Chapter 3
Quill
Ghost in a Cemetery Town
Les Secrets de la Soirée
Tom Kristiaan
A loud bang made me open my sticky eyes. Another bang and I flinched.
“Gravia,” my thirty-eight-year-old half-brother's worried voice reached me, and I sat up abruptly in my much too large dark-green-covered bed with its white pillows stained with coffee – and now mascara – and mentally went through all the things I might have forgotten, but there were no more bureaucratic appointments scheduled for this month.
“Gravia,” he sighed, sounding as if something was stressing him out. This was unusual for Anthony, who was the only member of the Richter family with a fundamentally calm and warm nature, and whom nothing and no one could throw off balance. “Breakfast is ready.”
Frustrated, I looked at the brown double oak door of my room, whose boiserie walls, like the rest of the house, were painted a rich Essex green.
The floors of the entire house were also dark, cold brown parquet, the same color as most of the furniture that also lined my room.
Except that my room was the only place where utter chaos reigned.
Empty or half-empty white coffee cups, with traces the aromatic drug had left behind, held my notes, splattered with coffee and ink, in place on the floor when I slept with the windows open again, just like last night.
The creamy white, translucent cotton curtain, on which the morning sunbeams danced, still swayed in front of the only one of the four large floor-to-ceiling windows that was open.
The only one, it should be noted, that wasn't covered with white Post-its containing new story ideas – or blue ones with potential quotes I wanted to include in one of my books.
More Post-its and mind maps, crisscrossed by blue threads attached to pushpins, on which further important information for the dystopian world of one of my series hung, sprawled across the two built-in bookshelves, from which books threatened to burst out.
No matter how hard I tried, I had never had a system for keeping things tidy.
My desk, which stood in front of one of the windows, was also kissed by my creative chaos, as was my bedside table. Crumpled papers, worn paperbacks, notebooks filled to the brim, my dip pens, and more cups.
Ever since I was a small child, I often worked on the floor, sometimes moving to my desk, sometimes to my bed, preferring to write while lying down.
It was different for reading. I could read anywhere in the house, because there were enough hidden corners and nooks in this beautiful mansion that my Nazi grandfather had built here in Maplecrest, Virginia, after fleeing Germany.
The Voice in My Heart – Piano
(Violet Evergarden Original Soundtrack)
maats, Evan Call
“Gravia. You better be dressed and ready to come downstairs when I open the door.”
I sighed and pushed the covers aside, jumping hastily out of bed and slipping into black trousers, then into one of my blue knitted sweaters, which was lying on the floor and still smelled tolerable.
Ever since I was eleven, I had slept naked, but that had become exhausting in this house, where there was no such thing as privacy – at least not for me.
“No one cares if I'm there,” I blurted out in frustration and tiptoed across my mess to the mirror.
Normally, I would sneak into the kitchen to join the staff, who all had more soul than the residents of this house, except for Tony. There I could eat the leftovers from the overly lavish meals and listen with a grin as the maids complained to Thabeea, our cook, about the unbearable Richter family.
“You know that's not true.”
Anthony was the only reason I was here. A curse or a blessing. I hadn't quite decided yet.
The door swung open and my brother walked in, as always with a smile on his lips, which immediately vanished when he spotted me.
“God, sis...” Concern settled in his gray eyes. “What happened to your face?”
I turned back to the mirror, where my gray eyes, framed by thick dark lashes and smudged with black, and the bitter chocolate brown bird's nest on my head presented themselves to me.
“Oh...”
Normally, my freckles were the dominant feature, but today I looked like a ghost.
The fact that I didn't have much on my ribs because I often forgot to eat when I was hyperfocused didn't make it any better.
“That...”
Embarrassed, I smoothed my normally straight, chest-length hair and tried not to glance at the suit jacket still lying on the second pillow on my bed.
I deserved to be buried for curling up in it, last night, as if it would bring the mysterious stranger back and not just awaken more longing in my chest. The scent of pine, coffee, and cedar wood had burned itself so deeply into my nose that I was afraid I would get used to it before it would fade from the expensive jacket on its own.
We hadn't even exchanged names. Two ghosts in a cemetery town.
“I think I...”
I reached for my brush on the dresser, but overlooked the cup, which, in the next moment, slipped off the dresser.
“Shit.”
Just in time, my brother stepped next to me and caught it skillfully, but some of the cold coffee still spilled and splashed down onto the fortunately blank dotted sheets of paper.
Anthony held the cup up to me with a grin. He was used to things breaking around me by now.
And I had gotten used to him too. To the fact that we shared the same hair and eye color, that he liked to take me on hunting trips in the woods, even if I stepped on creaky branches and slipped on mossy rocks, that he liked to talk a lot and make jokes about the conceited residents of Maplecrest, and that he was remarkably intelligent.
He was one of the most respected professors in the law department at Maplecrest University, one of the few liberal and open-minded people in this place, laughed at and criticized by his colleagues and praised to the skies by his students.
I still wondered what he was doing here, why he, with his charisma, wasn't married yet, because he was definitely a family man. Or why he hadn't left town yet and finally moved to the West Coast, where he loved to travel.
The problem was that he was a family man and believed that our father would change. That we could all become one big happy family.
The mere thought sent a wave of painful disillusionment through my body.
Tony narrowed his eyes playfully.
“Where were you last night?”
“At a reading,” I said quickly, walking past him to grab two loose black socks from my sock drawer, which was filled with identical socks.
“Then why do you look like you've been kidnapped and dumped on our doorstep?”
For very good reasons, I hadn't told Tony about all the men I'd been seeing over the past three months, searching for something that, as I'd come to realize, couldn't be found in meaningless sex.
My father was the one who collected old German hunting rifles, but Tony was the one who could actually shoot. He was the one who always assured Brittany and me that he wouldn't let any of the town's dishonorable scumbags anywhere near us.
“That's pretty close to what you did to me,” I laughed dryly, combing my hair before striding toward the open door.
Tony followed me into the hallway on the third floor, which was decorated with elegant vintage lamps on the walls and furnished with walnut commodes, adorned with antique statues and strange art sculptures.
The paintings by Kaspar David Friedrich and those depicting large hunts in Bavarian forests were impossible to ignore.
“A whole month.” Tony took an apple from a bowl on one of the commodes and followed me to the wide staircase.
“Come on, sis” He threw the apple up, almost hitting the chandelier, but caught it unerringly as we reached the second floor, where the brown wooden stairs with their elegantly decorated railings and green carpet merged into an even wider staircase that led us into the large foyer on the ground floor. “You'll have to forgive me someday.”
He grinned, the piece of apple in his mouth pressing against the inside of his cheek, unaware of the damage his actions had caused me.
I couldn't hold it against him. He meant well, being the only one in this family who had cared about me from the start, even though he hadn't even known me until three months ago.
“Someday,” I sighed, preparing myself for the family drama that was most likely awaiting us in the family dining room. “Now please tell me why I should come to breakfast. Something tells me the rest of this wonderful family is sitting in there, ready to tear me apart.”
Tony's smile faded again, which made me pick at the sides of my thumbs until it hurt pleasantly.
Even though he tried to ignore it and, on good days, even fought against them treating me like a leper, he knew very well that I was a spark in this powder keg of a family. As soon as I encountered one of the other residents of this big mansion, there was tension, or it ended in carnage.
“Father wants to discuss something with us. It's about the gala tonight.”
Oh. Of course. How could I have forgotten the well-attended opening gala of the Richter family?
A gathering where the town's professors and esteemed lawyers from around the area and Washington, D.C.
, would meet to toast the start of the new semester at Maplecrest University with tropical fruit stuffed endangered birds, caviar, and the most expensive champagne.
It should be mentioned that Maplecrest was a breeding ground for future top lawyers and corrupt judges. No one talked about it, but Maplecrest graduates were the ones who were preferred over those from Yale and Harvard.
At tonight's event, fathers would introduce their golden sons to their colleagues and other rich kids, who would be attending law school together in the coming semester.
Although women also had the right to study law at Maplecrest, not one had dared to sit in lecture halls filled with spoiled, sexist adolescents until now.
“What do I have to do with his university circle?”