Lucy, often referred to as “Grammie,” is the maternal grandmother of Thea and Rem and one of the most emotionally grounded characters in Mind Games. A widowed matriarch and gifted telepath, Lucy embodies both the caregiver and sage archetypes. Her physical appearance (tall, strong boned, and blue eyed) mirrors Thea’s, as does her inherited psychic ability, though Lucy acknowledges that her granddaughter’s power exceeds her own. Throughout the novel, Lucy is a moral compass, emotional anchor, and teacher, offering stability and wisdom amid trauma and chaos.

Lucy lives in Redbud Hollow, Kentucky, where she runs a small farm and sells soaps, candles, and home remedies. Rooted deeply in Appalachian culture, Lucy embraces a lifestyle centered on self-sufficiency and community interdependence. She and other community members barter for goods and services, give generously to neighbors, and participate in a rural social structure in which caregiving and reciprocity are routine. After her husband, Zachariah, died in a mining accident at 31, Lucy raised their three children alone—a backstory that underscores her quiet strength and resourcefulness.

After Riggs murders her daughter, Cora, and son-in-law, John, Lucy steps in without hesitation to raise Thea and Rem. Although grief-stricken, she finishes renovations on the house and offers the children emotional and spiritual sanctuary. She refuses to give in to despair, instead choosing to cultivate love, routine, and meaning on the farm. In addition, Lucy guides Thea in managing her psychic abilities, grounding the abstract through kitchen magic: spells, herbs, and charms handed down through generations.

As Thea grows into adulthood, Lucy transitions from guardian to mentor. She supports Thea’s independence while offering gentle but firm guidance on everything from grief to romantic relationships. Her role in the family is central. Most gatherings, celebrations, and conflicts revolve around her. Although Lucy can be blunt and fiercely protective, she’s never cruel. Her presence is vital not only to the Fox and Lannigan families’ survival but also to their healing. In a novel shaped by trauma and isolation, Lucy’s constancy affirms that love and wisdom, rooted in community and tradition, are legacies as powerful as any psychic gift.

Thea’s younger brother by two years, Rem, is her narrative foil throughout Mind Games. Whereas Thea is cautious, guarded, and internally burdened by her psychic abilities, Rem is relaxed, emotionally open, and intuitively grounded. Their contrasting temperaments highlight the psychic weight that Thea carries; though she and Rem are raised in the same environment and family, Thea’s gift sets her apart in ways that Rem doesn’t experience.

The novel portrays Rem as brilliant but in a different mode than Thea. While Thea’s intelligence is creative and intuitive, channeled into video-game design and narrative world building, Rem’s strength lies in logic, finance, and strategy. He earns a master’s degree in business administration, manages the family’s finances, and negotiates business contracts, including Thea’s lucrative game licensing deal with Milken. Additionally, he serves as Thea’s beta tester, offering sharp, unflinching feedback on her games. Rem’s practical, methodical mindset makes him essential to Thea for both emotional support and professional assistance.

Unlike Lucy and Thea, who are deeply rooted in Redbud Hollow, Rem moves easily between urban and rural spaces, maintaining ties in both New York and Kentucky. This geographic and emotional fluidity reflects his curiosity, adventurousness, and comfort with being unanchored. Although Rem buys land next to Thea’s when Miss Leona offers to sell part of her property, he never builds on it, constantly restless and searching for purpose. While Thea’s dreams have a precise shape, Rem’s are still evolving.

Rem functions as a vital part of Thea’s emotional support system. He offers something Lucy can’t: space for raw emotion. He allows Thea to grieve furiously, to express anger without judgment, and to lean on someone who doesn’t expect immediate solutions. While Lucy represents generational wisdom and structure, Rem is the emotional counterbalance: present, responsive, and empathetic.

Although Rem is a secondary character, his role is essential. He illustrates that strength doesn’t always come from having a fixed purpose; it sometimes stems from just showing up, staying present, and choosing love, even in moments of uncertainty. Through Rem, the novel affirms that listening, adapting, and caring unconditionally are at least as important as psychic gifts.

The primary antagonist in Mind Games is Riggs, whom the novel first introduces as an 18-year-old serial killer and is a 33-year-old inmate serving two consecutive life sentences by the novel’s end. Like Thea, Riggs possesses a psychic gift that allows him to read thoughts, influence dreams, and project his consciousness. Unlike Thea, however, Riggs is devoid of empathy. Whereas Thea’s abilities invite connection, Riggs weaponizes intimacy and perception into tools of domination and destruction.

Physically, Thea describes Riggs as pale, wiry, and forgettable: “blondish hair, messy […] blue eyes […] really light blue, like washed out” (47). His appearance mirrors his internal void: emotionally colorless, spiritually stunted, and hungry for control. Riggs’s motivations are driven not by ideology but by a pathological sense of entitlement. He resents anyone who possesses what he cannot: stability, love, wealth, or beauty. Upon seeing Cora Fox, he immediately hates her, perceiving her self-confidence as smugness and self-importance. His perceptions, always skewed, reflect his insecurities and rage.

Riggs exhibits signs of antisocial personality disorder, including early acts of animal cruelty and a compulsive need to hurt and humiliate. From childhood, he has viewed the suffering of others as entertainment, escalating from insects to cats to humans. The psychic gift that he and Thea share becomes a deadly amplifier of his disorder. Unlike Thea, who receives support from Lucy and the Redbud Hollow community, Riggs receives none. His gift festers in isolation, feeding his delusions of control.

From his prison cell, Riggs uses his ability to scan minds, manipulating guards and inmates to seek escape. However, as time passes, he loses the ability to connect with anyone but Thea and becomes fixated on her. His obsession is parasitic. He enters her dreams, invades her thoughts, and even learns to use his psychic power to injure her physically, causing symptoms like nosebleeds and lacerations. He taunts her to kill herself and reenacts scenes of violence in her mind. For Riggs, control isn’t a means to an end; it’s his entire purpose.

Riggs is a static character, incapable of remorse or growth. His final defeat at Thea’s hands, both literal and symbolic, isn’t a redemption arc but a narrative exorcism. His mind collapses inward, broken by the very game he sought to control.

Ty is the male lead in Mind Games. He’s a former boyband member turned successful songwriter and is a single father to a young son named Braydon, or “Bray.” Ty enters the narrative as an outsider to Redbud Hollow, seeking respite and reconnection after the death of his great-grandmother Leona. Although he plans only a temporary stay, his growing bond with Thea and the quiet rhythm of Appalachian life begin to shift his sense of home and belonging.

Ty’s family dynamic provides a subtle counterpoint to Thea’s. While Thea’s maternal grandmother offers unwavering support, her paternal grandparents reject her entirely. Ty’s parents fall somewhere in between: They love him and actively helped raise Bray in his early years, but they don’t understand Ty. In a family dominated by high-achieving professionals (doctors, lawyers, and business executives), Ty, who hated school and dropped out of college to pursue music, is the black sheep. Despite his fame and financial success, his choices continue to be a quiet disappointment to his family, and Ty feels this alienation deeply.

Unable to rely on his family for emotional understanding, Ty built an alternative family through Code Red, the band he helped lead to stardom. His former bandmates became his confidants, and their continued support highlights the importance of chosen family in his life. Despite the closeness of these friendships, however, Ty’s emotional center gradually shifts to Bray and, eventually, to Thea.

Ty is fiercely protective of Bray, a trait shaped by past betrayals. Former employees sold stories and photos to tabloids, leaving Ty wary of outsiders. This fear makes him slow to trust Thea, and when he mistakenly believes that she used his son to gain access to his home, he immediately reacts by rejecting her. His emotional response reveals both his vulnerability and the unresolved wounds of past betrayals.

As Ty learns to trust, he experiences significant character growth. His relationship with Thea forces him to confront not only his fear of betrayal but also his desire for a rooted, meaningful life, a desire that ultimately leads him to embrace Redbud Hollow not just as a refuge but as his home.

Ty’s son, Bray, who is four years old when the novel introduces him, plays a quietly pivotal role in Mind Games. Although young, Bray’s character thematically embodies The Transformative Power of Love and Understanding. His open-hearted nature helps guide the adults around him, particularly Ty and Thea, toward emotional growth and healing.

Bray accepts Thea immediately, bonding with her dog, Bunk, and slipping seamlessly into her life. His lack of judgment and intuitive warmth starkly contrast with the guardedness of the adults around him. This pure affection softens Thea’s fear of being perceived as a “freak” due to her psychic abilities. For Ty, Bray becomes the lens through which he reevaluates emotional decisions. When Ty, out of fear and betrayal, tells Bray that they’re leaving Redbud Hollow and will never see Thea again, Bray’s heartbreak and eventual runaway act shake Ty to his core. Bray’s distress, not Ty’s pride, prompts Ty to reconsider his actions and fight to repair his broken relationship with Thea.

Although Bray is young, he’s emotionally perceptive. His repeated gifts to Thea after the fallout with Ty, like a ribbon-tied card and a handmade flower, are acts of forgiveness and invitations for reconnection. Amid the story’s grief, trauma, and psychic violence, Bray is a beacon of emotional clarity. His character illustrates that love, when given freely and without fear, can disarm the most guarded hearts and help restore fractured families.