Blackwood (11 page)

  "Have the feds showed yet?" Phillips asked.

  His dad's head came up. "A few hours ago. To assist, not to take over. Yet."

  "It
is
a missing person's case."

  "Is it? I don't know, Phillips." His dad sighed. "Listen, I know I haven't ever wanted to talk about this before, but–"

  "I know about the birds and the bees, Dad. Also, about sex. I've been at boarding school in Kentucky, not a monastery."

  "I don't care about that – not right now." His dad paused. "Except you don't hurt that girl any more than she's already been hurt."

  He waited for a response, and Phillips nodded. "She needs my help."

  "That's fine, but we need to talk about you – your gifts. I know my mother had them too. I tried like hell to pretend she didn't, but it wasn't hard to miss the stream of women who showed up at our back door so she could talk to their dead or help their daughters. I didn't want that for you."

  The curtain behind his father had a sheen to it. Turkish prison with artful drapes.

  "But you want it now?" Phillips asked.

  "I want to find these people and get them home. This whole town – an emptiness like the one that's here, it will kill us all. It'll kill this island."

  Phillips didn't have any love for the town. Or any hate for it, really. Except for the way they'd treated Miranda, and she was in this up to her temple.

  "I can't hear anything right now, but I'll work on it tomorrow. I'm going to be helping Miranda–" Philips held up a hand to cover his father's protest "–find some answers. Those answers are the same ones you need. I think."

  "Do you have any idea what's going on here?"

  "No clue. But I'm going to find out, because if I don't Miranda's the next to go. Or something bad will happen to her. I don't know what exactly, but something."

  His dad leaned forward and poured a drink, downed it in one shot. He had on his cop face, thoughtful.

  "But her old man didn't vanish, he died. He was killed. A mystery in itself, since he was a sad drunk. Harmless. But he didn't vanish."

  
Not harmless to Miranda.
"I told you I don't know how, but it's connected. Get the autopsy done on him as fast as you can."

  "The university can't do it until Monday."

  "Use the feds, then. Convince them somehow. You need to know what killed him."

  Phillips waited to see if his dad would believe him for once. Trust him. The drapes swayed as the air conditioning kicked in.

  His dad nodded. "There's one more thing. Mom… your gram… when she died, she left a letter for you. I was supposed to give it to you. But I kept it."

  He held something out to Phillips. A cream envelope, gram's stationery with her initials on the front. The envelope was wrinkled, like it had been worried over.

  He didn't want to take it. His dad held it closer.

  "Your mom doesn't know about this, but I guess now I'll have to tell her. I didn't want this for you, but I don't think it's up to me anymore."

  Phillips didn't have a choice. He took it, halfway expecting a lightning strike. But the earth didn't move, the voices didn't clamor at his ears. His name was written across the back in his gram's small neat handwriting. He put the envelope in his pocket.

  His dad said, "You'll let me know anything important?"

  "Of course."

  "Go get some sleep."

  Phillips practically leapt to his feet. His father had never talked to him like this, like they were almost equals. Like he didn't blame Phillips for hearing spirits.

  Then he ruined it. "Don't think I'm not going to tell your mother what you were doing out there. Don't hurt that girl, Phillips. I mean it. She's been through enough."

• • • •

Miranda bolted back to the guest room, pressing the door quietly closed before Phillips busted her on his way upstairs. She'd known Phillips thought her family was connected to the disappearances, but hearing him tell his dad was different.

  He really did want to help her. And he thought she was next. Where were the vanished people?

  Miranda closed her eyes. She didn't want to go anywhere besides the one place she couldn't – off the island. Blackness waited inside her eyelids. The snake crawling toward her temple throbbed.

  She was so tired.

  Miranda pulled off her jeans and slid into bed next to Sidekick, blushing when she considered the porch. Phillips had been about to kiss her. And then the porch light, and his dad…

  She groaned and pulled the covers over her head. How would she face Sara? Who had let her stay in this nice house, who offered her turkey sandwiches and bubble bath?

  When she closed her eyes, her father's too-pale face swam before her. So instead she studied the ceiling, painted the pale blue of a spring sky. She remembered Phillips' reassurance that her mom wasn't watching, but the truth was: she wanted her watching.

  Miranda rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, waiting until her father's face faded and left only darkness.

The Island

The waves heaved against the shore in muted attack. Sand refused to shift and trees held still and inland streams flowed slow, soft. The island listened for the crash and roar of the coming storm. Craved the sound, the fury.

  
The island did not care for its spirits being held quiet.

  
Spirits that clamored, desperate to speak, more desperate to be heard. The boy had finally come home after too many years away. But the devil's hands have hushed and smothered them. Only those preparing to cross the border speak, and only to each other. The living cannot hear those awaiting resurrection. The living never have.

  
The dead hear every twisted syllable.

  
The waves and the sand and the trees listened. The island listened, and waited.

  
He has fashioned his will into a reality intricate as blood and iron and words. Soon, he will unlock the passage.

  
Soon, the spirits will not be silent.

10

Biscuits and Roses

Despite the need to get moving and find a way out of the whole 'being doomed' situation, Miranda lingered as long as she possibly could in the guest room the next morning.

  She let Sidekick out the door, knowing someone would give him backyard access, and finally managed that bath. Pacing around the guest room afterward, she picked a random book out from the shelf in the corner and started reading. The book was titled
The Haunting of Hill House
and unsurprisingly involved an old house that was supposed to be full of angry ghosts. When the sense of dread in the book began to mix with the one already hovering around her like an aura, she tossed it aside and checked the clock.

  10am.

  
Sigh.
She straightened her T-shirt, and left the room.

  She almost missed the single flower waiting on the floor outside the bedroom door – a perfectly formed rose made of… duct tape. Intricate silver folds shot up in a spray of triangular points to form the bloom, tear-shaped leaves dropping from the thick stem.

  Picking the unreal flower up, she twirled it, feeling a lot better about facing Sara's disapproval if Phillips wasn't going to be guy-like and ignore the night before's
almost
. That was what she'd feared, mainly because the only guys she knew were jerks (witness Bone).

  She slipped the rose stem through a loop on her jeans. The motion reminded her of sliding a hammer into place on her tool-belt. Concern spiked through her for the people at the show – even His Royal Majesty and demon Caroline. And, of course, Polly. Missing Polly.

  The smell of frying food tempted Miranda the rest of the way down the stairs and to the kitchen. Sara stood at the stove, transferring crisp slices of bacon onto a plate covered with a paper towel. Sidekick waited next to her, tail thudding against the cabinet, observing her every move with great hope. A heap of scrambled eggs waited on another plate.

  Miranda hovered at the entry. "Should I set the table?"

  Sara's head whipped toward her, startled, and Miranda couldn't stop a cringe as she waited to see whether she was in for cold distance or a heated talking-to.

  Instead Sara gave her a non-angry mother smile. "Why doesn't my son ever make that offer? That'd be great." She waved her spatula, "Plates are right up there, silverware in that 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 family."

  Phillips' hands landed on the table on either side of his plate and he stood. "We really should get going." He cast a pleading glance at Miranda, added, "Unless you aren't finished with breakfast?"

  Miranda's plate was still half full… but she was staving off awkward. "Sure, let's go." She grabbed a biscuit. "Thank you for breakfast."
And for the bits of info.
"Should we take Kicks? Is he trouble?"

  Sidekick gazed at Sara as if she might drop a crumb or a piece of bacon on his head. She scratched behind his ear and he leaned into her fingers. Sara said, "You guys go on, do your investigation. We'll make do. But you be careful. Phillips, we'll talk later."

  Miranda didn't realise until Phillips steered her through the front door with his hand on her back that he hadn't given any hint of where they were headed in such a hurry.

  "Where are we going?" she asked. "Your dad's work?"

  "Dr Whitson's place."

  The name meant nothing to her. "Who?"

  "Oh. You know, Dr Roswell."

  Miranda stopped on the steps down to the yard. The day was cooler than the one before, a promise of fall wrapped in late summer colors, and a strong breeze wrapped around her. The breeze wasn't unusual – there was always a breeze, whirling in from the outer islands and the ocean, flying across the salt-free Sound. But this wind didn't come from the ocean. It had begun somewhere else and now danced around them, the whole island in its cooler embrace.

  
Of course, it comes from the ocean. Where else would it come from?