UNSPOKEN: Undone Realms Book 3

Ch. 24: When One Door Closes

(Six years, one month, three weeks and four days after the Ban began)

Avie uses a box cutter to slice open a newly arrived package. Inside is a new Our World Only sign to replace the old one long faded in the lobby window. She mustn't look as if she's gotten lax in her patriotic fervor. Securing the new sign, she gently places the old one in the shipping box to be sent to the Friends of the Authorities non-profit. They will respectfully dispose of it.

Despite everything that has happened to her, Avie considers herself to be a very lucky woman. She has survived over six years alone in this awful, awful place, narrowly avoiding arrest or death on more than one occasion. She thinks of her last brush with fate, of Troi, gone from her life almost a year now.

At first, the Council believed the story spun about Hiram returning to Texas. According to the news reports, Gillian had told them their mother's health was failing. Avie's not sure Gillian ever believed her brother had ditched his life in Cascadia to high-tail it back to Texas without so much as a goodbye, but for a while, the hapless Council seemed to.

Six months after Hiram disappeared, a utility crew laying lines for a new housing development found his decomposing body buried in a shallow grave fifty miles southeast of the hotel. The deceased's DNA matched that of missing militia officer Hiram Burk.

Troi was arrested by the authorities within the week. He gave a full confession, which was released in its entirety to the press. In it, he stated that he had murdered Hiram when Hiram caught him faking a medical condition in order to take leave. Troi had been exhausted by his job, he'd claimed, and had contemplated abandoning his post before his contract ended. Hiram had threatened to expose him as being derelict of duty. Troi simply couldn't handle the disgrace.

In a statement his lawyers issued to the press, he asked that his wife, Gillian Onslowe, as well as everyone he had hurt, find a way to forgive him.

Avie has forgiven him, for lying on her behalf, for coming into her life under false pretenses, for pursuing her when both of them knew it would not end well. She's forgiven him his zealousness, his gullibility, his horrendous taste in movies. She's forgiven him for being an enemy, but she can't forgive herself for letting him become a friend. Like other times in her life when it mattered most, Avie had miscalculated. She should never have let him get so close, even if rejecting Troi made him more suspicious of her.

Avie is stewing in old grievances, mainly ones she's inflicted on others, when a customer enters the lobby. "Not quite the same, but close." He approaches the counter. When she looks up from her tablet, his smile falters. "I was talking about the hotel, but now that I see you... you look so much like her."

Avie does her internal eye roll. She pleads with everything that is sacred that this man isn't another effing anti-realm journeying nut job with a weakness for brunette hotel managers.

She succeeds in a thin lipped smile. "You need a room?"

The man glances around the lobby, empty save for them. "It's time, Avie. Your daughter needs you." Avie is about to tell him he must have mistaken her for someone else, but he holds up a hand. "It's okay, I'm a friend-a friend who knows about the pocket realm... and what you've given up to keep Clara safe."

The man, who must be in his late teens or early twenties at the most, knows a shocking amount about her situation. So that can only mean....

"Vira sent you, didn't she?"

His mouth hangs open, and if Avie's not mistaken, he flinches slightly. At least Avie knows one thing this man doesn't. "Vira came to me before the Ban. She's the reason I knew it was coming."