Even with eighteen hours of sleep the night before, she slept soundly and was more rested than she’d been in months when she woke.
She was at the airport at eight o’clock, and found Variable and a few other well-known fighters waiting for her.
They boarded a plane to California and they were gone. They had to stop for a change of planes, but they were there by that night.
“Good God, that took forever,” one of the other fighters groaned as she cracked her back while they waited for a cab in front of the airport.
“How long do we have to settle before the tourney starts?” another fighter asked.
“The tournament starts the day after tomorrow. You’ll have more than enough time to rest,” he said.
His voice was clipped, as it had been all day. The other fighters ignored it for the most part, but Variable had been throwing dirty looks her way the entire trip to California.
Finally, their cars arrived. Two separate SUVs pulled up, loaded the luggage and the people, and they were off.
They slowly made it out of the city.
The other fighters fell asleep in the car, leaning against each other as they slept. After traveling for fourteen hours it wasn’t hard to understand why.
She sat in the back in a door seat, the three other fighters leaning on each other as they slept. But touched her temple to the window and she watched the landscapes go by.
Max was awake when they pulled up.
They’d gone further and further into the country of California; more sand dunes covered with mossy grass as they drove further from the ocean.
And the further they drove, the less houses she saw. There were more woods, less neighborhoods.
Finally, they reached it. It had been an hour since Max had seen a house or neighborhood or even another car, so it was a relief.
It was an estate, just as Will had said before. A house; a huge house. Three or four stories tall, and it looked like a court in old Rome, mixed with Hollywood glamour. Tall white columns intercut with huge balcony's that jutted out over the entrance to her house. A mansion, that was the only word to describe it, sat in the peak of the U-turn driveway. They drove past it, down a paved driveway into a cache of woods. The woods formed a sort of barrier between the estate and the rest of the world; they were at least a mile thick between the two worlds.
“We’re staying here,” Variable said shortly.
A house, a normal sized house, stood three stories tall in the back. Another one, smaller, sat a few hundred yards back into the woods. The house looked to be upper to middle class, which wasn’t surprising …. Considering that it was on an estate, that is.
The car stopped, and the rest of them took their things out of the back. They stood in front of the house while Variable read from a piece of notebook paper.
He called off names and room numbers, and directed them to their houses.
After he read off the names of the other five girls, he got to Max.
“Max, you’re in the secondary house down the path from the main house,” he said.
Max eyed him suspiciously.
“Alone?” she asked.
His cold eyes met hers, and he smiled.
“Yes, alone. Is there a problem with that?” he demanded.
