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Some moments in life you remember forever

One ti on a trip I looked out of the , at the grey Noveoing My dad brought ht hand andhallway deep into our inn At the end of the hallway, an ordinary door waited We reached it, it swung open, and suht light, and when I opened them, we stood in an alley paved with stone Tall terraced buildings rose on both sides of us, and straight ahead, where the alley ran into a street, a current of creatures in every color and shape possible surged past merchant stalls, while a shattered planet looked at them from a purple sky

Then there was the ti The trees stood reen Texas oaks that only dropped their leaves when they felt like it I had driven slowly, looking for the right address, and when the old Victorian ca, ornate and nonsensical the way Victorians often are, the building jutted against the les had fallen off the roof and siding peeled frorounds I’d known it would be bad, since the inn had lain dorht it would be that bad

I pulled into the driveway, got out, and began circling the house, looking for any signs of life, reaching out withhope with every step And then I rounded the corner There, bright against the backdrop of oaks and pecans, twelve apple trees bloomed, branches heavy with blossoms It was the moment I realized Gertrude Hunt still lived

Today was such a moile beauty of the apple trees, but I would never forget it Sean Evans stood in our bedroo an innkeeper’s robe

“Mirror,” I murmured

Gertrude Hunt shifted itsinto a mirror We stood side by side, he in the copper-colored robe I had sewn for him and me in the blue robe my mother made me

Sean was taller than me by a head The robe covered him from his neck to his toes, but he’d left the hood down He was very handso to win a hopeless war It left scars that even his body with its accelerated regeneration couldn’t heal, and the shadows of its memories still flickered in his amber eyes But when he was alone with , his posture lost the coiled readiness, and he relaxed the way a man would in the safety of his own home

I studied our reflection Innkeeper robes came in a variety of styles, but these simple ones were our daily uniform We looked like a couple My parents had worn robes just like this, except rey and blue

I’d never thought I would have this When I was younger, I had iined myself as an innkeeper of a successful inn, but innext to , my sister left to marry a vampire Marshal on a faraway planet and took alaxy, but I had Sean He loved er alone

The blond innkeeper woman in the mirror smiled back at me She looked happy

“I like it,” Sean said

Three days ago, he’d refused to wear a robe, but I had made this one myself and now he liked it

“You don’t have to pretend,” I told him

“I like it It’s soft”

“I tumbled it with rocks for twenty-four hours And I tattered the hem”

Sean hiked up the robe and looked at the worn hem

Our profession was old By chance, Earth sat on the crossroads of warp points and diateways, a convenient waypoint on the way elsewhere We were the Atlanta airport of the galaxy Because of this special location, an ancient pact had been alactic civilizations Earth was designated as neutral ground Nobody could conquer us Nobody would ever enslave or devour us The hunorant of any alien intelligence in the great beyond

In exchange, Earth provided the alien visitors with safe havens; specialized hotels, each ic symbiosis with our inns Within the inns, we could bend physics and open gateways to worlds hundreds of light-years away Outside of the inns, ere only slightly more powerful than noroals: to see to their guests’ every need and to keep their existence secret from the rest of the planet

Gertrude Hunt, my inn, accepted Sean because it sensed that he loved me When he spoke to the inn, it obeyed, and it tried toasked So off a clan of alien assassins and nursinginn turned me catatonic, Sean had become an innkeeper He had been an innkeeper for a less than teeks, I had been an innkeeper for a couple of years, and in that short ti the prioverned the inns Now the innkeeper Asse of prominent innkeepers, decided they wanted a closer look atthe invitation wasn’t an option

“In the eyes of the Assembly, I’ve only been an innkeeper for the blink of an eye, and you even less,” I said “I don’t want to show up there in brand new robes”

Sean reached over and caught“It will be fine,” he murmured into my ear

For a long moment I just stood wrapped in him

“What’s the worst that can happen?” he asked