Haunted || Leo Valdez

80 - Katherine Howard Does Not Get a Lambo

Anne stepped into the kitchen and noiselessly opened the fridge. There was all sorts of stuff in there, but nothing to make her special sleepy water with.

"Well, when you can't have a sleeping potion," she mumbled to herself as she plucked a can of cherry coke from the fridge, "have caffeine." She didn't even like coke that much, and she didn't see how its cherry-flavored variant could be much better, but that was all the Queens had, and it was too late to go to the store for something else. The can opened with a pop that seemed to shake the house. The soda fizzed so loudly that Anne was sure it would wake everyone up, but nobody came stomping down the hall, demanding to know what all the noise was, so Anne padded to the dining room, where she came face-to-face with Henry.

It took every ounce of willpower to not scream and wake everyone up. Even if she couldn't sleep, there was no reason the others in this house didn't deserve to.

"What in Hera's name are you doing?" Anne demanded in a whisper-shout. "You almost gave me a heart attack!"

"Now you know how I feel when Cleves does it," Henry said, shrugging.

"Oho, very clever, Mr. History Nerd," Anne said, rolling her eyes. "What on earth are you even doing here? Why aren't you asleep?"

"Jet lag, I guess."

"Jet what?"

"You know, when you go into a different time zone and it messes with your brain because you're not used to it?" Henry shrugged. "The best way to deal with it is to sleep for twenty-four hours or stay awake for twenty-four hours and let your brain sort of reset."

"Are you going to turn into Mr. Science Nerd, now?" asked Anne, taking a sip of the coke. She found that cherry-flavored coke was in fact much better than regular coke, and she'd be drinking this instead of Sprite from now on.

"That's actually psychology," Henry muttered. "And no. I like history better."

"So if you're staying up for twenty-four hours -- good luck, by the way -- why are you out here and not in your room? Surely that would be more comfortable?"

"Leo snores too loud."

Anne snorted mid-sip, almost causing her to choke on the cherry deliciousness. "Leo doesn't snore much at all. You'd hear Rebecca complaining about it if he did. No, he was just pretending to snore so you'd think he's asleep. Bet you ten drachma that he snuck into Rebecca's room the minute your back was turned."

"Oh."

"Mm-hmm." Anne decided she needed to slow down if she wanted to make this coke last. There were only five of them left in the refrigerator, after all, and she needed to pace herself.

"They're a cute couple," Henry noted awkwardly.

"They are, aren't they?" Anne replied with the pride of a matchmaker who'd created the idea of them together, which she practically had. "I helped Piper get them together, you know."

"Really?"

"Yep. A long, hard, and unnecessarily tedious task, that was. Rebecca was worried that Leo was afraid and distrustful of her; Leo was worried he wasn't good enough for her; both of them were worried the other would reject them; the result of that was much beating around the tree."

"Bush."

"Beating around the bush," Anne corrected, as confident as if the phrase were her idea. "It took a lot of nudging and pushing and prodding, but it finally happened. And the fruits of my labor are juicy indeed."

"Yeah."

"Just imagine how beautiful their children will be!" Anne gushed. "If they decide to have children, anyway. That would be one beautiful family."