Serpent's Storm by Amber Benson Page B

out of the war-torn bathroom like two limp rag dolls. Hyacinth slammed the door closed behind us, a muscle-relaxing sense of relief flooding my body. I hadn’t realized how tense the situation had made me until I was out of it.
    “Where can we go?” Jarvis asked as we followed Hyacinth down the hallway.
    “This way,” she urged, guiding us away from the crowd of office workers who were surrounding the kitchen—obviously, someone had found Robert’s prone body.
    As we ran, it seemed like Jarvis and I were forced to take two steps for every one of Hyacinth’s. Call me crazy, but I was pretty certain my boss had grown like five inches since I’d last seen her. After all the weird stuff I’d been exposed to since Jarvis had unspelled me from my Forgetting Charm, I knew that when someone presented themselves as completely normal and then suddenly did something totally abnormal right in front of you, it meant they were not totally human.
    “I have a way out. It’s not magical, but it should do the trick,” Hyacinth—who wasn’t really Hyacinth, my boss, anymore—said. She led us to the emergency exit stairwell and pushed open the door, setting the alarm off. It began to screech like a banshee, but this didn’t faze Hyacinth—she merely waved her hand across the doorframe and the sound instantly ceased.
    “Nice,” I offered as she held the door open for Jarvis, who was standing unsteadily on his hooves.
    “Easily done,” came her reply, but she wasn’t really paying attention to me. Instead, her gaze was fixed on Jarvis as he paused beneath the door lintel, trying to catch his breath. The head wound may have healed, but the faun still looked drawn. His skin was pasty and dry, his eyes encircled by dark purple bruising. He gave a ragged cough that sent him reeling, but Hyacinth had anticipated what was coming next and reached out, catching him just as his legs gave way beneath him.
    “Jarvis,” I cried, but the faun only shook his head for me to be quiet. Hyacinth stared at the creature in her arms, taking in his haggard appearance and lack of strength. Then she fixed her steely gaze on me, and under the intensity of her glare I felt like an impaled bug trying to wriggle its way off a specimen board.
    “What have you done, Callie?” she asked. Her words came evenly, but I didn’t believe for a second there wasn’t malice underneath them. I took a cue from the rigid set of her shoulders and the faint lines ringing her mouth and decided not to be a smart aleck.
    “Look, I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done,” I said, my thoughts all jumbling together as I spoke, “but I swear to God I didn’t do it.”
    Hyacinth pursed her lips, but didn’t respond.
    “I’m serious, I didn’t do whatever it is you think I did,” I said again. “I mean it.”
    Hyacinth shook her head.
    “I believe you, Callie, because I don’t think you would have knowingly wrought this thing upon a friend.”
    “Excuse me?” I said, my voice going up an octave. I didn’t like being accused of something . . . especially something I had no knowledge of having done. I wanted an answer from her, but Hyacinth didn’t seem to think now was an appropriate time for further discussion. Instead, she turned her back on me, slinging Jarvis’s barely conscious body over her shoulder as if he were as light as a sack of foam packing peanuts.
    “This way,” she intoned, crossing the threshold and taking the fire stairs two at a time, leaving me with nothing to do but follow her.
    “Crap,” I said under my breath as I stepped into the stairwell, letting the fire door close behind me with an ominous click . I paused, the sense that I was closing the door on my past, now and forever, overwhelming all other thought. I let this feeling linger inside my brain, hoping time would give it clarification, then I picked up my pace, grasping the handrail with a shaking hand as I blindly followed Hyacinth’s retreating back.
    The stairs