Chapter Text
"Knock knock!"
Lethica woke up from her first sleep in her new house to the sound of a very cheery, very unfamiliar voice. She sleepily raised her head from the thin pad of her sleeping bag, then yelped and quickly threw her long hair over her face. There was a stranger in her living room. A petite woman with shoulder-length black hair and wide, doe-like eyes, who was dressed like a 1920s flapper, for some reason? Lethica would have written it off as a dream, except for the fact that she was questioning it. Frantically kicking off her sleeping bag, she groped for her mask and sunglasses, trying to crawl out of the woman's sight.
Her housemates had noticed the commotion, too. Yorgrim leaped to his feet with surprising grace, his fists raised like an old-timey boxer's. Briggsy blinked a few times before realizing the flapper was real and promptly hiding in his blanket pile. Marius and Jericho clung to each other like a pair of frightened kittens, and Farryn shouted, "who the hell are you, and why are you in our house!"
"Oh my gawd! Your accent is so cute! Are you, like, Irish or somethin'?" The flapper pressed her hands to her face, squealing like she was looking at a viral puppy video instead of a human woman.
Farryn, baffled, opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. "You didn't answer my question," she finally said.
"Oh, silly me! I'm Adela." When that didn't garner the response she was hoping for, she added, "Druskenwald? I'm Philly's wife."
"Oh!" Jericho sighed, this one detail apparently assauging all his fears. He popped to his feet, loping over to her in a few long strides and holding out his hand. "Well I'm Ol' Jericho Sticks, but you can call me Jericho, most folk do."
"Well it's nice to meet you, Ol' Jericho Sticks! My, your accent is also cute! Does everyone here have a cute accent?" Adela shook his hand with vigor, smiling her aggressively white smile. Jericho beamed back, and Lethica, now appropriately bespectacled and masked if still pajamaed, didn't miss the slight rosy tint to his tan cheeks. Surely Jericho couldn't have taken her patronizing remark as a complement…
Yorgrim lowered his fists, but kept his wary gaze on Adela. "Why are you here?" he said bluntly. "And when are you going to leave?"
"No need to look at me like that, you old sourpuss," Adela said with a playful pout. "Philly and I just wanted to give ya a little housewarming present, is all!"
Behind her, the front door slammed open with a loud creak. "Adela, darling! Would you be ever so kind and hold the door for me? These boxes are a little heavy!" Phillip shouted. Behind him, Lethica could hear several more people chatting and stomping on their porch, and the beep of…a car backing up?
"Coming, honey bunch!" Adela trotted off towards the door.
Lethica sighed deeply. A headache was already starting to pound in the back of her skull. This was supposed to be her fresh start—a home where she was in control for once, not stuck catering to the whims of an insane, power-tripping floozy! "I'll handle her," she announced to her housemates, and stood to follow Adela.
"No, I will!" Jericho said, jogging after her. "Shouldn't be holding a door. She's a lady."
Lethica rolled her eyes behind her glasses. Lady was certainly one way to put it.
She and Jericho found Adela holding the door for a seemingly endless stream of sweaty muscular men holding boxes, chairs, tables, and—was that a fainting couch? "Here, Miss Adela, let me hold that," Jericho said, trying to slip behind her to grab the door while also contorting his body to avoid any accidental contact.
"Oh!" Adela let him, batting her eyelashes a little. "Thank you, Mr. Sticks! What a nice young man!"There was absolutely no way Adela was more than a few years older than Jericho, but he seemed to take it as a complement.
With the door passed to another party, Adela turned to Lethica. She was slightly reticent to actually talk to the woman, given her response to Farryn and Jericho's accents, but she hoped her long years of customer service jobs had given her the skills to talk down a stupid but well-meaning socialite. "Would you mind terribly explaining what's going on? Lethica said, pressing herself to the wall as the workers paraded past, some of them blatantly gawking at her strange getup. "How did you get in here?"
"Through the front door, of course," Adela tittered. She reached into her purse and pulled out a ring of keys, jingling them at Lethica like she was an infant.
Lethica's heart sank. "You…have the keys to our house?"
"Our house," Phillip corrected, as he walked in holding a box—noticably smaller than the ones the other men were carrying. "We're just renting it to you—for free, of course."
Adela nodded. "Zero dollars a month plus utilities! Doesn't get cheaper than that, now does it?"
Lethica's mouth hung open under her mask. "That's—but when you offered us the house, you said it was ours," she sputtered.
"Yes, as long as you work for us," Phillip said. "It's a long-term temporary arrangement. Sounds like renting to me!"
Lethica fought back a sigh. She ought to have known that Phillip's deal was too good to be real—too good to come without caveats, at least. She supposed that changing the locks wouldn't go over well—they'd just have to live as though their most private moments could be intruded on at any moment. At the same time, Phillip was right. It didn't get better than not paying rent. It wasn't like her old apartment had been a haven of privacy either, and she had drained her bank account every month just paying for necessities. Perhaps she could twist this situation in her favor.
As Lethica pondered her strategy, Briggsy stumbled into the hall, wearing a T-shirt and boxers. "What's with the boxes? And all the…other shit?"
"Well, we figured you might need a little help making this house a home, what with all the dead children you found," Adela said. "So we figured we'd donate a little to the cause! Just some spare furniture we had lying around!"
Lethica watched as a workman carefully carried a box labeled China, 1859 into the kitchen. If this was their idea of things that were just lying around… "Let me take that," she said as Phillip stepped through the door, carrying an oddly shaped package.
Phillip peered up over the top of what turned out to be an enormous oil painting of a slightly misshapen horse. He squinted at her. "Are you sure?"
Lethica wasn't sure. Perhaps she should have waited to see what he was holding before offering to take it, but she couldn't back out now—if she didn't seem grateful, she wouldn't get more free shit, even if that free shit was a hideous painting. "Yes, I am sure. You are giving us a gift, it is only fair that we help place it."
Phillip shrugged. "Suit yourself."
He passed the painting to her, and Lethica immediately had to lean back, letting the canvas rest against her chest so it didn't fall over. She had no idea where she was going to put it. The lower floors weren't really the sort of place you could put a big ugly horse painting, and they hadn't managed to fully deputrify the top levels of the Crooked House. It barely even fit through the door of the living room.
When Lethica stepped inside, leaning the painting against a wall, she saw that it had been furnished—for lack of a better word. Dusty armchairs, wobbly coffee tables, and that fainting couch she'd seen earlier were definitely in the room, but not arranged so anyone could actually use them. They'd just been dropped there, like their new home was a storage locker to be filled and forgotten about. Marius and Yorgrim were slowly maneuvering them into a more usable configuration, but there was only so much they could do so fast. Lethica wasn't sure what made her angrier—that the Druskenwalds were unloading their trash on her, or that their trash was nicer than anything she'd ever owned.
Farryn eyed the painting. "I hope you know someone who wants to buy that."
"Me too," said Lethica.
"Oh, come on, Miss Farryn!" Jericho said, strolling into the living room with a box of his own. "I think it's nice! …Kinda! Well, it's nice that Miss Adela gave it to us!"
Farryn raised her eyebrows. "Sure, Jericho. It's very nice."
The front door slammed, and a moment later Phillip and Adela invited themselves back in. "Well, that should be everything!" Phillip announced, clapping once. "We'll leave you to your own devices now! Enjoy your new home!"
"Took them long enough," Yorgrim grunted quietly as he set down a chair.
Not quietly enough, apparently. "Excuse me?" Adela squeaked. "We were trying to help you! When I came in, you were sleeping on the floor!"
Lethica didn't mention that they hadn't brought them anything to sleep on. After all, why would they need to throw out a bed? "What I think Yorgrim means is that there is simply much more furniture than he expected," she said smoothly. "Indeed, none of us expected such a gift at all. Thank you."
"Oh, you're welcome, sweetie!" Adela said with another blinding grin. "Lethica, right? That's a…unique name!"
"Yes."
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Lethica." Adela practically pounced on her, forcibly shaking her hand. "Here, wait—you seem like you could appreciate this. No offense to you, Farryn!" she giggled.
As Farryn made an aborted, befuddled noise behind her, Adela reached into her purse and withdrew a small, half-full bottle, pressing it into Lethica's palm. Lethica recognized the pink-and-black label from TikTok videos she tried not to watch. It was some trendy rose perfume that every influencer was wearing, and probably cost fifty bucks a spritz. Once again—it was trash to Adela, but pricier than any cosmetic Lethica would ever purchase. She lifted her mask just enough to sniff it. The perfume was surprisingly high quality, for a TikTok trend —rosy and sweet without being overbearing. "Thank you," she said, because what else was she supposed to say?
Then, to her surprise, Jericho spoke up. "Now, Miss Adela, that isn't very nice."
Both she and Lethica turned to him. "Huh?"
"I know you're trying to give Miss Lethica a gift, but you can't just give someone something you already used! You have to make it new and special. My granny taught me that much."
Adela swallowed. "Well—y'know, I didn't exactly plan ahea—"
"We really ought to be going!" Phillip said. "We have to get to the country club for brunch, remember, sweetie bear?"
"Oh! Of course, my light!" Adela chirped. The slight strain in her voice told Lethica that that hadn't been a plan until Jericho had spoken. "Goodbye, dearies!"
"Goodbye!" Lethica said, deeply grateful to Jericho, even though the man himself looked a little ashamed. The Druskenwalds beat a retreat, and Lethica followed down the hallway to slam the door behind them.