“I can’t imagine whose idea that was,” Elijah broke in.
“—shut up, and I backed down in my usual dishrag fashion.”
“Maybe it was Shane,” Elijah mused. “Speaking of dishrags, I can’t believe I’ve been cooking for him and Rob. Assholes.”
“But what’s Shane done wrong?” she asked.
“I told him that I had MAD and that I needed a pill from you, and he went to Glitterati with me. Then I told him I needed to kidnap you and take you to Icarus to find a stash of Mentafixol, and he loaned me this car and that gun.” He nodded toward the glove compartment. “What kind of person would give a gun to his mentally ill friend who planned to kidnap a Las Vegas showgirl? Shane is involved in this. We should pay him a visit first.” In fact, the exit onto Flamingo, which would lead them past the Strip to UNLV, was coming in a couple of miles. Shane taught guitar lessons at UNLV on summer mornings. Elijah signaled to the trucks surrounding him and eased into the right lane.
“However involved he is,” Holly said, “he’s not in nearly as deep doo-doo as my parents. We need to find out what they know before we interrogate Kaylee. Shane is way down on the list.”
“On your list,” Elijah said.
Holly took a breath. He felt it in his chest. Her mind swirled with confusion about who was really responsible for hiding their power, her thoughts struggling as always under the heavy sodden blanket of her betrayal by her parents and Kaylee. “We could split up, then.”
“Split up!” Elijah could not believe this. He finally had Holly Starr and she wanted to break up with him already? “No way!”
“I don’t mean you and me split up,” she said, exasperated. “Why aren’t you reading my mind now? I mean you find Shane and I’ll have a talk with my parents, and we’ll meet up later.”
“Absolutely not.” Elijah felt only a little relieved that she wasn’t breaking up with him. He still had to keep her safe. He couldn’t do that if they went their separate ways. “We can talk to your parents, but not while your dad is in the middle of his impossible feat of whatever whatever. Right now, you’re going with me to see Shane.” He drove down the exit ramp and turned onto Flamingo. He piloted the car through the canyon created by the towering casinos crowding either side of the road, determined to make it to UNLV. He still didn’t feel comfortable driving, and with Holly bopping around inside his brain, he was liable to cause a wreck.
If he made it that far. The car was veering into the right lane, as if to turn onto the Strip, despite his effort to keep it straight. He steered it to the left with no effect. There was no noise of the tires against the pavement anymore, only the roar of the engine and the grinding beat of the radio. Holly was levitating the car and directing it where she wanted it to go.
“God damn it, Holly!”
She sat on her side of the car with her legs crossed primly, gazing at him in mock astonishment that he would use such language with her when she hadn’t done anything wrong.
Brakes screeched behind them, and a man’s voice cursed them with choicer words than Elijah’s. Holly’s head jerked around to look before she remembered she was levitating the car. That was the whole problem: she was pretending to drive without knowing how to drive, and when she had entered the right lane to turn onto the Strip, she hadn’t signaled.
“Put the car down, Holly,” Elijah yelled. “You think this is funny? You’re going to get us killed!”
She gently put the car down. Elijah felt the tires settle on the asphalt, and the engine’s roar grew louder as it echoed nearer the pavement.
But then she yelled right back at him, “Do not tell me you’re mad because you’re afraid for our safety. Bullshit. You’re mad because you’re losing control of me.”
“Lost, I would say,” Elijah bit out.
“Poor baby,” she cooed. Her soft voice had a hard edge of sarcasm. “I’m not nearly as much fun now that I can think for myself, right?”
He looked over at her in shock. He couldn’t have put it better himself. On top of the scary levitating, she could read his mind, too? Heart sinking into his stomach, he asked her, “Can you—”
“Of course not,” she said, waving his question away. “I just know what you’re thinking. You’re exactly like Rob.”
“I am not exactly like Rob,” he said. “I’ve listened to what Rob is thinking, and I’m not thinking what he’s thinking, believe me.” She would have been horrified if she’d seen what Elijah had seen in Rob’s mind. “And I was not thinking you’re not as much fun now. I wouldn’t put it that way.” Actually, he had been thinking something like this, but he definitely would not have put it that way.
“You wouldn’t put it that way!” she exclaimed. “You mean you wouldn’t admit to thinking it at all. It’s tough not to have secrets in your own mind, isn’t it? Now you know how I feel.”
“Listen.” They were nearing the casino. He needed to keep going past it, off the Strip, and head toward UNLV to confront Shane. She would protest. He had to disarm this battle between them, because they had much more dangerous enemies than each other. He fought his way back to the protective attitude he’d had toward her before she woke up in the backseat. But even his olive branch came out sounding cantankerous. “This all started when you picked up the car in broad daylight, with potentially thousands of spectators.”
“I levitate cars very low to the ground so nobody will notice,” she said with a toss of her long hair, “and that is not what started this argument. You started it by acting like I wanted to break up with you, when all I wanted us to do was split up and go in opposite directions for a little bit, and you knew that because you can read my mind but you choose to pretend you can’t when it suits you, you manipulative Rob-like ass.” Mentally she removed her focus from him for the first time since she’d woken. Her gaze shifted outside the car, to the towering casinos and the crowded sidewalk. She considered stepping out of the car the next time he slowed at an intersection. He was scaring her.
He reached back and pressed the button sticking up to lock his door. He thought this would lock her door also and startle her. But only his own door locked. Right—this car was too old for power locks. He had so little experience with cars.