This 'Lovecraft Country' Twist Has Me So Nervous For Leti

After two episodes of a road trip, Lovecraft Country turned back to Chicago this week. The death of Tic's Uncle George hung heavy over the episode, which opened at his funeral. But life goes on, and after several weeks' time jump, Leti has a brand-new project. She bought herself a giant house on the North Side of Chicago, with money she believes came from her late mother. But Leti's inheritance in Lovecraft Country comes with many strings, some of which she doesn't know about.

Warning: Spoilers for Lovecraft Country Episode 3 follow. Three episodes in, the story emerging about Leti's family is a tough one. Her older sister Ruby sees herself as the responsible daughter holding the family together. Her brother, Martin, has grown up to be abusive man dealing with alcoholism. All suffer from childhood trauma, and a late mother who the show has suggested lived with drug addiction.

Everyone agrees Mama was selfish and did strange, impulsive things. But the idea she had the money to buy a four-story house in a white neighborhood is hard to believe, even if the house has a reputation of being haunted. Leti doesn't want to see the truth, but Tic realized there's no way her inheritance is real, nor did he believe Leti randomly choose to buy the old rundown Winthrop House. Tic's first instinct was right; the whole thing was a scheme organized by Christina Braithwhite.

It's a complicated throughline, so let's run it down: Before Leti owned the house, it belonged to a man named Hiram Epstein. He was an astrophysicist with controversial beliefs about naturalism. He also did human experimentation. When his body was found, so were parts of eight other people, deep in the subbasement, linked to missing Black residents from Chicago's South Side.

Despite realizing the Chicago sheriff who arrested her probably supplied those bodies to Epstein, Leti's interest in the issue ends there. Her concern is expelling Epstein's ghost, calling upon the spirits of his victims to help her. But during the ceremony, three white men broke in and were murdered by her ghost assistants, their bodies deposited in the subbasement. As Leti carried on, oblivious to the danger, it was clear there's more to the house than meets the eye.

The spirits of the house are powerful because of the original owner, Horatio Winthrop. Tic recognized the Winthrop name when Leti said it, because he saw it inscribed on the Ardham House walls.

Tic then staked out Leti's realtor, JJ Johnson, and discovered he works for Braithwhite when Christina showed up. She dropped some history on Tic when he confronted her: Horatio was one of the founding members of The Sons of Adam within the Ancient Dawn order. But he fled the group, stealing several pages of the sacred text. Without them, no one can translate Titus' most powerful spells. She wants those pages back, and, as Leti's new boyfriend, Tic was perfectly placed to find them.

It's not clear if Tic will do as Christina demanded. But he is terrified these wizards will kill Leti like they did Uncle George. Removing those pages and giving them to Christina could be the only way to make the house safe.

Lovecraft Country continues on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.