Blackwood by Gwenda Bond Page B

drawer."
      Miranda took several plates and picked out some silverware. They came from matching sets. A novelty.
      Sara craned her neck and yelled, "Phillips, breakfast!" No response, until she added, "Phillips – I know you can hear me. Oh, and Miranda is already down here."
      Feet battered the steps in a fast drumbeat, and Phillips swung around the edge of the arch. Miranda finished the last place setting and slid into a chair. She held up the rose, giving him a nod, then placing it awkwardly on the table next to her plate. I'm a moron.
      But the weirdest thing happened. Miranda could've sworn Phillips looked slightly embarrassed.
      He moved in close enough to the counter to grab a piece of bacon, handing her half as he sat in the chair next to hers.
       He gave me bacon.
      Sara joined them, setting the plates of food in the center of the table. She raised her eyebrows at the fake rose, but didn't ask about it. Snapping her fingers, she said, "Biscuits," before turning and attending to the oven.
      Phillips lowered his voice so he spoke only to Miranda. "It's a Steampunk rose – I didn't make it, bought it from another delinquent at school."
      She had to say something. "It's beautiful. And, um, it'll last forever."
      He smiled at her, and she wished with everything inside her that the snake would disappear and she could live in a normal world with this strange boy who – for some reason – had decided he liked her.
      Miranda crunched her bacon, taking in the fluffy golden tops of the biscuits on the plate Sara carried to the table. They looked like someone who grew up around there made them. As Sara slid into her chair, Miranda reached over and took one.
      "Where'd you learn to make actual biscuits?" Miranda asked.
      Miranda fully expected to discover that New Mexico was a hotbed of biscuit activity and her impressions gathered from an inadequate education were wrong. When you'd never been anywhere, it was impossible to know what other places were really like.
      Sara gave Phillips a look before answering, and Miranda wondered why the question had brought a strange stillness over the sunny kitchen. "The recipe is Phillips' grandmother's," she said. "She taught me before she passed away."
      The Witch of Roanoke Island. Miranda was desperate to ask about her, given what Philips had told her about the voices he heard and his conversation with his father.
      "I never met her," Miranda said. She'd sometimes fantasised about the Witch of Roanoke Island becoming her defender, after her mom died. Giving the jerks at school boils if they taunted her, or giving her a magical potion that made her normal. Broke the curse. She reached up and touched her father's birthmark.
      "She was a strong woman," Sara said, again watching Phillips. He didn't react except to keep chewing his eggs. "She couldn't stand the thought of someone living here who couldn't make her son and grandson the right kind of biscuits. The house has been in the family for generations, but it's always passed down to the daughters before. Biscuits are part of its legacy."
      Miranda tried to remember if the chief had any sisters or brothers. "Why not this time?"
      "She only had a son – there'd always been a girl child in the family line, as far back as anyone remembered. And they'd always lived well into their nineties, active right up to the end."
      Phillips stopped eating, but he didn't interrupt.
      "Technically," Sara said, "the house belongs to Phillips. His grandmother felt strongly it should be his. That this was the place he was meant to be. We don't really know why though. We only know the island's not good for him."
      Phillips said, "Mom."
      Miranda realised Sara was fishing. She wants to know what the letter said.
      She went on, "He and his father are both tied to this place, in different ways. I don't think I can fully understand. I never had that. My roots moved when I did. My roots are my