Levitating Las Vegas (4 page)

His stomach left him as the elevator sped upward, but his mind cleared, and the tingles subsided. Taking a deep breath, he noticed his ghostly reflection in the clear plastic sheet protecting the portrait of white-haired, dignified Mr. Diamond. Elijah wiped more sweat from his brow, yanked his wavy hair into place as best he could, and hoped he would pass for healthy, at least until his interview with the owner of the casino was over.

He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. If he was being kicked out of his apprenticeship, his boss would tell him, not Mr. Diamond. Maybe Elijah had done such a great job that Mr. Diamond was promoting him. Elijah
had
very carefully refurbished the elaborate gold paneling in the Peacock Room. But he was fourteen. He couldn’t officially work even part-time until his fifteenth birthday in the summer.

The doors slid open before he was ready. Tentatively he stepped onto plush carpet and looked around. There were only three doorways in this short hall, and Elijah knew one of them led to the penthouse. Mr. Diamond’s door must be the one with two men in dark suits stationed outside. The guard with a beard daydreamed about his trip to the beach next month. The red-haired guard noticed Elijah. Tall kid, fourteen years old, light brown wavy hair, green eyes. Yep, that was him. The orders were to scare him to soften him up. The guard planned to open the office door for Elijah and shove him inside.

Realizing this, Elijah stopped five paces away.

The red-haired guard glared at him and moved his jacket aside with one hand to expose the gun on his hip, though he had no intention of using it on an unthreatening kid. He barked at Elijah, “What the fuck do
you
want?”

“You know I’m Elijah Brown,” Elijah burst out. “Open the door for me. Don’t you dare shove me. I’m having a really bad day, and so help me God, I will kick your ass.”

The red-haired guard froze. The kid was one of
those,
and Mr. Diamond hadn’t warned him!

The bearded guard was unimpressed. Elijah might be a mind reader, but he didn’t know how to control his power yet. The guard hoped Elijah
did
try something, and then he would show Elijah how to kick somebody’s ass. He pushed open the door and shoved Elijah twice as hard as the red-haired guard had planned. Elijah reeled across the carpet, his backpack throwing him off balance. The door slammed shut behind him.

He stopped himself in the center of the room, in front of a single chair. Beyond that was the biggest desk he’d ever seen. Mr. Diamond himself sat behind it. Floor-to-ceiling windows displayed a killer view of the Strip at night. Other casinos glowed every color. The red and white lights of traffic crawled by a million miles below.

Beside Mr. Diamond’s desk, waiting for Elijah with his arms folded, was Holly Starr’s dad. Elijah hadn’t recognized him at first without his magic cape. He wore a normal business suit, had a black eye, and scowled at Elijah.

Uh-oh.

“Sit down,” Mr. Starr spat. He tried to make this sound authoritative, but he was distracted. Elijah looked
exactly
like his father had looked at that age. It was uncanny that two people could look that much alike, father and son or not.

Hearing this in his head, Elijah forgot to follow the instructions. He placed his hand lightly on the back of the chair and watched Mr. Starr.

Mr. Starr pointed at him. “This is exactly the attitude that’s gotten you in hot water. And you’re not taking Holly with you.” After his experience earlier that night, Mr. Starr now thought Holly might be more dangerous than Elijah. But that didn’t matter right now. His mission was to scare this kid. “Stay away from my daughter.”

“Bullshit,” Elijah said as calmly as he could. His voice broke, but he pushed ahead, heady with power and high on the tingling sensation in his limbs. “You’re scared of me and of Holly. You’re trying to hide something from both of us, and I won’t let you.” To make good on this threat, Elijah turned to Mr. Diamond for help.

But Mr. Diamond was the only person Elijah had encountered in the last few minutes whose mind he couldn’t read at all. Elijah would have suspected the old man was a cardboard cutout, another reproduction like his portrait from the elevator, if it weren’t for Mr. Diamond’s middle finger tapping the opulent desk.

Mr. Diamond stopped tapping and cleared his throat. “Peter, it’s happening for Elijah right now. He can hear everything you think.”

Mr. Starr looked at Elijah in surprise, then at Mr. Diamond. “Do you have a shot?”

“Not here,” Mr. Diamond answered in a kindly, rumbling voice. “You’ll have to take him down.”

Mr. Starr grabbed Elijah by the throat. He hadn’t moved a step toward Elijah. He hadn’t uncrossed his arms. But with his mind, he took Elijah by the throat and squeezed.

Elijah fought back. He knew now that he was powerful. If Mr. Starr was scared of him, surely Elijah could crush people’s carotid arteries with his mind, too. He focused all his energy on Mr. Starr’s throat, just as Mr. Starr focused all his energy on Elijah’s. But Elijah only tingled mightily from the effort, his mind bursting with Mr. Starr’s violence, as the room faded to black.

He woke not fifty feet from where he’d started—in the basement of the casino, at the employee health center, with his mom and a physician named Dr. Gray in chairs on either side of his bed. His memory of what had happened was so ridiculous that he immediately doubted it. His mom confirmed that much of it had been a delusion. Mr. Diamond really had called Elijah up to his office because Mr. Starr had complained about a lowly apprentice carpenter asking Holly out. Mr. Starr had
not
attacked Elijah with his telekinetic powers, duh. Elijah had wigged out and punched Mr. Starr. Funny how Elijah’s malfunctioning mind had turned that around to make him think Mr. Starr already had a black eye when Elijah stepped into the room. If he’d held out hope that Holly’s parents would reverse their decision and let him date their daughter someday, that was pretty much over.

His mom and Dr. Gray listened to his story of what he’d imagined Mr. Starr had done to him. When he finished, his mom and the doctor stared at him for a few moments. He wished he knew what they were thinking, but all of that was gone.

Finally his mom smiled. “Well, no
wonder
you’ve got an A in English. That makes a great story!” She looked at Dr. Gray. “His advanced English class is reading
Romeo and Juliet
right now.”

“Ohhhh.” Dr. Gray nodded. “We see this a lot. All teenage boys want to save the girl and take on the world. The only difference between other boys and you, Elijah, is that you, unfortunately, have a hereditary mental disorder that pushes your delusions of grandeur into the danger zone and makes you think you can read minds.” He chuckled.

It wasn’t funny. Tamping down his panic, Elijah turned to his mom. “Hereditary? Did Dad have it?”

His mom took a deep breath and held it.

“Dad didn’t die in a drunk driving accident like you told me, did he?” Elijah asked. “He had this disease and he did something horrible.” His mom had always been vague about the details of his dad’s untimely death. Now Elijah knew why. It had been a lie, for good reason. The truth was worse.

His mom let out her breath slowly. “He wasn’t on medication. You’re in much better shape.”

Dr. Gray patted Elijah’s arm and handed him a glossy pamphlet. “This will tell you more about the disease. Just take your medicine, Elijah”—he picked up the prescription bottle on a nearby table and rattled the pills inside—“and I think you’ll be fine. If you’re not, we’ll move to the next step.” He rose, and Elijah’s mom followed him to the doorway of the examining room, where they talked softly together.

Elijah opened the pamphlet, which was decorated ironically with butterflies, rainbows, and stick people hugging each other. Somebody down at the crazy people’s print shop had a sense of humor.

LIVING WITH MENTAL ADOLESCENT DYSFUNCTION

The news that a patient has mental adolescent dysfunction (MAD) can be devastating, both for the family, who had expected a normal, healthy life for their child, and for the patient amid an already turbulent adolescent period. Patients and their families should take comfort in the knowledge that a diagnosis of MAD no longer mandates a lifetime in a mental institution. A new drug makes normal life possible in many cases. Mentafixol suppresses the symptoms of the disease and enables most patients to enjoy an average lifespan. In fact, all known assaults by patients with MAD were committed when the patient was off medication.
¹

1 JA Gray, “Mental Adolescent Dysfunction: Long-Term Prognosis,”
Journal of Mental Illness.

Elijah frowned at the pamphlet and ran his thumb over a rainbow. He’d been on a wild ride, a strange mix of fact and fiction, he realized now. If only the whole thing were his imagination. Especially the part where Mr. Diamond and Mr. Starr ganged up on him to keep him away from Holly.

Elijah’s mom returned alone and sat at his bedside again. “I’m so sorry, honey.” She picked up his fist and kissed it.

He looked down at his hand in hers. Shouldn’t his knuckles be bruised from punching Mr. Starr in the eye? Maybe the adrenaline from the disease had given him superhuman strength and resilience, like an addict on crack.

Then he looked up at his mom, still young and pretty, with long black hair and dangling turquoise earrings that showed pride in their Native American heritage. Yet for some reason, she was terrified they’d have to live on the reservation—she called it the “Res”—and he sensed one of those lectures coming on.

“You’ve got to be careful now,” she said. “People are prejudiced against the mentally ill. Don’t tell anybody about your disease.”

“I won’t,” Elijah promised. If he did, he would never hear the end of it from the lacrosse team. Worse, what would Holly think? He was almost glad she’d broken their dates. She deserved better than a mental patient. What if he’d gone out with her and hurt her?

“And for God’s sake, stay away from that girl,” his mom said. “Don’t even talk to her. Mr. Starr and Mr. Diamond were understanding of your condition and promised to keep it quiet. But that’s it for you and me, Elijah. Mr. Diamond says if you have another episode, I might have to withdraw you from Holly’s school, or I could get fired altogether, and then I wouldn’t be able to take care of you. You might end up at the Res. You don’t know what the Res is like, Elijah. Promise me you won’t pull any more
Romeo and Juliet
shit on me. There are plenty of pretty girls you can ask out. Let this one go.”

The next morning, Elijah had trouble getting out of bed, but his mom shook his shoulder incessantly and hissed at him that he had to go to school so no one would suspect anything was wrong. He walked into first-period English on the bell, as usual. Holly was the brightest point in his day, as always, her shining brown curls cascading over her shoulders, her dark brown eyes wide. But she cast them down at her desk the instant she saw him.

He crossed to the opposite side of the room and sat down, all the while reaching over the rows for her thoughts. He tried to read her mind, jonesing for the tingles that had spread through him when he’d read minds the night before. He wanted that feeling from
her
. But she kept her head down, poring over their Shakespeare textbook, with hardly a sideways glance at the guy she’d just dumped.

He opened his own book. His life wasn’t over, he assured himself. He would keep his grades up, pull his weight on the lacrosse team, make the most of high school despite his illness, and try his best not to worry his mom. Only one thing had changed irreparably since yesterday: there was nothing left between him and Holly but regret.

2

PRESENT DAY

Kaylee Michaels saw Holly walking toward her across the casino floor and felt her face light up. When Mr. Diamond had taken in Kaylee a year ago, he’d made her head of security at the casino though she’d been only twenty-one years old at the time. She was at the height of her mind-changing powers, the strongest person seeking refuge at the casino besides the many teenagers and twenty-somethings drugged with Mentafixol. The burden of the responsibility weighed on her every second, but she accepted it, seeing her job as a way to atone for the terrible things she’d done while she was at the Res.

Holly was her window onto the carefree life of a college girl. When Kaylee had first arrived, Mr. Diamond had encouraged her to befriend Holly and rent an apartment with her. He pointed out that, during her senior year of college, Holly would get the freedom from her parents that she’d longed for, yet Kaylee could still keep her safe. What had started as a business transaction had unexpectedly turned into Kaylee’s closest relationship ever. Despite herself, Kaylee had let her defensive walls crumble in front of this bubbly girl, and they’d been the unlikeliest of best friends since.

Now Holly glimpsed Kaylee and galloped toward her between two rows of slot machines, long brown curls bouncing, somehow looking even more glamorous in jeans and sandals than she ever did in her magician’s-assistant getup. She was leading a man by the hand. A handsome, clean-cut man about their age, but still. Even as Kaylee switched her bag of Thai food to her left hand and put out her right to greet him, her senses went on alert.

She poised to strike him with her power if she detected the slightest danger, ready to change his mind about getting close to Holly. Just because a guy had asked Holly on a date didn’t mean he was from the Res, but the timing was suspicious. For the past few days, the mind readers on the casino floor had whispered that they’d sensed people from the Res passing through, plotting to take over the casino.

He’d better not be one of them.

“Kaylee Michaels,” she introduced herself over the electronic music of the slot machines, looking hard into his brown eyes.

“Rob Price.” With no guile in his voice, he wrapped his hand around hers.

At the same time, Holly was effusing, “This is Kaylee, my roommate and the head of security at the casino. See, Rob, I told you we might find her on the floor somewhere. And Kaylee, this is Rob. He asked me out and he still wants to go, even after I told him my roommate is like the Secret Service.”

“Why is that?” Rob asked Kaylee. “Have you had security problems?”

“Well . . .” Kaylee puzzled over the strange question.

“You can tell Rob,” Holly said. “He’s a cop.”

“Oh, really?” Kaylee asked suspiciously, dropping his hand.

Rob drew his wallet out of his back pocket—slowly, as if he understood other cops and people in security didn’t like sharp movements, especially out of pockets—and showed her his Clark County Sheriff’s ID. She’d seen a lot of those cards in the year she’d been in charge at the casino. It looked authentic.

The issue date was recent. “Worked there long?” she asked, straightening.

“Just started. I went to police academy in Chicago,” he said with a flat Midwestern accent to back up his claim. “I got recruited to come here.”

She tried not to let her shoulders sag visibly with relief. If he’d arrived in town from Chicago in the past few weeks, he couldn’t have been sent here by the Res to infiltrate the casino and steal Holly away. Still, Kaylee would be researching him thoroughly as soon as she got back to her office. “Well, Holly’s one of our biggest stars—”

“For God’s sake,” Holly interrupted. “I stand onstage and point to stuff Dad does. It’s not like I personally pull a rabbit out of my hat and shiz.” She turned to Rob. “Kaylee has this thing about stalkers. I’ve told her that if she’s so concerned about me attracting the wrong kind of man, the casino might consider taking down the billboard over Interstate 15.”

Holly had a point, but the casino needed the business Holly’s billboard brought in—not just to line Mr. Diamond’s pockets, but to keep the operation running that protected all of them. Kaylee glanced at Rob to gauge his reaction. If he started salivating and his jaw dropped to the floor at the mention of Holly’s provocative photo, she was going to ixnay this ateday.

“I see why you’re concerned,” Rob told Holly, “but I’ll bet that billboard is good advertisement for the casino.” He raised his brows at Kaylee in question.

“Ugh, you act like that billboard is why
you
came here!” Holly gave Rob a playful shove. “Of all the casinos in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.”

“If that were true, I would never admit it
now
.” Rob grinned down at Holly.

She smiled moonily up at him, then turned back to Kaylee. “Listen, one of my friends is throwing a killer party after graduation, and Rob has to work. Come with? Pleeeease? Come on, you hardly ever go out.”

Kaylee shook her head no. She wanted to say yes but couldn’t. She was a drag, so preoccupied with her job that other people her age thought she was a snob. There was no point in going. Even if
she
finally met a guy (gasp), nothing could come of it. She’d dedicated her life to the casino. She had room for nothing else.

Instead, she would send a security team to watch over the party without Holly knowing and make sure Holly stayed safe. Kaylee didn’t want to ruin Holly’s good time. In fact, when Kaylee shook her head and Holly’s face fell, Kaylee found herself asking, “You have to buy new shoes for the party, though, right?” Sometimes she
needed
time with ebullient Holly to make herself feel human vicariously.

“I like how you think.” Holly beamed at Rob. “Indulge us for just another second? Planning. Shoes.” When Rob nodded, she drew her cell phone from her purse.

Kaylee put down the bag she’d been carrying, found her own cell phone in her suit pocket, and thumbed through her schedule. “Forum Shops tomorrow at four?” She would need to rearrange a security meeting, but Holly was busy in her own way. She had final exams and then her family’s nightly show. Holly was worth rescheduling for.

“Perfect.” Holly nodded toward the bag. “Whatcha got there?”

“Take-out Thai, Mr. Diamond’s favorite. Working dinner.”

Holly closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of pad Thai. “My mom brought me a salad from home. Because I have been extra good, she shaved some carrots on top. Party on. I wish
I
had a working dinner with Mr. Diamond.”

“No, you don’t,” Kaylee said, faking her smile this time. Holly’s mother watched Holly’s diet for a very good reason. And Kaylee and Mr. Diamond were meeting alone to discuss Kaylee’s fears about the Res infiltrating the casino. She wanted Holly as far away as possible.

“I’ll feed you when we go out,” Rob chuckled.

“Now you’re just blatantly coming on to me,” Holly teased him.

Kaylee leaned into Holly’s good-bye hug, then watched her bop away with Rob in tow, toward the lush theater where she would perform with her parents in a few hours. Holly had confided to Kaylee that she worried a lot about her mental illness, and Kaylee yearned to tell her the truth. But at the moment, Kaylee could have sworn there was nothing heavier on Holly’s mind than food, shoes, a party, and her hot date with Rob.

Kaylee hoped it stayed that way.

Rounding the corner, she stepped onto an employee elevator and pressed the button for the fortieth floor. The doors slid shut, closing her inside alone with the poster of Mr. Diamond. She jumped when she saw her reflection in the protective plastic, her blurry image superimposed over his clear one, as if she aimed to take over the casino.

That wasn’t what she wanted to do. She was glad Mr. Diamond could read her mind so he would know her intentions. She only questioned his policy of using Mentafixol to suppress the powers of the very people who were potentially the casino’s strongest allies.

Las Vegas had long attracted people with power because they could use their talents to make a living without being detected, and because they blended in with the other eccentrics. But over time, with so many in one city, the teenagers discovering their own powers inevitably found each other. Tested each other. Experimented on each other. Bullied each other. They became more and more withdrawn from their parents. They stopped coming home altogether, forming their own compound that moved from cheap hotel room to abandoned house to big brother’s basement faster than their parents could keep track of it. They called it In Medias Res, or Res for short, because they went there to get in the middle of all the things their parents never wanted them to see.

For a while, their parents put up with the behavior, saying it was hard to be an adolescent with power, and the kids would grow out of their dangerous needs eventually. But when three of their bodies were found in the desert, Mr. Diamond stepped up to become the parents’ leader. He set up the casino as a safe haven for people with power and started drugging the teenagers, preventing the casino’s young people from hurting themselves or their parents, and keeping them away from the Res, where they would be lost for years, if not killed.

But Kaylee recognized the catch-22 this created. Power faded with age, so the casino was suppressing the abilities of the group most able to protect it. In the past decade, the casino hadn’t needed much protection. The Res had seemed stable, only occasionally murdering its own and spitting out the body in the desert. But Mr. Diamond had warned Kaylee they shouldn’t take the stability of the Res for granted. Sooner or later someone would head the Res who tired of toying with the other people there and thought bigger. Kaylee was afraid her ex-boyfriend Isaac was that person. He was brilliant, cunning, impatient with the teens’ petty dramas, and determined to amass a fortune before he grew older and his power started to fade.

Like Mr. Diamond. Only evil.

With youth and strength and the sadistic power of the Res behind him, he could conquer even the casino—and then, who knew what he could do?

Judging from the Res’s visits to the casino in the past few days, it seemed Isaac was about to make a move. Kaylee had warned Mr. Diamond that she and her aging guards would be no match for a group of Isaac’s most powerful twenty-somethings. The casino needed to take some of its own young people off Mentafixol to face down the Res and protect them all.

Mr. Diamond had balked, but at least he’d agreed to discuss the idea over pad Thai. She hoped he would show her the list of people the casino currently drugged so she could get an idea of whom she could train to help her.

The elevator doors slid open. She stepped quickly onto the fortieth floor. All day she’d used her mind-changing power to handle minor security emergencies, which made her metabolism skyrocket. She was famished to the point of nausea. Mr. Diamond must be too—

She stopped short on the rich carpet.

The guards outside Mr. Diamond’s door were missing.

She felt in her suit pocket for her phone to call them, but it was too late. She knew exactly what had happened. Her skin went cold. She dropped the pad Thai and ran through the doorway.

Mr. Diamond’s power had diminished considerably with age. But folks at the casino said he’d been the strongest mind reader around in his day. Even now that he was sixty-five, Kaylee’s panicked thoughts, if not the noise as she burst into his office, should have woken him from his uncharacteristic catnap.

He didn’t stir from his position, head down on his enormous desk. The dull Vegas skyline through the windows flickered to neon life in the dusk just as Kaylee realized Mr. Diamond was dead.

Even as she put both icy hands to her mouth in despair, her training as head of casino security kicked in. Drawing her pistol, she scanned the room to make sure Mr. Diamond’s killers had left. His office was huge but streamlined, dominated by the view of the Strip. There was nowhere to hide. His attackers from the Res were gone.

Next she needed to sound the alarm about the security breach, in case the people from the Res were brazen enough to stick around the casino. Her hand found her phone in her pocket and stopped again.

People with power tended to be headstrong and paranoid, with good reason. They were prone to infighting. Even here in the relative peace of the casino, there had been provocations by mind readers and mind changers, and minor assaults by levitators in the employee break room. The only thing that had kept them safe in this loose confederacy all these years was their confidence in Mr. Diamond’s leadership. Kaylee had no idea how she could break the news of Mr. Diamond’s demise to them without causing mass hysteria and exodus, which would leave people like Holly vulnerable to kidnapping by the Res.

So Kaylee wouldn’t tell them.

She rounded Mr. Diamond’s enormous desk, watching him warily the whole time, half expecting him to rise up suddenly and say “boo!” She wished he would. Blinking back tears, she slipped one hand onto his neck to feel for a pulse. Nothing. A levitator had pinched his carotid artery until he expired.

As if comforting him, she put her hand on his shoulder. Then she leaned over his body and tapped on his keyboard, accessing the security camera outside his office door. She started the video thirty minutes before her arrival, then fast-forwarded until the scene suddenly changed.

Sure enough, the security guards on either side of the closed door walked away from their posts without a glance at each other. Seconds later, Nate in his cowboy hat and red-haired April, mind changers Kaylee knew from the Res, came into view. They’d made the guards think it was a good idea to go home early. Carter came to stand with April and Nate at the door. Violet approached last in gauzy purple skirts embroidered with stars. She looked up at the camera and stuck out her tongue.

Kaylee’s face burned. She and Violet had arrived at the Res at about the same time seven years ago, when they were both fifteen and new to their power. They’d struck up a friendship at first. That had lasted less than a day. There were no friendships at the Res, only temporary allegiances as innocent girls and sweethearts of boys turned jealous and cruel with the knowledge of what they could do to each other and the guilt about what they had done.