“Sorry about that,” Jackson said. “I was stupid.”
“Now, was that so hard?” Kay said with a playful shove.
Jackson chuckled.
“But you know, it wasn’t all bad,” Kay said. “When all said and done, you still have an amazing Djinn. And I think that’s probably worth the price of any house, don’t you?”
“I guess it’s not so bad,” Jackson said.
“So…what now?” Kay asked after they’d gone a few hundred yards.
“I don’t know,” Jackson said honestly. He’d been so wrapped up in last night’s defeat he hadn’t considered what he would do next. “Just…work at the ranch until I’m legal and can be a Djinn tamer, I guess?” Things would be pretty tight — he would have to pull enough away from his check to feed Asena and still save enough to put toward training in the future.
Jackson shoved his hands in his jacket pockets when one of his fingers brushed against the sharp corner of an envelope.
His eyes widened as he pulled out the white card that Vance McAllister had given him.
“What’s that?” Kay asked.
“It’s…” Jackson said, his mind racing. In the whole mess that was the previous evening, he’d completely forgotten about the invitational. He tore open the envelope and pored over the words. Each line fanned the fires inside him a little more. When he finished, he pumped his fist in the air, overcome with excitement.
“YES!”
Kay looked at him like he’d gone crazy. “Did you just find a long-lost check or something?”
Too excited to speak, Jackson shoved the invitation in her face.
“Not so close, moron. I’m not eighty,” she said instinctively, pushing the letter about a foot from her face. After reading over the same line several times, her own face began to glow.
“Where did you get this?”
When Jackson told her about the previous night, he watched her face drop in amazement. Even to someone like her, Vance McAllister was a name you couldn’t help but recognize.
“The winning prize is fifteen thousand suns?” she asked. “That’s insane!”
“And more than enough to cover what we owe on the house and my grandma’s debt!” Jackson shouted.
He let out another shout of joy and kicked at the dirt, amazed by the sudden turn of events. “The tournament is two days before the bank date! There’s still a chance!”
Jackson could hardly contain his excitement on his walk home with Kay. When they reached the beginning of the houses, he begrudgingly returned Asena to her ring and bid Kay goodnight with the promise they’d talk more at work the next day.
Back at home, Jane just about had dinner ready. Jackson did his best to curb his enthusiasm as he wolfed his dinner down in the complete opposite mood he’d left the house in.
“My,” his grandma commented. “Maybe I should have taken a walk, too. It looks like it did wonders for you!”
“It was just hard boxing things up,” Jackson said, already thinking again about the moment when he could show his grandma the money right after he’d paid off the loan. “But the fresh air helped me get a uh…new perspective on things. In fact — I think I’m going to head to bed early to get a fresh start on the new week.”
Before Jane could continue the conversation further, Jackson kissed her on the head and rushed up the stairs to his room. Inside, with the door shut, he scanned the invitation code with his watch, and the invitational’s event page appeared on the holo-projector screen hovering just beyond the foot of his bed. Jackson confirmed again that he’d read the prize amount correctly and did a little dance while sitting on his bed. A little more research dug up some additional information about the tournament.
Apparently, Vance McAllister held small gatherings like this all across the country before the coming Djinn season to scout for new talent. Although none of the tamers were guaranteed entry into League camps the following season, the invitationals were designed to showcase local upcoming tamers, even in rural areas like Tyle. Jackson waved his hand and the projector switched to the next page, one with the other contestants.
He felt a slight pang of jealousy seeing Fiona at the top of the lists. Jackson’s mouth hung open when he saw Antony Barranco’s — Appleby’s — name on the list.
Although Jackson had beaten him, he guessed it did make sense he’d be on it. Not everyone could fight with a Moldune like he did. Still, Jackson hoped he’d have been the only new tamer from the Underground, though he recognized that was just his ego talking.
The rest of the competitors were either complete strangers or from neighboring towns. All told, thirty-two contestants were invited, with a few slots still open showing those that hadn’t registered yet.
Registration. Jackson flipped away from the page and found the official forms he’d have to fill out. His heart sank. In fine print, right at the bottom were two lines: all Djinn competing must be licensed, either by the contestant or by their guardian, if underage. Annoyingly, his birthday fell a solid two weeks after the tournament. Jackson had only hated his birthday more on the day of his mom’s disappearance. There it was, that damn “licensed” rule coming back to haunt him.
He bit back a groan and punched his mattress again, this time from frustration instead of excitement. After her breakdown earlier, there was no way in hell he could ask his grandma to sign the form. Wrapped up in training and the Underground fights, he’d failed to notice the emotional toll losing the house had on Jane as well. Before, Jackson assumed his grandma was just being overprotective in keeping him away from Djinn, now he thought he might very well break her heart if she found out about Asena.
Two weeks. Two weeks stood between Jackson and his goal. Two weeks separated him from being able to enter the contest as a legal adult and needing his grandmother’s signature. Two. Weeks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jackson woke up early on Monday morning and headed to Briggs’s gym harboring a small amount of hope. The morning sun had just come up a few minutes before, painting Tyle and the surrounding fields in a golden glow. In spite of everything going on in his life, Jackson couldn’t help but take a deep breath of the fresh, crisp morning air and sigh. He smiled and let Asena out of her ring to follow him — nobody would be in the old warehouse district this time of morning and it felt wrong for her to miss out on the beautiful sights.
When he reached the heavy sliding doors, he wasn’t surprised to find them shut and for the inside to be pitch black, but that didn’t stop him from pounding on the sheet metal as loud as he could manage.
For the first two knocks, nothing happened. Finally, after a third round of drumming on the doors, Jackson heard muffled cursing inside. Someone stumbled toward the sliding doors and fumbled with the chain locking them shut. A moment later, a bleary-eyed, and most definitely hungover, Cassius Briggs scowled at Jackson.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, voice even more hoarse from what Jackson guessed had been a night of drinking.
“I just came to say I’m sorry,” Jackson said, trying to sound as mature as possible. “I shouldn’t have lied to you — and I wanted to thank you for helping me out.”
Briggs studied him up and down, leaning heavily on the door with one hand. Midnight appeared out of the grey morning light inside the gym and stood at his master’s side, looking even more rumpled and salty than his tamer.
“That all?”
“I wanted you to know I got invited to a tournament, too,” Jackson said. He held up the white card with gold trim Vance had given him at the Underground.
Briggs snorted when he saw the invitation. “The McAllister Invitational. Congrats, kid.”
“I was wondering —”
“No,” Briggs said. “I told you once — follow my rules or I’m done.”
“But —”
“I told you to jump, Jackson,” Briggs said, calling Jackson by his name for the first time. “You didn’t jump, did you?”
Jackson did his best
to curb his mounting temper. Sure, he’d lied to Briggs about placing side bets on the fights but it wasn’t like Cassius had been a model mentor and trainer, either.
“Will you at least —”
“Nope.” Briggs started to shut the door. “Now get out of here — it’s too early for an old man like me to be up and you’re making my headache worse.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask!” Jackson blurted out. “Will you just let me finish?”
For some reason, Briggs paused. The attention caught Jackson off guard.
“Well?” Briggs finally asked.
“I can’t enter the tournament without a license, and I can’t get a license without a guardian’s signature,” Jackson said, talking fast before Briggs shut the door on him completely. “And since my grandma obviously won’t sign I was wondering —”
“Nope.” Briggs held up a hand to stop Jackson from talking again. “I’m not going to break the law for you. But good luck at the tournament — if you keep a level head, you’ve got a good shot. Well, maybe an okay shot.”
The door slid shut on Jackson’s face and he stood in front of the gym, stunned. Asena let out a small growl at his side.
“Fine!” Jackson shouted. “I’ll figure something else out! And I am going to win — just to prove you wrong, you old bastard!”
Silence was the only response.
“So what are you going to do?” Kay asked.
While they fixed the fences surrounding the enclosures of the more docile Djinn, Jackson explained his predicament to Kay. But even venting to her had done little to provide him with a solution to get into the tournament.
“I don’t know!” he said, pulling on a pair of fence stretchers to connect two pieces of wire. “I can’t just forfeit — that money is all I need to save the house!”
“You sure if you went to your grandma that she wouldn’t…?”
“No way,” Jackson said, still struggling with the stretching tool. “You should’ve seen her. She still can’t even talk about what happened. She’ll say no as soon as she finds out about Asena. I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t make me give her up!”
“Well, just quit, then!” Kay’s burst of anger caught Jackson by surprise and he dropped the stretcher, sending the two wire ends twanging in opposite direction. “Good hell, Jackson. Sometimes you’re the dumbest guy I know. You spent all this time trying to save the house, working yourself and Asena to death, and now that you’ve finally got a chance you’re just going to give up?”
Jackson’s mouth fell open. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you…are you actually telling me to break the law?”
“Maybe I am!” Kay said, turning red. “All I know is I’ve listened to all of this I’m going to take. You’ve dragged me out to more Underground fights than I’d ever hoped to go to, illegally put down money on shady fights, and even lied to your own hero. And now when all you’ve got to do is forge a stupid signature, you won’t even do it!”
“Forge a…” Jackson trailed off. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “Did you just say what I think you said?”
“Maybe — I don’t mean you should,” Kay said, trying to backtrack, “I was just saying that instead of — dude, I’m sick of your complaining, okay? I’m only human here. I just…I’m gonna go, okay?”
“We got more work to do.”
“Call it a bathroom break.” Kay stomped off, leaving him alone in the field.
“Man, you just can’t win, can you?” Fiona said.
Jackson jumped and whirled around to find Fiona walking up to him from out of a stand of trees.
“Were you spying on me?” he asked.
Fiona scoffed. “Oh come on. I’ve got better things to do. I was checking out the trees for some nesting habitats my dad wants to put in for some of the haggard Valcorus we train and release into the wild each season. You two were fighting like an old married couple — I couldn’t help but overhear. At least she’s talking to you now, though.”
Jackson blushed.
“I saw you were in the tournament too,” he said.
“Of course,” Fiona said. “I got invited almost a month before you did! I’m gonna win, you know.”
She said the last sentence with only the smallest hint of a smirk. “The question is, are you going to enter? At least that’s the question I overheard between you two.”
“I don’t know,” Jackson said. “Asena isn’t licensed.”
“That’s not your only problem, either,” she said.
“You looked to see what other problems I would have?”
“I hardly had to look. It’s in the basic requirements,” Fiona said.
She opened up her holo-watch and flipping to the site for the invitational requirement. Scrolling past the signature form, she came to another page Jackson hadn’t noticed the night before. “You need a clean bill of health for your Djinn — where do you think you’re going to get one of those?”
Jackson’s heart sank. He’d seriously considered forging his grandma’s signature — after all, no one would really notice with an online form — but a health check from a professional Djinn provider wasn’t something he could just make up. There was no way he wouldn’t get caught.
“Where’d you get yours from?” Jackson asked.
“My parents, of course,” Fiona said. “It’s one of the services we provide here at the ranch. How do you not know that?”
That seemed like the final nail in the coffin for Jackson. He couldn’t ask the Satos to check Asena, not without them asking a million questions and saying something to his grandma.
Fiona must have seen the look in his face because her confident expression softened. A tiny bit, at least.
“Sorry, Jack — I’m being honest when I say I wish we could have competed against one another.”
“Yeah,” Jackson said in a flat voice. The thought only reminded him of how far he’d fallen in the last few days. And how far apart he and Fiona were overall as tamers. “Well…I’ve gotta finish fixing this fence, so…”
“I guess we’ll never know which one of us is best,” Fiona said. The smirk returned to her face. “Although the answer is obviously me.”
If she meant to cheer Jackson up, he didn’t find the comment funny. Instead, he grabbed at his tamer ring under his cutoff shirt and fought the urge to summon Asena right there on the spot. “Whatever!” he said. “You know Asena would mop the floor with that pretty bird of yours!”
Fiona laughed. “Oh come on! I’ve seen you fight — you’re like a little boy playing fetch with his puppy Djinn out there.”
“Right since you’re sooo —” Jackson stopped as a thought struck him. “If you think you’re so good then why don’t you prove it?”
“I’m not going to fight you on the ranch,” Fiona said. “My dad would kill us and you know it.”
“I didn’t mean here,” Jackson said. “I meant in the tournament.”
“Hadn’t we already had this conversation?” Fiona asked, her eyes squinted in confusion.
“If you wanted to, you could get the health check for me,” Jackson said. He put on his best serious face, hoping that Fiona would fall for the challenge. “I think you just don’t want me to fight ‘cause you know I’ll beat you in front of everyone.”
“What am I, twelve?” Fiona said with a condescending gaze. “I see what you’re doing here, Jackson.”
“Hey, I’m just saying,” Jackson said, turning his attention back to the fence.
Fiona nodded and started to walk away, but Jackson knew her. She was smart, but also insanely competitive. She stopped for a few seconds, then turned back around.
“Oh, you’re back?” Jackson said.
“Okay, just so we’re clear. You’re not even in the same league as me,” she said. “You got lucky with a rare Djinn, and even then you’ve lost to two of those Underground —”
“Hey, it was the same guy twice, thank you very much,” Jackson said. “An
d he had armor the second time around.”
“Armor that was probably in the terms and conditions of the fight, no?” Fiona said. “If you don’t have the foresight to at least read the fine print of a match, you don’t stand a chance against me.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” Jackson shrugged.
“I hate you right now,” Fiona said. “I know what you’re doing.”
“So you said.”
“The way you’re talking is pissing me off.”
“That was the goal. You said you can get bills of health, right?”
“For events like this, it’s frowned upon if the Djinn isn’t licensed.”
“Oh, I’ll get a license.”
“You will?”
“I can’t compete without one. If you give me a clean bill of health for Asena, you bet I will.”
“Because if I find out you pulled out at the last minute, I’ll just have to assume you realized the truth.”
“What’s that?”
“That you really don’t stand a chance against me.”
“Ha-ha, you wish,” Jackson said.
Fiona pursed her lips together as she always did when she was deep in thought. “You know, this was a very shallow attempt on your part,” she said. “But I appreciate you not hanging the Underground stuff over my head. Honestly, blackmail would have worked a bit faster than this.”
Jackon’s eyes widened. He hadn’t even thought of that.
“And apparently you just realized it too,” Fiona said. “Maybe you don’t have a good heart, after all. Maybe you’re just dumb.”
“Will you do it or not?”
“I do have the qualifications to clear Djinn for combat…” she said, thinking. “If I do, you’ll have to promise to actually make it. I’d really love to see Rebel wipe the floor with your Lyote.”
“I already told you I’d be there.”
“I’ll be back, then,” Fiona said. She didn’t waste a single moment, and headed straight into the office. Jackson couldn’t be sure, but it almost seemed like Fiona was excited about this — not just about facing him in the tournament, but about going behind her parents’s backs. She had a dark side.
Djinn Tamer: Starter: A Monster Battling GameLit Adventure (Djinn Tamer - Bronze League Book 1) Page 19
