Chapter 19: Not Going to Like It

I stand there, unblinking. “You…It’s…What?”

Did she just say what I think she said? That she’s here to start some kind of discussion about me?

“Laetitia, not now. Not like this,” Addy interjects. 

“What’s the matter? Afraid your little plaything will abandon you once she learns the truth?” Laetitia says with a cocky grin.

The truth? What truth?

“I swear, Laetitia, if you say another word…” Addy growls. She looks like she’s about to jump the countertop. 

I stand in between the two women, arms outstretched. “Whoa, whoa. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if it involves me, I deserve to know.”

“It goes like this,” Laetitia says calmly. “I claimed you, and you reciprocated. That means you are mine.” She gazes directly at me, but points to Addison, whose hands are interlaced on the back of her head as it hangs low, practically hitting the countertop. “She has no hold over you.”

“I what? I’m what?”

“Laetitia,” Addy grumbles, “She doesn’t follow our rules. You have no claim. She’s—” she locks eyes with me and stops talking. Then she glances at Laetitia and mouths a word that I can’t interpret. What? I can’t read lips. So sue me.

“Oh? Care to test that theory?” Laetitia says.

“Nobody owns me,” I yell. “Ohmygod, was that the property dispute? You think I’m property?”

Laetitia gazes at me and says, “Silence, degenerate.” And the moment she does, my mouth suddenly snaps shut.

“That’s enough!” Addy shouts. “Your father might own this property by their laws, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re trespassing on Summer territory. Begone.” 

Laetitia narrows her eyes and grins devilishly. “Fine.” Her eyes dart over to me. I swear that grin grows twice as bright as she looks me up and down. “But whether you like it or not, so long as this one remains in Robin’s Brook, our laws do apply. That means you, degenerate, are bound to me. I know you feel it, too.”

A shiver rolls up my spine as a cold wind embraces me. Addy wraps her arms around her bare shoulders. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out. I have no clue what to say. This is all just too weird.

Laetitia’s eyes linger on mine for a moment, and then she exits the way she came. Addy unties her jacket from her waist and quickly throws it on, shivering. She gives me a pitying look as she hugs herself to keep warm. “Fucking Gelsper,” she says, almost spitting the name.

I start pacing. It’s a bad habit I get into when I’m agitated, but good luck getting me to stop now. “Addison…what in the hell…?” 

“I—I can explain,” she says.

“Can you? Because so far I feel like every time I start to understand this place, something even weirder happens. She—claimed me? You have laws that allow you to claim people? What the fuck?”

“Sit down, please,” Addy says. She motions to one of the stools in front of the countertop and leans over it. “Let me get you a drink or something.”

I keep pacing. “Hot tea. Chamomile, please.” I’m usually a coffee person, but coffee is the last thing I need right now. Addison nods and gets to work while she talks.

“We…everybody in Robin’s Brook…we’re not from here, originally. We come from somewhere else. Somewhere far away.”

“Somewhere far away? What, like, another country? The whole town?” I mean, what are the odds?

“Please Lum, just let me speak,” Addy says. She slides a mug of hot water over to me, complete with a packet of chamomile tea hanging over the side. I dip it in and wait for Addy to continue, staring into the water and watching as the tea leaves transform it. “We moved here because we had a…a conflict. The place we came from, we tore it apart. Then we were adrift, for a while. Eventually, we called a truce. Came up with a system, a way we could live together without tearing each other’s throats out. We finally found a place we could start over. A place we could call home. That place is Robin’s Brook.

“Our side and theirs, there’s a history there. We don’t mix well. But we’re still family, in a way, all of us. It’s…hard to explain.” She sighs and grips her forehead in pain, as though a horrible headache has suddenly erupted in her skull. “This probably isn’t making any sense. I apologize if it seems like I’m being vague. It’s just…you’re the first new person to come to Robin’s Brook in a long, long time. We only get people passing by. The last people to actually move here was Rey’s family, and that was over a decade ago. Truth is, I’m just trying to protect you. But I’ve done a piss-poor job of it, it seems.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I say, putting a hand over hers. “I’d say you’ve done a pretty damn good job of keeping me safe. And fed,” I joke, but her lips don’t even twitch. “Okay, so you and the Gelspers have some kind of feud, yeah? That explains why you guys seem to all hate each other.”

“There used to be balance between us,” she says, staring down at the counter. “There used to be peace. But now…” she trails off, squeezing my hand.

“Now what?”

“Now you’re involved,” she says. “And I won’t let you get hurt.”

“Can you explain how I’m…involved?” I still have so many questions, and Addy’s vague storytelling isn’t helping one bit.

Addy puts two fingers on her temple, shuts her eyes, and massages firmly. That headache must be pretty bad. I feel bad for her, but this is too important to put off for later. “The Gelspers play by old-school rules. That means pacts are really important to them. By the old laws, pacts have power, authority. Laetitia seems to think that you two became joined by pact. Can you think of a reason why she might think that?”

I recall being in her room, her plush lips on mine. Her voice echoes in my head. “I claim you for myself,” she’d said. After learning that I wasn’t with Addison, not in that way. And I…

I kissed back. 

I graze my fingers against my lips, eyes wide. “She said—she said she claimed me, but I—I didn’t know what that meant,” I stammer. “It was all so weird.”

Addy’s expression is impossible to translate. Maybe this is why she didn’t want me hanging around Laetitia, why she called her dangerous. Maybe Laetitia felt the same way. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not bound by their rules,” she says.

“This is all too weird.” I stare into my tea as it becomes oversteeped, the color dark and brooding. “I…I don’t understand any of this.” 

“I guess it was stupid of me to think I could keep you away from it. Protect you from it.” Addy leans back against the rear counter, arms crossed. “I’m sorry. I should have…I don’t know. I should have warned you.”

“You tried to,” I say with a shrug.

“Not enough.” She sulks. It’s hard to watch—Addy is usually so vibrant, so animated, so self-assured. 

“Can I just ask one more question?” I say. Addy nods, but her expression tells me she wished I wouldn’t. I do anyway. “When you kicked Laetitia out…what did you mean by ‘summer territory’?”

“You won’t believe me if I tell you,” she replies.

“So you’re still hiding stuff from me.” I shake my head. “Even after all of this, you don’t think I deserve to know?”

“You do. You absolutely do. It’s just…” she throws up her arms. “I can’t…I can’t tell you.”

“I think I need some time to myself for a bit,” I say, suddenly very dizzy. The Rat & Raven spins as I sit up and make for the door.

“Wait, what about your tea?” Addy calls out.

I say nothing, because I’m a coward, and rush out into the crisp autumn air. I don’t have Windy at my disposal anymore, so I get my bearings and begin to walk towards Rey’s house.

---

It takes longer to make it to Rey’s place than I thought it would, and by the time I arrive, I’m freezing. I knock on her door once, then again when there’s no response. “Please be home, please be home,” I chant to myself.

Thankfully, moments later, I hear the sound of someone crashing down the steps of Rey’s house into her living room, and the door opens. I look down at what is probably a seven or eight year old girl, wearing a pair of overall shorts and a She-Ra t-shirt. Rey’s doing, no doubt. Her reddish-brown hair is braided into two pigtails. Freckles cover her nose and cheeks. “You must be Heather, right? Rey’s sister?”

She nods. “And you’re the one with the weird name.”

Aren’t kids just the cutest? “Yep, that’s me,” I say. “Is Rey home?”

Heather turns and walks back into the living room. “She’s in the basement.”

I close the front door behind me as I enter. Heather grabs a half-drunk glass of apple juice from the coffee table in the living room and immediately heads upstairs without another word. I don’t blame her. I guess I must have interrupted something. 

I head immediately for the basement stairs leading down into Rey’s lair. The stairs creak as I descend, a reminder of just how old this home is. The overhead lights are completely off, so I place my hand along the left wall for balance, careful to avoid splinters. The whole basement is unfinished, and the wooden beams aren’t exactly sanded down.

“Heather, I told you, I’m in the middle of something right now,” Rey starts as I hop down the final step. She’s sitting on one of her bean bag chairs, playing something on the little screen down here. The light from the TV is bathing the entire room in a bright blueish glow, including Rey’s face. She’s wearing a pair of pajama shorts and a red Inuyasha hoodie that feels extremely on theme for Rey. An N64 controller is in her hands, and she’s mashing buttons like nothing else in the world matters.

“Hey. It’s me,” I say. “Whatcha in the middle of?”

She jumps up, fumbling her controller. “Oh! Lum! I uhh—” She pauses her game and drops the controller. I come around the corner to see her in the midst of a 1v3 in the Super Smash Bros. Pikachu vs three CPU opponents, it looks like. It’s like I’m back in the 90s or something. What gives?

“Can we talk?”

“Of course.” She heads over to flip the overhead lights on, then brings over a folding chair and falls into the beanbag chair, spinning it so the two are facing. “What’s up?”

“I heard today that your family moved to Robin’s Brook a while back.” I choose my words carefully, unsure what to say. “Did you notice anything…odd? Like, the people here talking about rules and pacts and shit like that?”

Rey bites her lip and nods. “Uhh, yeah. Something like that.”

“Please don’t keep anything from me,” I say. “I’m getting enough of that from Addy.” 

“She wants to keep you safe,” Rey says. “So do I.” A blush creeps along her cheeks as she says that. Gods, if I wasn’t here for answers, that would be so freaking adorable.

“Just tell me the truth. What’s really going on here?”

Rey leans in. “How, uhh…how much do you know?”

“I know that everyone is apparently from ‘somewhere far away’ and that they have ‘laws’ and that Laetitia apparently thinks she’s ‘claimed’ me and, and—” I rattle off. Rey places a hand on my shoulder to calm me down. I lean into it. It feels nice to touch somebody’s skin without them being freezing cold or burning hot. Does that have something to do with where they’re from? Who they are?

“Look, I’m not supposed to say anything,” she says. She suddenly shuts her eyes and shakes her head, like her forehead is in pain, too. “I can’t.” Rey leans in and speaks quietly as though we’re somehow being listened to. “Actually…I know a way you can learn the truth without anyone telling you. But…”

“What? How?”

Rey bites her lip and cringes. “You’re…probably not going to like it.”

---

Next Chapter!