Chapter Nine #2
My stomach sank. “Celeste…”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I know. I told him I didn’t want to hear it, and I thought it was so rude that he wouldn’t drive me here and was dumping me at the bus depot. But he kept going on about the girlfriend.”
The toad shifted, settling its belly more comfortably on the stone as if preparing for story time.
Celeste’s eyes flicked to the toad, then away, mortified. “He said she was two years older than me the whole time he dated her. Turns out she was my age.”
Stella’s face went very still.
Twobble’s eyes widened slowly. “That’s… gross.”
“It gets worse,” Celeste muttered. “He said he wasn’t that into her, and it was fine she dumped him because she was too needy anyway, and that if it would make me feel better, he’d drive me to Stonewick, so we stopped walking and turned back to the car, but then he kept going about the new woman he had eyes on. ”
Keegan made a low sound under his breath that wasn’t human.
My dad showed up just in time to hear his granddaughter talk about my ex, and his jaw clenched so hard I heard his teeth click.
Celeste pressed on, cheeks flushing darker. “When we got to the car, my dad said, and I quote, Thankfully, someone at the coffee shop in my condo building caught my eye, as if he were doing market research or something.”
The toad croaked again, but it was louder and absolutely smug.
My hands curled into fists.
“And then,” Celeste said, voice dropping, “he started picking on you again. He said you were still obsessed with him and still dramatic about the divorce and that you’d never get over him and that you were probably teaching me how to be a professional grudge holder.”
I blinked, anger flaring so fast it made my vision sharpen. “He said that?”
Celeste nodded, lips pressed together. “I told him to stop. He laughed. And then he said—” She hesitated, eyes flicking up to mine. “He said you were lucky anyone wanted you at your age.”
The air in the hall seemed to tighten.
Stella’s eyes went dark, and the glint of her fangs emerged.
Keegan’s hand flexed like he was imagining the shape of Alex’s throat in a previous, less amphibious form.
Twobble’s voice went small. “That’s… unbelievably rude.”
“I know,” Celeste said tightly. “And then he started talking again about the girlfriend and the coffee shop lady and how it was nice to have someone younger appreciate him.”
The toad’s throat puffed, and he ribbited in a way that sounded like a laugh.
Something cold slid down my spine.
“Keep going,” I said softly.
Celeste swallowed. “I got so mad I didn’t even know what to do with my anger. You’ve never spoken ill of Dad, even when you’ve had every reason to tell me things. I’m old enough to have figured things out, but you’ve been the most gracious person I’ve ever met, and I just lost it.”
“What happened?” I asked, though I already knew.
She pointed at the toad. “He started ribbeting.”
The word landed in the space between us like a dropped plate.
“He—” I stopped, because my brain tried to reject the image. “He just… started?”
Celeste nodded. “When we were in the car, that's when my anger boiled over. At first, it was like he was choking. Then he made this sound, and it was horrible and hilarious at the same time, and he tried to clear his throat like it was normal. But he couldn’t. He did it again. He got small. Poof. Flash of Light. And…” she looked at her dad.
Stella’s gaze snapped to Twobble.
Twobble’s gaze snapped to Stella.
They didn’t speak, but something passed between them, swift and uneasy, like two people recognizing a particular kind of trouble.
“And then?” I asked.
Celeste lifted her shoulders helplessly.
“Then his voice just… slipped. Like it stopped being a voice. His hands got weird. Not immediately full toad, but… not right. He tried to swear, but it came out like—” She made a small ribbit sound, then looked like she wanted to crawl into the stone floor.
“And then he shrank. And then he was… that.”
The toad blinked at us.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
It wasn’t cute.
My mind raced through everything I knew about transformation magic, about thresholds, about magical rebound, and none of it fit the timing she described.
A destabilized boundary could amplify things, yes.
Unresolved emotions could snag a person, yes.
But this wasn’t a stumble. This wasn’t magic randomly summarizing Alex’s personality into amphibian form.
This was targeted.
This was sharp.
This was… advanced.
My stomach turned.
Because I had done something once…something petty and impulsive and, at the time, deeply satisfying. I had turned Alex into a barking dog.
Not physically, not truly. He’d been human, still human, but barking on all fours, furious and humiliated and utterly unable to stop himself. A prank, I’d told myself. A little karmic nudge. A harmless outlet for anger I didn’t want to feed.
But this?
This wasn’t barking.
This was full transformation. Deep. Complete. A spell that rewrote the body, not just the behavior. A spell with teeth.
My eyes widened as the truth started to rise, slowly and dreadfully.
“That wasn’t me,” I whispered again, but this time it wasn’t reassurance.
It was realization.
Celeste stared at me. “Mom?”
I looked at her, then at the toad, then back at her.
“The timing,” I said, voice shaking. “The trigger. It happened when he started… when he started saying those things.”
Celeste’s eyes narrowed. “So what does that mean?”
“It means,” I said slowly, “that something heard him.”
The Wilds? No, this wasn’t the Wilds. The Academy? We weren’t here yet. The Hollows? They held vows, not petty insults. This felt older. Sharper. Like a force that didn’t care about social norms but cared deeply about balance.
Or consequence.
Stella’s gaze remained fixed on the toad, her expression carefully blank in the way it got when she was thinking too hard.
“Maeve,” the vampire said softly, “that wasn’t your spell.”
“I know,” I whispered.
Twobble’s ears drooped. “Then whose was it?”
Before I could answer, the air shifted.
A familiar sweep of presence moved down the hall, quick and smooth, like wind deciding it had business indoors.
Nova appeared around the corner, robes whispering, staff in hand, her eyes bright with that distant awareness that meant she was always three steps ahead of the rest of us.
She took one look at the gathered group, the tense faces, the Academy’s pulse flaring faintly with agitation.
Then her gaze dropped.
She gasped.
Her whole body pulled back a fraction, brows shooting up, mouth parting in a rare flash of genuine shock.
“Oh,” she breathed, staring at the toad.
The toad croaked.
Nova’s expression shifted instantly from surprise to a deep, unimpressed frown.
Then, as if remembering herself, her eyes lifted to Celeste.
And her face softened into a smile that brightened the entire hall.
“Celeste,” she said warmly. “Welcome back to Stonewick.”
Celeste blinked, caught off guard. “Hi… Nova.”
Nova’s smile held, gentle and real, even as the strange, unsettled hum beneath the Academy rose, as if it too had realized this arrival wasn’t just a coincidence.
And the night, which had already given us too much, quietly promised more.