And now the Brown kid would be the death of Holly. He’d known it ever since the night Holly got her power and then this kid got his and stormed into Mr. Diamond’s office. The kid would have torn the place down if Peter hadn’t taken him out. Peter had never said this to Mr. Diamond or Jasmine Brown—though they’d probably read it from him anyway—but he’d always hoped this kid would do himself in like his f**ked-up father, before he got his paws on Holly.
“Thanks a lot.” Elijah’s face was stuck to the black leather seat of the limo. He pushed himself off with shaky forearms and sat up, head throbbing with Mr. Starr’s vitriol in his head. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Starr sat directly across from him, staring him down, eyes glittering like the sequins on his magician get-up, deliberately waking him with his hatred.
Next to him sat Kaylee typing furiously on a laptop. She glanced at Elijah. “You okay?”
“I’m perfect, Kaylee. Thanks for asking.”
She shut the laptop. The limo bumped into the back parking lot at Glitterati and parked across the spaces. She left one foot in the car and stepped outside onto the asphalt with the other high-heeled shoe, blocking Elijah’s way if he had chosen to escape, which of course he didn’t. He’d been thinking about it, but then he changed his mind. She looked back at Mr. Starr. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Who, me?” Mr. Starr asked with his hands up.
Mr. Starr watched Kaylee disappear inside the building, then turned back to Elijah, who met his steely gaze. But Elijah was beginning to think he should look away and kowtow. This was, after all, the man who had now twice caused Elijah to pass out in the blink of an eye. If Elijah and Holly were somehow able to get out of this mess and continue to date, he and Mr. Starr were going to have to talk about this before Mr. Starr caused Elijah permanent brain damage, maybe even short-circuited his mind-reading ability.
Elijah didn’t kowtow fast enough. Mr. Starr wielded his right hand as if he would smack Elijah with it, bandage and all.
And then he did smack Elijah—with his power, not his hand—a hard blow on the cheekbone that nearly turned Elijah’s head around, yet echoed tightly through the limo like a bitch slap.
“I told you to stay the f**k away from my daughter!” Mr. Starr roared.
Elijah had wondered last week whether Mr. Starr’s threats still mattered seven years later. Now he had his answer.
“And I told you that’s bullshit,” Elijah said.
Mr. Starr gripped Elijah’s throat, pinning him against the seat. Elijah watched blackness seep into the edges of his vision.
The pressure lifted. He grabbed his throat protectively, panting.
Kaylee opened the limo door. She glared at Mr. Starr. “Play nice.”
“Fucker,” Mr. Starr said.
“We have to get past this,” Elijah said, voice gravelly. “We can’t do this in front of the kids every Thanksgiving.”
“Shut up!” Mr. Starr and Kaylee both told him.
The limo was off again. Kaylee opened her laptop. She had a headache of her own from changing minds. A drop of sweat tracked from her platinum-blond hairline down the side of her face.
“Working hard in there?” Elijah asked.
Kaylee pulled a DVD from her pocket. “The security cameras filmed Holly coming in. Marilyn Monroe thought she’d finally hit the jackpot. She had the TV tuned to the local news, hoping Holly made a spectacle of herself. Then Marilyn was going to sell the nudie preshow.”
Mr. Starr used his power to lift the DVD from Kaylee’s fingers. He broke it with a ping into eight perfect pie-shaped pieces. “This is your fault,” he told Elijah.
Elijah ignored him. He turned to Kaylee. “You were at Glitterati that night. You’re the one who changed Rob’s mind when he was going to hit me. Why didn’t you stop Holly from giving me a pill? If you think I’m so bad for her, why didn’t you keep her away from me?”
Kaylee shrugged. “I don’t think you’re so bad for her, necessarily. I think you two could be great together, if you didn’t manipulate her like a mind reader, and if she didn’t attack you like a levitator, and if you both stayed out of the Res.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Mr. Starr grumbled.
“But the night at Glitterati,” Kaylee said, “it seemed easier to give you what you wanted, in a controlled environment.”
“That is, where you could control everybody’s mind if you had to,” Elijah said accusingly.
“That is, where I could keep Rob from kicking your ass.”
Elijah’s pride took over. Usually he wasn’t one to flaunt his musculature, but at some level he’d always been aware and a little turned on that he’d stolen his ex-roommate’s potential girlfriend. Besides, he’d just been slapped by Holly’s father. He said, “Rob’s not so tough.”
“Rob is a sheriff’s deputy,” Kaylee said matter-of-factly. “He’s always packing.”
“Maybe you should enlist his help, then,” Elijah said. “Are we the only ones in pursuit of Holly? This is seems awfully fly-by-night. Can’t you call for backup?”
“I have a small army of security at the casino, yes,” Kaylee said, typing on her keyboard again. “But I have only a handful of people who know about powers. They have low-level power themselves, or they’re married to people with power. Folks who won’t blab. And almost every one of them is lying unconscious on the floor of your house, thanks to Holly. That is one angry girl.”
“She’s scared,” Elijah said, throwing an accusing look at Mr. Starr.
“She should be,” Kaylee said, “if she’s headed where we think she’s headed. The Res is just beyond Hoover Dam.”
Elijah went cold. “Can’t you ask Mr. Diamond for help?” His voice cracked.
“Yeah.” Mr. Starr turned to Kaylee. “Can’t you ask Mr. Diamond for help? I think this finally rises to his level of interest, don’t you?”
“Mr. Diamond hasn’t been as involved lately,” Kaylee replied, typing.
Elijah sat back and rested against the seat, watching the Strip fall away and the barren mountains crawl closer. The limo wound up to Boulder City, where workers had lived in the 1930s while building the dam, and down through deep red canyons. Holly must have been terrified to propel Shane’s car underneath these canyon walls. Her power sent her into a panic when it encountered anything overhead too large for her to hold up.