Free Serpent's Storm by Amber Benson

my own life. All I could do was stand there while the things I’d worked so hard to attain all my adulthood slipped inextricably out of my grasp. The thump of my heart skipping a couple of beats brought me back to myself, but this return to reality just reaffirmed the one thing I already knew: I was quickly running out of options. I could either let Hyacinth find the body (and go to jail for a human lifetime) or I could lose my job (and my human existence) while keeping my immortal freedom intact.
    I stared at my boss, willing her to back down first, but I knew it was useless. She’d never backed down from anything in her life—and she wasn’t about to start with her unruly Executive Assistant.
    “If you do not get out of that kitchen right now . . .” Hyacinth said, taking a dramatic pause to give more weight to her words. This was her way of making me understand that she didn’t want to issue a definitive ultimatum, but that I was forcing her hand.
    I opened my mouth to acquiesce. An apology was right on the tip of my tongue, but before I could form the words, a giant belch issued from the depths of my belly. I covered my mouth with my hand, but the damage was already done.
    Hyacinth’s nostrils flared at my rudeness.
    “Then consider yourself fired.”
    It was like getting sucker punched right in the gut while being concurrently poked in the eyeballs with a pointy stick. Still, my unresponsive body stayed wedged in between the kitchen cabinets, blocking Hyacinth’s way. It appeared that my decision had been made for me. My body, apparently, would rather see the end of my so-called “normal” life than allow me to rot in jail.
    I sighed and felt my eyes smarting with tears. This time my thoughts seemed to flow from my mouth in a flood of words.
    “I’ve really enjoyed assisting you, Hy, and I’m sorry that our working relationship is ending this way.” My throat ached from the throttling Marcel had given me—and from something else, too. Something that, if I’d been forced to describe it, I would’ve likened to despair.
    “I accept that you’re firing me, but I will not move from this cabinet,” I continued, clearing my throat in a last-ditch effort to not emotionally lose it in front of my (now) former boss. “So, that’s it, then.”
    Finished with my speech, I bit my lip, trying to channel the pain I was feeling into a physical outlet. I hoped it would pull me back from the brink of the full-scale tear-fest I was on the precipice of having.
    For the first time since I’d known her, Hyacinth Stewart (the woman with the mad skill set for figuring out a person’s weakness and then exploiting it) was speechless. She’d pegged me for a total pushover—which normally would’ve been a correct assumption—only she’d chosen to confront me during the most transitional period of my entire life. She had no idea I was in the process of extracting myself from the “normal” world so I could return to the bosom of the Afterlife. All the years of trying to change myself, to fix the quirks that made me different from the human beings who surrounded me, were fast becoming irrelevant. The past few months had been the brine, changing the consistency of my soul until I was ready to step out of my old skin and become someone new.
    Hy’s mouth worked open then shut, then open again, her brow furrowing in intense concentration. Finally, she cocked her blond head at an angle and said:
    “Clean out your desk.”
    No sooner had the words cleared her lips than she turned around and sashayed back down the hallway, hips swinging in time to the click of her heels. I watched her go, all the tension I’d been holding in my jaw and shoulders dissipating with her exit. I felt the countertop pressing into the small of my back and I closed my eyes, letting my body sag against it, elbows resting on its smooth, laminate surface for support.
    My moment of respite was interrupted by the crack of knuckles against wood. I