Chapter 14That was the last word he had ever expected to hear fall from his father’s lips. Pap was too practical, too tied to the here and now to even pick up a magazine at the general store. “A waste of time,” he called it, and for him, it probably was. He had a family to support. He labored long days in the fields he’d grown up with, standing by his parents when he was all they had left. Life wasn’t about the hopes of places like carnivals, or wishes made in clouds, never to come true.
Yet…he sat opposite Levi, unblinking, unfazed by the turn of their conversation. A turn he’d made.
“Magic?” Levi parroted, then winced at what a fool he sounded.
“You tried messing with someone,” Pap said. “And it backfired on you worse than Mr. Marling’s truck.”
“How…how would you know that?”
“Where
