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 They became more and more withdrawn from their parents.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.
Suddenly Kaylee realized she was gripping Mr. Diamond’s shoulder hard in anticipation of what Violet was about to do to him on this video. She snapped her hand away—as if she’d hurt him herself—and wrung her hands instead as she watched. She was glad the placement of the camera meant she wouldn’t be able to see into the office. She didn’t have to see. She knew. She could easily have been a part of it herself if she hadn’t escaped from the Res. There was too fine a line between herself and Violet. The only difference was that Violet was still at the Res and Kaylee was not.