Page 365 of Wicked Brutal

She makes it three feet before Xander barrels out after her with Tobias on his back.

I just stare. Tobias is wearing a green cardboard crown, a green blanket knotted around his shoulders like a cape, and brandishing a cardboard wand colored aggressively green. And Xander—

“Oh my God.” Ryan starts laughing beside me.

Cassandra covers her mouth, but I hear hers too. Xander has green marker all over his face. Not a little. His cheeks are green. His nose is green. There are lines across his forehead.

“I’m a frog,” he informs us as he thunders past. Like that explains anything.

Walter nods. “Of course you are.”

Tobias spots Penny. “There!”

“I see her, Your Majesty!”

“GET HER!”

Penny shrieks and tries to change direction. Xander lunges. All three of them go down in the grass.

“NO!”

“TURN HER INTO A FROG!”

“I’M YOUR GIRLFRIEND!”

“Not anymore.” Xander uncaps the green marker. “Now you’re amphibious.”

Penny screams. Tobias loses his entire mind, laughing so hard he tips sideways off Xander’s back, crown sliding over one eye, while Xander grabs Penny’s wrist and draws something green across the back of her hand.

“Traitor!”

“Ribbit.”

“Xander!” He kisses her — right in the middle of her yelling at him — then draws another green line on her cheek. Tobias shrieks.

“She’s a frog!”

“She is!” Xander yells.

“I hate you,” Penny says, laughing.

“Language,” Xander tells her, solemn.

Ryan snorts. Walter shakes his head. Cassandra is still laughing.

And for one strange second, standing there with a court order in my hand and my mother’s will still burning behind my eyes, I just watch them. Tobias laughing. Really laughing. Not the careful version we’ve been getting for three weeks. Not the one that vanishes the second he remembers Mom. A six-year-old in a cardboard crown chasing Penny across the grass while Xander Anderson cheerfully lets himself be colored green.

Penny finally notices us. Her eyes widen. “Oh.”

Xander looks over his shoulder. Tobias follows his gaze. And his whole face changes when he sees me.

“ALLY!”

He scrambles up. The crown falls off. He doesn’t even notice. He runs. I barely have time to brace before he hits me, and Ryan’s hand catches my elbow automatically as I bend and wrap my arms around my brother. Cassandra reaches toward us, then stops when she sees Ryan already has me.

“Hey, little frog.”

“I’m not a frog.” He pulls back, deeply offended. “I’m the Frog King.”