had liked Lanie’s hair brown, and when Holly was born with a mass of brown curls, it was like having the old Lanie back again in miniature. They took every Monday off from the show and had a picnic at Lake Mead. Lanie was afraid of keeping baby Holly out in the sun too long. She slathered Holly in sunscreen. Her excuse was that they had to think of Holly’s future career, and a career as a high-profile magician started with tight and supple skin. They couldn’t risk sun damage. Of course, Lanie wasn’t nearly as concerned about appearances as she let on. That was just for show, to keep up the casino act. Peter knew what the fuss was really about. She was overprotective of Holly, always thinking of the first baby she had lost.

But he was content to let Holly sit on the beach as long as she wanted. She was fascinated by the large-grained sand worn from the surrounding mountains, tiny rocks every color of the rainbow. She would scoop up a handful, examine it sticking to her fingers, and wash it off by waving her fat hand in the inch of water lapping at her baby toes. Strange that such sand, like a billion gemstones, could come from the dun-colored mountains. Strange that he’d likewise found Lanie among the monsters at the Res, a powerless farm girl drawn in by magic. He’d rescued her and built a beautiful life with her under Mr. Diamond’s protection and created this beautiful baby.

And now the Brown kid would be the death of Holly. He’d known it ever since the night Holly got her power and then this kid got his and stormed into Mr. Diamond’s office. The kid would have torn the place down if Peter hadn’t taken him out. Peter had never said this to Mr. Diamond or Jasmine Brown—though they’d probably read it from him anyway—but he’d always hoped this kid would do himself in like his fucked-up father, before he got his paws on Holly.

“Thanks a lot.” Elijah’s face was stuck to the black leather seat of the limo. He pushed himself off with shaky forearms and sat up, head throbbing with Mr. Starr’s vitriol in his head. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Starr sat directly across from him, staring him down, eyes glittering like the sequins on his magician get-up, deliberately waking him with his hatred.

Next to him sat Kaylee typing furiously on a laptop. She glanced at Elijah. “You okay?”

“I’m perfect, Kaylee. Thanks for asking.”

She shut the laptop. The limo bumped into the back parking lot at Glitterati and parked across the spaces. She left one foot in the car and stepped outside onto the asphalt with the other high-heeled shoe, blocking Elijah’s way if he had chosen to escape, which of course he didn’t. He’d been thinking about it, but then he changed his mind. She looked back at Mr. Starr. “Don’t hurt him.”

“Who, me?” Mr. Starr asked with his hands up.

Mr. Starr watched Kaylee disappear inside the building, then turned back to Elijah, who met his steely gaze. But Elijah was beginning to think he should look away and kowtow. This was, after all, the man who had now twice caused Elijah to pass out in the blink of an eye. If Elijah and Holly were somehow able to get out of this mess and continue to date, he and Mr. Starr were going to have to talk about this before Mr. Starr caused Elijah permanent brain damage, maybe even short-circuited his mind-reading ability.

Elijah didn’t kowtow fast enough. Mr. Starr wielded his right hand as if he would smack Elijah with it, bandage and all.

And then he did smack Elijah—with his power, not his hand—a hard blow on the cheekbone that nearly turned Elijah’s head around, yet echoed tightly through the limo like a bitch slap.

“I told you to stay the fuck away from my daughter!” Mr. Starr roared.

Elijah had wondered last week whether Mr. Starr’s threats still mattered seven years later. Now he had his answer.

“And
I
told
you
that’s bullshit,” Elijah said.

Mr. Starr gripped Elijah’s throat, pinning him against the seat. Elijah watched blackness seep into the edges of his vision.

The pressure lifted. He grabbed his throat protectively, panting.

Kaylee opened the limo door. She glared at Mr. Starr. “Play nice.”

“Fucker,” Mr. Starr said.

“We have to get past this,” Elijah said, voice gravelly. “We can’t do this in front of the kids every Thanksgiving.”

“Shut up!” Mr. Starr and Kaylee both told him.

The limo was off again. Kaylee opened her laptop. She had a headache of her own from changing minds. A drop of sweat tracked from her platinum-blond hairline down the side of her face.

“Working hard in there?” Elijah asked.

Kaylee pulled a DVD from her pocket. “The security cameras filmed Holly coming in. Marilyn Monroe thought she’d finally hit the jackpot. She had the TV tuned to the local news, hoping Holly made a spectacle of herself. Then Marilyn was going to sell the nudie preshow.”

Mr. Starr used his power to lift the DVD from Kaylee’s fingers. He broke it with a
ping
into eight perfect pie-shaped pieces. “This is your fault,” he told Elijah.

Elijah ignored him. He turned to Kaylee. “You were at Glitterati that night. You’re the one who changed Rob’s mind when he was going to hit me. Why didn’t you stop Holly from giving me a pill? If you think I’m so bad for her, why didn’t you keep her away from me?”

Kaylee shrugged. “I don’t think you’re so bad for her, necessarily. I think you two could be great together, if you didn’t manipulate her like a mind reader, and if she didn’t attack you like a levitator, and if you both stayed out of the Res.”

“That’s a lot of ifs,” Mr. Starr grumbled.

“But the night at Glitterati,” Kaylee said, “it seemed easier to give you what you wanted, in a controlled environment.”

“That is, where you could control everybody’s mind if you had to,” Elijah said accusingly.

“
That is,
where I could keep Rob from kicking your ass.”

Elijah’s pride took over. Usually he wasn’t one to flaunt his musculature, but at some level he’d always been aware and a little turned on that he’d stolen his ex-roommate’s potential girlfriend. Besides, he’d just been slapped by Holly’s father. He said, “Rob’s not so tough.”

“Rob is a sheriff’s deputy,” Kaylee said matter-of-factly. “He’s always packing.”

“Maybe you should enlist his help, then,” Elijah said. “Are we the only ones in pursuit of Holly? This is seems awfully fly-by-night. Can’t you call for backup?”

“I have a small army of security at the casino, yes,” Kaylee said, typing on her keyboard again. “But I have only a handful of people who know about powers. They have low-level power themselves, or they’re married to people with power. Folks who won’t blab. And almost every one of them is lying unconscious on the floor of your house, thanks to Holly. That is one angry girl.”

“She’s scared,” Elijah said, throwing an accusing look at Mr. Starr.

“She should be,” Kaylee said, “if she’s headed where we think she’s headed. The Res is just beyond Hoover Dam.”

Elijah went cold. “Can’t you ask Mr. Diamond for help?” His voice cracked.

“Yeah.” Mr. Starr turned to Kaylee. “Can’t you ask Mr. Diamond for help? I think this finally rises to his level of interest, don’t you?”

“Mr. Diamond hasn’t been as involved lately,” Kaylee replied, typing.

Elijah sat back and rested against the seat, watching the Strip fall away and the barren mountains crawl closer. The limo wound up to Boulder City, where workers had lived in the 1930s while building the dam, and down through deep red canyons. Holly must have been terrified to propel Shane’s car underneath these canyon walls. Her power sent her into a panic when it encountered anything overhead too large for her to hold up.

All the while, Elijah monitored Kaylee’s mind, planning his escape. He would grab Holly at the dam and run away with her, somewhere neither the casino nor the Res could find them—Mexico, Europe, an island paradise. Elijah had saved a lot of money working at the casino. He hadn’t spent it all on college. Unfortunately, it was in the casino credit union, where Kaylee could erase it. But that didn’t matter. He and Holly would make more by setting her up in her own show as a magician.

He only needed to wiggle out of Kaylee’s grip. She had changed his mind about trying this. But he
knew
she had changed his mind, and that was half the battle. If she let up for just a second, he was free. Provided Mr. Starr let him go, too.

There was definitely a way out of this. There had to be.

Finally the limo rumbled around the last curve and emerged from the crevice blasted out of the solid red rock. Elijah was riding backward, so he slid to one end of the seat and turned around to see the top of the bright dam appear out the tinted windows.

He knew Hoover Dam was big, but it was hard to gain perspective on exactly how huge it was until he saw something familiar against it for comparison. Holly, for instance, hovering in front of the vast expanse of concrete, her shining hair whipping around her shoulders in the wind, her sequined silver minidress glinting in the setting sun.

“She is going to be the death of the casino,” Kaylee breathed. “She’s not walking a wire! She’s not even pretending she doesn’t really have power!”

“She must have run out of Kleenex,” Elijah said.

“Nice form,” her dad said. “All those ballet lessons Lanie made her take are finally paying off.”

“Is her power strong enough to fight these winds?” Elijah asked. “She may have grabbed a dress from Glitterati, but I seriously doubt she’s wearing underwear.”

Kaylee and Mr. Starr looked at him uneasily.

The limo rolled to a stop at the side of the road nearest Holly. They couldn’t have gone any farther if they’d tried. Holly had parked Shane’s car half blocking the right lane. Traffic edged around it on the narrow road—or stopped completely, staring at the beautiful girl walking in midair. Tourists lined the guardrails along the near side and the top of the dam. They pointed at her and snapped pictures.

“At least she’s not carrying her purse this time.” Kaylee told Mr. Starr, “You look a bit conspicuous, Peter, but I’ll change the crowd’s mind about asking you for an autograph.” She turned to Elijah. “The Res may have beat us here. They’ll try to take her. As we walk through the crowd, tell me if you see any of the people who ambushed you in Icarus. Or anybody else you know.”

Elijah didn’t understand what she meant, and he couldn’t get clarification by reading her mind. Flashing through her head in quick succession were the faces of his boss and all his coworkers in construction at the casino. “What do you mean, anybody else I know? Why?”

“The Res knew you were going to Icarus,” Kaylee said. “They knew you were coming back. If they’re here now, they had a good idea Holly would be here. There’s someone on the inside, listening to your minds. I just haven’t figured out yet who it is. Maybe one person who knows both you and Holly.”

“Shane,” Elijah said.

“Sligh?” Kaylee’s blond brows arched. Elijah felt a whirl of emotion in his chest, Kaylee’s anticipation of seeing Shane again, before she cut it off and shut Elijah out. “Not Shane,” she said in a businesslike manner, as if Shane were only an employee. “I’d know if it were Shane.” She and Mr. Starr opened their doors on opposite sides of the limo and started to step out.

“Wait,” Elijah said.

They stopped and watched him expectantly.

“Since saving Holly is our ultimate goal, wouldn’t both of you work more efficiently if you let go of me?”

“No,” they said together. They got out of the limo. Elijah stubbornly stayed put, then changed his mind. He slammed the door and followed Kaylee closely through the crowd. Her slender shoulders in a black suit stood out among the tourists in T-shirts and tank tops, on vacation at one of the man-made wonders of the world, thrilled to have stumbled upon a real-life Vegas spectacle they could tell their friends about back home. Keeping one eye on Holly still taking dainty steps in midair, Elijah listened to the thoughts of the crowd, all he could gather, until he gave himself a massive headache. But he didn’t hear anything about the Res.

And then, as he and Kaylee and Mr. Starr rounded the corner in the sidewalk and stepped onto the dam itself, parallel with Holly’s course across the canyon, Elijah said, “There.”

“I see her,” Kaylee said, gesturing to April, tiny on the far end of the dam, her red hair glowing. “If she wants to help the Res out, she has to be sneakier than that. Step one would be to dye that damned hair. And look, there’s Carter beside her. Don’t go any closer or April will change our minds.”

“I didn’t mean them,” Elijah said. He nodded toward the muscular uniformed sheriff’s deputy sauntering along the guardrail, moving the crowd aside as he walked so he could get the choice view, keeping perfect pace with Holly. “I meant Rob.”

Holly had no choice but to move forward now, placing one high heel in front of the other as gracefully as possible as she hovered hundreds of feet above the Colorado River. But she wished she’d planned this illusion more carefully. She’d forgotten how the canyon walls loomed overhead on the winding road just before the dam. She’d barely kept Shane’s car afloat while quelling her own panic until she got past that seemingly interminable section. She’d been beat when she arrived here, only to realize she had nothing to pretend to walk across.