Jackson wiped the back of his hand across his nose and looked up. Jane’s trembling hand rested on the picture hiding the safe door. The seconds stretched by and after what seemed like hours, her hand finally fell away. Jane slumped down in the office chair and sobbed.
“All for the sake of an imaginary monster,” she said between shuddering breaths. “No Djinn is worth losing a daughter for.”
Jackson felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart. He wrapped his arms around his grandma, tears falling into her hair. Any thought of mentioning Asena vanished.
It took a while, but grandmother and grandson eventually regained their composure, leaving the study unfinished. An unspoken agreement passed between them: not yet.
After making sure his grandma was okay — meaning settled on the porch with a glass of iced tea — Jackson kissed her on the forehead, grabbed his jacket and told her he was going for a walk. He had no destination in mind, just away from the house and all it represented.
Jackson wandered out toward the fields at Tyle’s outskirts. Once he made it far enough from town that he wouldn’t run into anyone without seeing them coming from miles away, Jackson released Asena from her ring.
In spite of her brutal battle the night before, the Djinn looked no worse for wear. She greeted Jackson with a tail wag and a happy bark, but when she tried to jump up on him, she winced and dropped back on all four paws.
“I’m sorry, girl,” Jackson said, taking her furry head in both hands. “That was a stupid thing I did last night. I promise I’ll never put you in a situation like that again.”
All seemed forgiven already, however. Asena licked at his hand and then scurried ahead of Jackson along the dirt road, sniffing at the fence posts and bunches of grass.
They walked in silence, Asena lost in exploring her surroundings and Jackson lost in his thoughts.
His mind wandered all over, from Tak, Laila, Kay, and the Underground, to Briggs and his mother. Most of the time, his thoughts stayed on his mom longer than he wanted, and no matter how much Jackson tried to distract himself, he always came back to her.
The acute pain from the night before subsided into a dull ache. After a few miles, Jackson finally started wrapping his mind around the unfortunate reality: they would lose the house and move out. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t that bad, but the positive thoughts fell far short. He doubted that would change anytime soon.
Another buzz from his watch distracted Jackson from the cloud hanging over his head. He looked down and saw another message from Kay. He still hadn’t responded to her, although he’d received several more messages while cleaning and packing. Sighing, Jackson tapped the answer button.
“You really need to learn to turn off your GPS if you want to be left alone.”
Before Jackson could reply, Kay’s voice cut out and the call ended. Ahead, Asena’s head perked up and she turned to look behind them. Letting out an excited bark, she looped back in the opposite direction as fast as her injuries allowed. Jackson followed. Moments later, Kay’s bike crested over a small hill behind them, Sunshine running alongside the tires.
Jackson waited for Kay to approach, unsure what to say. She finally slid to a halt in front of him. Sunshine and Asena gave each other an inspecting sniff and then wandered off together to continue exploring the tall grass on the side of the road.
“How are you?” Kay asked.
Jackson shrugged. “I’ve been better. But it’s not the end of the world.”
As bad as he felt, today had been nothing like the day he’d learned his mom wasn’t coming home. He supposed it was the one good thing to come from the tragic event — that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the worst day of his life — although this probably still would rank second, even if it was a distant second.
“Asena looks like she’s doing well,” Kay said. Jackson agreed and they spent a few minutes watching their Djinn wander away down the road. They started walking — Kay pushed her bike alongside her and Jackson kicked at the rocks at his feet.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said.
Kay gave him a soft, sideways smirk, but didn’t say anything.
“You’ve always been there for me, and I took you for granted and pretty much did everything you told me not to.”
“Yeah, you did,” Kay said. She sounded mad but had a smile on her face “And then you decided to trust Tak Rito, of all people, over me.”
“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 walkin
g 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.
Djinn Tamer - The Complete Bronze League Trilogy Page 19