“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.
