Elijah was beginning to doubt himself. He’d been so sure Shane was in on the conspiracy. Shane had been too helpful about Elijah’s entire quest. There had to be something else there, and Elijah was determined to find it. He asked some leading questions, hoping the information he wanted would pop into Shane’s head, where Elijah could snap it up. “Have you been trying to control me?”
“Yes,” Shane said. “That’s why I loaned you my gun.” His mind was still filled with hiding Elijah’s meltdown from the girls.
“What about them?” Elijah asked, nodding in the direction of the classroom. “Do those girls have magical power?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shane said. “They’re way too young.”
“What did you say?” Elijah exclaimed, pressing his arm across Shane’s throat until his arm trembled and Shane turned white.
“It’s a joke,” Shane croaked. He put one hand on Elijah’s forearm and pulled.
Elijah resisted. “Why exactly are you so paranoid? Why do you carry a gun, anyway?”
“Because I’m from Mississippi!”
Elijah sighed. He’d been dead wrong. He let Shane take the gun from him, and he backed up a step. “I’m sorry, man. I—”
“Later,” Shane repeated, straightening against the wall. He glowered at the gun.
“Okay,” Elijah said uncertainly. Shane had been loyal to him throughout this ordeal. Elijah didn’t want to leave things this way between them, but he had another tree to bark up. “I’ll see you at home.” He started down the corridor.
“Oh, and Elijah?” Shane called.
Before Elijah could turn, he felt a splitting pain in the back of his head, worse than anything he’d felt trying to read ten minds at once. His face hit the cold tile floor. He rolled onto his back. Shane stood over him, still gripping the gun by the barrel and wielding the butt as a weapon.
“Don’t ever interrupt my class again.” Shane threw the gun down on Elijah’s chest. His face was impassive and his mind yielded nothing but anger as he stepped over Elijah and walked away, a tall figure silhouetted against the sunlight glowing through the windows at the end of the hall.
15
Holly saw one flash of her dad’s body dropping on the far side of the pole. She leaped forward and had a vague impression of knocking both her mom and the temporary fence out of the way with her power in her effort to catch her dad, like a baseball player pursuing a hit into left field.
His hand had hit the asphalt already. She heard the smack. But she caught the rest of him. He hovered facedown an inch from the ground, cradling his hand. A wave of guilt washed over her that she might have broken her dad’s hand. Gently she released him from her power.
But he didn’t move. He continued to hover. He must have saved himself at the same instant Holly caught him. He sank the last inch.
The audience wasn’t fooled. They’d seen magicians’ acts before. They knew that the ploy of the trick going wrong and the magician barely escaping death was just another ruse Peter Starr pulled from his pocket occasionally for variety. But this performance was convincing, and they appreciated it. The applause was thunderous.
“Show’s over, folks!” the black-suited goons shouted. Holly looked around and saw that her mom was talking to one of them. Several of them parted the crowd on either side of the pole and directed the spectators through the large doors back into the casino—down the corridors and past the slot machines where they might gamble again, rather than into the street from which Holly had entered. Voices escalated to a fever pitch as the crowd discussed at what point they’d realized it was all a trick and where the wires had been hidden this time.
Now Holly herself was surrounded by more of the black-suited goons. Several of them put out their hands to grab her. She created a force field around herself. They couldn’t reach through it. She clopped forward to the tall metal pole, walking as one unit with the goons. Her dad sat with his back against it, cradling his hand in his lap, his face red. Her mom knelt in front of him.
“Dad,” Holly said breathlessly. “I’m so sorry.”
Her dad wrinkled his brow and squeezed his eyes shut, as if he was in so much pain that he couldn’t speak.
Her mom spoke for him. “It’s a little late now! You haven’t learned a thing out gallivanting with Elijah Brown. Until you do, shut that power down!”
“I wouldn’t have gallivanted with Elijah Brown,” Holly said indignantly, “if you’d told me what was going on. Or if you’d told me anything in the past seven years!”
Holly’s mom straightened and whirled to face her. “We didn’t tell you because you would have acted exactly like this!”
Holly felt her heart in her throat. She’d been so angry at her parents, but what if she really was the one to blame? Would she have hurt her dad if they’d allowed her to have power when she was fourteen? Would she have hurt him on purpose?
Her mom didn’t care enough anymore to wait while Holly worked out this conundrum in her head. Disheveled now with her tiara hanging off one side of her bouffant hairdo, she bent in front of Holly’s dad again. “Here comes the limo, sweetie,” she said softly. Her sequined booty rose as she helped him stand.
Holly reached out with her power and gave her dad an additional very gentle boost underneath. He stood instantly and glared at her. He and her mom made their feeble way past the pole, away from the casino.
“Where are you going?” Holly cried, half apologetic, half exasperated.
“To the hospital, unless you know someone with magical powers of healing,” her mom spat as if this were a ridiculous idea. Magical powers, ha! The casino’s black limo sped across the asphalt and screeched to a halt in front of them. Holly’s parents slipped into the backseat. Almost as an afterthought, Holly’s mom leaned out the door and called, “Come with us.”
Holly wanted to. Even if her dad did glare at her, she wanted to sit beside him while the doctor examined his hand. But she still didn’t trust her parents. They might drug her or worse, especially now that she’d hurt her dad.
As a test, she considered easing the limo onto its side, just as she’d tumbled the SUV around the parking lot in Icarus the night before. Her mom’s earnest gaze didn’t change. She wasn’t a mind reader.
Then Holly said, “No, I’m not going with you.” She waited, but she didn’t suddenly decide going with her parents was a good idea. Her mom wasn’t a mind changer, either.