Elijah. Simultaneously she recognized him and was surprised she’d been able to pick him out seven rows back in the sea of faces dimly lit by the glow onstage. Her heart raced at the thought that he’d come to check on her. He didn’t think she was a dork for bailing out of his bathroom window. He was concerned for her safety after her run-in with his unbalanced roommate.
A lovely little fantasy about her dream carpenter, but untrue. More likely he’d gotten bored with whatever he was nailing and slipped into the audience to catch the end of her dad’s show. He’d blinded her with the mirror as a hello, not realizing how much damage he could have caused to her dad’s act. She forgave him. People who weren’t in showbiz had no idea how difficult it was to make magic look this easy. She resumed her slow head turn, grinning at everyone in the crowd.
Her attention snapped back to him as he held up one hand in a power fist. No—he turned his fist on its side and stuck out his thumb and first finger. Then he made an L. He was spelling to her in sign language, which they’d both learned in communications class their senior year in high school, before the teachers put a stop to it because students were spending whole periods signing to each other when the teachers made them turn their cell phones off. G-L-I-T-T-E-R-A-T-I, Elijah spelled, then the sign for midnight.
He wanted her to meet him at the Glitterati dance club at midnight?
Canned trumpets blasted at her from all directions. Time for her mom to reappear! Holly pirouetted around the box and extended her arms toward it, as if this helped the trick somehow. Her dad ripped back the velvet curtain to reveal—wonder of wonders—her mom, wearing a different color bikini!
Holly felt the force of the audience’s cheer hit her in the center of her chest.
Smiling, she took the hand her dad offered her. With his other hand he assisted her mom down from the box, and the three of them stepped forward and bowed. Her dad, who had very limber fingers from many years’ experience as a charlatan, managed to pinch Holly’s pinkie. Hard.
He was right to reprimand her, she thought as she and her mom retrieved the levitation table from the wings and wheeled it center stage. She couldn’t let one random flirtation from her high school crush distract her from her duties. She wanted her own act as an illusionist. She needed to stay on her parents’ good side if she planned to use their tricks and their connections.
She caught the glittering gold hoops her mom threw her and passed them up and down her dad’s supine body as he slowly rose from the levitation table, into the air. The audience ooohed. Holly had no idea how her dad pulled this trick off. Usually levitation tables were powered by carefully hidden hydraulics. Holly couldn’t even see any wires on this one. Of all her dad’s illusions, this was his most impressive, and in her opinion almost made up for the fact that she’d bought the hula hoops at the dollar store and coated them with spray glitter left over from one of her middle school art projects. As soon as she’d cleared his head with the hoops, she assumed a pageant pose at the end of the table and held both hoops high in the air as if she’d truly done something special this time.
And then, free to examine the audience again, she looked for Elijah. She couldn’t help it. Parents and job and potential career be damned, Elijah Brown wanted her attention, and he had it. She squinted into the darkness for a sign language clarification of Glitterati at midnight and (she wished) Elijah’s love for her that had never died.
He was gone.
Elijah ducked out the stage door and hurried down the stairs, into the bowels of the casino. He was a legitimate employee now, with benefits the same as anybody else, and access to all the shows because his boss trusted him. He kept reassuring himself of this. The only reason he felt tonight as if he’d done something wrong was that he had MAD, he had no Mentafixol, and the two days it took the drug to cycle out of his system were over.
Insomnia didn’t help: he’d been up half the night with the same delusion from the night before that he was reading Rob’s mind and experiencing his dreams. Over and over Rob had rushed through a Chicago subway station to find a hidden bomb before it was too late. Elijah was exhausted.
Nodding to showgirls who called his name as they tiptoed past in their stilettos and feathers, he hurried down the corridor to the casino health clinic and approached the pharmacy counter. Good, a different clerk manned the register from the one who’d been there that morning when he’d checked fruitlessly.
Thirty-six hours off the drug at the time, he hadn’t gotten angry. Instead, he’d called Dr. Gray and listened to the message that the number had been disconnected. Then he’d flipped frantically through the phone book. Dr. Gray wasn’t listed. He’d peeked into the casino health center and asked for Dr. Gray. They’d never heard of him. Elijah had pressed the button on his cell to call his mom and get more information about the disappearing doctor who’d diagnosed him with MAD and prescribed Mentafixol in the first place seven years ago.
Elijah had hung up before the call went through. He was twenty-one years old, after all, and it was getting a bit pathetic for him to call his mom to figure out stuff like this for him. He was growing desperate, yes, but that was probably a symptom of MAD—a symptom he’d best hide before he landed in an insane asylum. Or got himself booted to the Res blah blah.
But that had been at thirty-six hours. Forty-eight hours off the drug now, he was angry. At his mom, at Dr. Gray, at the pharmacy, at the drug company that had neglected to send their shipment as usual. Angry that he’d been forced to drag Holly Starr into this. But if that shipment of Mentafixol didn’t come in before her own prescription ran out, she’d get dragged into it no matter what Elijah did.
Now he smiled his most winning, least insane smile at the pharmacy clerk. “I have a prescription in your computer for Mentafixol. When I came in to fill it two days ago, the clerk said you’re out. I’m just checking to see if the shipment came in.”
“Mentafixol,” the girl murmured like this was a new one to her. She took his name and typed on her computer. Obviously no one had gotten wise and included a message with his prescription information that said “WATCH OUT FOR THIS ONE! HE’S CRAZY WHEN UNMEDICATED!” because the girl didn’t hit a panic button under the counter—anyway, not that Elijah could sense with his imagined mind-reading abilities. She said simply, “Let me check in the back,” and disappeared behind shelves of colorful boxes and bottles.