Chapter Nine
For one blessed, uncomplicated moment, everything in me softened.
“Celeste.”
She stood on the Academy’s front step like this was perfectly normal, with a backpack slung over one shoulder, hair pulled into that familiar not-quite-trying knot, eyes bright with curiosity and a touch of exhaustion that came from college life and late-night caffeine rather than shadow realms or magical peril.
Relief flooded me so fast it made my vision blur.
I crossed the threshold and wrapped her in a hug before she could say a word, holding her longer than necessary, breathing in the scent of laundry detergent and campus coffee shops and normalcy.
“Mom,” she laughed, hugging me back. “You remember I said I was coming tonight?”
I forgot. How could I forget my own daughter’s visit?
She pulled back, smiling, and gave me a once-over. “You look like you fought a forest.”
“Accurate,” I muttered.
Her gaze slid past me, with amused recognition lighting her face when she spotted Keegan.
She waved. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he replied easily. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks. You look… less haunted than last time.”
Keegan snorted. “That’s because I am.”
She nodded, accepting that without further comment, because my daughter had lived long enough adjacent to magic this year to know when not to ask follow-up questions.
“Okay,” Celeste said, shifting her bag and clearing her throat. “Before anyone panics, I should probably explain why I’m not alone.”
Every instinct I had went rigid.
She stepped to the side.
Something round and brownish green occupied the stone step behind her.
It croaked.
I stared.
It was a toad.
Not a cute, jewel-toned fairy toad. Not a whimsical forest creature with personality sparkles.
This was a substantial toad. Wide. Heavy.
Mottled green and brown. It sat there with the unmistakable posture of something that expected to be acknowledged and had already decided it was unimpressed.
Its droopy eyes and extra-wide grin reminded me of someone.
“Oh,” I said faintly.
Keegan made a sound beside me that he very quickly turned into a cough.
Celeste winced. “I told him not to follow me.”
I looked at the toad.
I looked at my daughter.
I looked back at the toad.
And my stomach dropped straight through the stone steps.
“No,” I whispered. “No…no…no.”
The toad turned its head.
It frowned.
I knew that frown.
“Oh stars,” I breathed. “That’s your father.”
Celeste squeezed her eyes shut. “I was hoping you wouldn’t recognize him immediately.”
My heart kicked into a panicked sprint. “Okay. Okay. This is not…this is not something I did. I would remember turning your father into a toad.”
The toad croaked indignantly.
“I would,” I insisted.
Twobble popped up at my elbow. “Ribbit.”
“Ribbit yourself. That’s my ex-husband,” I said in shock.
Twobble’s face lit up. “Wow. He’s not really a looker, is he?”
Skonk frowned and shook his head. “How in the world does he get the ladies with a personality like that?”
I cocked my head and glanced at the toad. “How can you see his personality?”
Skonk straightened and rubbed his chin.
“Well, by the type of toad he is. Not everyone who gets turned into a toad looks like…that.” Skonk looked at me as if the answer should be obvious.
Stella appeared behind us, took one look, and sighed deeply. “Yikes.”
Keegan leaned closer, studying the creature with narrowed eyes. “Come to think of it, he does look… familiar.”
And I knew Keegan was loving every second of this, considering what he’d witnessed over the years from afar.
“Not helping,” I told him, hiding my grin.
Celeste shifted awkwardly. “For the record, he was fine when he got to campus.”
I stared at her. “Define fine.”
“He was grumbling,” she said. “Which is his baseline, as you know. He insisted on walking me to the bus stop because he suddenly decided he couldn’t drive me to Stonewick. Some hot date swiped right since his last twenty-year-old girlfriend dumped him, and then he just gets all…weird.”
I kept my expression emotionless.
“Anyway, he complained about the town I was in, the cost of my tuition… and you.’”
The toad puffed up.
“He never learns,” I muttered.
Celeste continued, “But I told him I didn’t want to take the bus, and his flavor of the week could wait until he drove me to see my mom. And then he looked at me like I was the weird one, which made me so mad.”
That’s my girl.
Stella and the goblins chuckled, while the toad didn’t look amused.
“He started to put up a fuss, but some sort of decency must have seeped into his thick head, and we started back to the car so he could drive me here, but then things got weird.”
“And then he said something about you and living so far away, and the next thing I know, we were sitting in the car and…” She looked at her dad.
The toad croaked loudly.
“And then?” I asked carefully.
“And then,” she said, “there was a flash, a weird hum, and suddenly he was… shorter.”
Keegan frowned just so he wouldn’t laugh. I could see it in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I said miserably. “I don’t know how I managed to turn your father into a toad.”
The toad hopped forward, clearly intending to enter the Academy.
The charms flared instantly.
The toad bounced back with a soft plop.
Stella nodded approvingly. “The Academy has excellent taste.”
The toad croaked, deeply offended.
Celeste stared at him, then at me, horror dawning. “Mom. Please tell me this is temporary.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and ran through every spell I’d cast recently. Protection chants, ancient rites, a couple of prayers…nothing involving amphibians.
But here Alex was in all his toad glory.
It felt good.
“Toad behavior looks good on him.” Keegan chuckled despite himself. “This is the calmest I’ve ever seen him.”
I shot him a look and smiled. “Not now.”
Celeste groaned and covered her face. “My friends are never going to believe this.”
“Especially because you can never tell them,” I reminded her gently.
The Academy doors creaked slightly, light spilling out as if the building itself were leaning forward in curiosity.
The toad croaked again, louder, clearly demanding entry.
I straightened slowly, resignation settling in alongside a strange, familiar resolve.
“Well,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “Welcome home, Celeste.”
She peeked at me through her fingers. “And Dad?”
I glanced at the toad.
He blinked at me.
“Temporary accommodations,” I said. “Very temporary.”
I wasn’t sure whether I could convince the Academy to let my ex inside rather than keep him in the garden where he could get snatched by an eagle.
Actually, maybe the garden wasn’t such a bad place for him to be.
I flushed the thought away. This was Celeste’s dad we were talking about.
But I had the sinking feeling that tonight was far from over.
The Academy didn’t fling open its doors for the toad, and I couldn’t even blame the school.
The charms shimmered with polite firmness, the sort of refusal that didn’t slam someone in the face but made it very clear they were not invited to the party.
Alex, my ex-husband, currently amphibious, sat on the threshold and glared at all of us as if we were the ones being unreasonable.
Celeste hovered beside me, cheeks flushed with embarrassment and disbelief, and I could feel the same frantic question rattling around in both our heads.
How?
“I didn’t do this. I just…I don’t think I could have. I’ve been a little preoccupied,” I explained.
Celeste crossed her arms, eyeing the toad. “I know you didn’t do this. You weren’t even there.”
“Yes, but magic has a way of finding me and your father,” I muttered, then immediately wished I hadn’t said it because Alex let out a smug little croak.
But the truth was, I didn’t need to be there to have Alex barking on all fours when he was in Colorado with one of his girlfriends last year.
It was plausible that I was responsible for this, but at the time it probably transpired, I was in the Wilds, ending the Hunger Path, and at no point during that process did Alex come to mind.
Keegan shifted his stance, watching the toad the way he watched anything that might bite. Stella, on the other hand, watched the situation with a kind of offended fascination, as though she had been personally inconvenienced by the universe’s sense of humor.
Twobble crept closer to the toad and squinted. “Does he… have to stay like this on the front step? Because I feel like the Academy is going to develop a rash.”
“The Academy won’t be the one with the rash,” Stella murmured, and her eyes slid to me with pointed sympathy.
I exhaled and tried to gather my thoughts, forcing myself to step away from panic and into problem-solving.
“Celeste,” I said gently, “tell me exactly what happened. No skipping. No ‘and then it was weird.’ Every detail.”
Celeste’s mouth flattened. “You’re going to hate this.”
“I already hate this,” I said.
“No, you’re going to hate the reason,” she replied.
She shifted her bag higher on her shoulder like she needed something solid to hold onto.
“Okay. We were walking toward the bus stop because Dad had suddenly decided he didn’t want to drive me here after all and then he insisted on carrying my backpack, even though he complained about it the entire time.
It felt like he thought he was doing me a favor by carrying my stuff, not even realizing the bigger picture, like going back on his word bring me here. ”
I narrowed my eyes. “Of course he did.”
Celeste gave me a look that said, Brace yourself.
“He was on one of his rants. About how Stonewick is a cult, and the local inn is a glorified haunted house, and how you’ve lost your mind.”
The toad croaked, a sound that was far too pleased with itself.
Keegan’s shoulders went tight. Stella’s expression intensified, but her fangs behaved.
Celeste continued, voice steady but with that faint edge she got when she was trying not to explode. “Then he started talking about his last girlfriend.”