The Bone Artists
Author: Madeleine Roux
Date: 2015-08-04 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short Stories; Thriller; Mysteries & Detective Stories; Fiction; Paranormal; New Experience; Mystery Thriller; Mystery; Horror; Young Adult; Fantasy; Social Themes; Novella; Young Adult Fiction
Description: In this bone-chilling digital original story set in the world of Madeleine Roux's New York Times bestselling novel Asylum, a Louisiana teen tries to make tuition money working for a sinister organization but finds that leaving comes at a terrible cost. When Dan, Abby, and Jordan meet Oliver in Catacomb―the third book in the Asylum series―he is a mysterious young antiques dealer with a dark past. But before he was stuck in America's most haunted city, he was a teenager with a bright future ahead of him. In this story, we find Oliver saving up to attend his dream college in the fall and leave be
Publisher: HarperTeen

EPIGRAPH

“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.”

—ERICH FROMM, MAN FOR HIMSELF

“Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”

—AMBROSE BIERCE, THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY

CONTENTS

1. Epigraph
2. Prologue
3. Chapter 1
4. Chapter 2
5. Chapter 3
6. Chapter 4
7. Chapter 5
8. Chapter 6
9. Chapter 7
10. Chapter 8
11. Chapter 9
12. Chapter 10
13. Chapter 11
14. Chapter 12
15. Chapter 13
16. Chapter 14
17. Chapter 15
18. Chapter 16
19. Acknowledgments

20. Excerpt from Catacomb

1. Prologue

2. Chapter 1

21. Back Ads
22. About the Author
23. Books by Madeleine Roux
24. Photo Credits
25. Copyright
26. About the Publisher

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Chapter 1

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These were the rules as they were first put down:

First, that the Artist should choose an Object dear to the deceased.

Second, that the Artist feel neither guilt nor remorse in the taking.

Third, and most important, that the Object would not hold power until blooded. And that the more innocent the blood for the blooding, the more powerful the result.

>

His friend’s voice was frantic on the other end of the line.

Oliver had only heard him that upset one other time, when they had climbed a nasty old chain-link fence in Bywater and Micah had sliced his palm open on a jagged link at the top. The cut clearly needed stitches—there had been blood soaking Micah’s clothes, all down the front of his new Saints T-shirt. The blood was on Oliver, too, but somehow he remained calm, got Micah to pedal on his bike back through the neighborhood toward home. Then came Micah’s grandmother and a trip to the hospital, and it was all fixed.

Oliver wasn’t so sure any phone call or hospital could fix this. He could hear something sizzling and popping in the background, and his friend could barely breathe as he wheezed into the cell phone.

“Ollie? Ollie, oh shit, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. . . .”

Four Days Earlier

Oliver splashed his face with ice-cold water, reaching blindly for the hand towel he knew would be hanging just to the right of the mirror. He didn’t bother with a shave, since he was growing attached to the wiry scruff of a goatee he had managed to grow. Hey, at seventeen that was a badge of honor. It wasn’t nearly as full or legit as Micah’s, but that kid was descended from swamp people, and from the pictures Oliver had seen at Micah’s house, even the youngish cousins all seemed to have giant shag beards, messy as birds’ nests, by twenty.

And anyway there wasn’t time to shave. He had to pick up his girlfriend, Sabrina, and Micah from karate or judo or whatever they were teaching at the dojo where they worked.

Oliver dried his face, smirking, patting down the wisp of a mustache over his upper lip, trying to hide the scar that subtly deformed the skin there. A surgery for cleft palate as a kid had left him up one scar and his family down a significant load of cash. He hated hospitals. What was the point of insurance if they could still gouge the hell out of you for stuff like surgeries? On a kid? It was all backward.

That was one of many reasons he daydreamed about hauling ass to Canada one day. Things were different there. Oliver could get far, far away from his family’s shop and do something, maybe open a garage. Tinkering with cars for the rest of his life would be just fine, especially if Micah and Sabrina came along. Was Vancouver nice? Or Ottawa? He’d have to look it up. They could try Montreal, even though only Micah spoke a lick of French, and his was the muddled Creole kind.

But Oliver was getting ahead of himself. He had news. Awesome news. Sabrina and Micah needed to know ASAP because Oliver was bursting out of his skin trying to keep it to himself. He hurried out of the small bathroom, avoiding the creaky old door that never shut properly anyway. Katrina had done a number on the building, and the lingering damage had left the doorways, floors, and ceilings warped. Most of the doors in the house had to be shouldered shut because of misshapen wood frames. Without the cash to make the repairs, Oliver’s family had seen only to what was most crucial—the active leaks, the windows broken by looting, the mold, the water-damaged furniture. . . .

He winced, thinking about all the small fixes he would do if he had the time. Or hell, the money. That would change, he decided. Not right away. Not with the minimal cash flow he managed between working hours at the family antique shop and the Part-Time Job.

That’s how he referred to it in his head. It was easier to pretend it wasn’t shady—wasn’t illegal—if he gave it a nice, safe nickname.

That Part-Time Job would be taking up most of his Monday evening, but for now he had that news to deliver and breakfast to snag on his way out the door. Spring break was a godsend. Prime tourist time, it meant his father was busy almost nonstop in the shop—knickknacks of the vintage variety were always big with visitors to the Big Easy, and the flow of tourism seemed to get better and better every year. It had been scary there for a while in the recovery years, but now things felt almost back to normal. That thrilled his father, and it thrilled Oliver, too, since it meant he could pick up as many hours as he wanted now and also feel better about leaving his dad later.

Because he was definitely leaving. Finally, the University of Texas had gotten back to him. Missing the early decision deadline had stressed him out big-time, but now he had his answer and the answer was: yes, Oliver could attend the school’s mechanical engineering program. Hell, maybe if things went his way he wouldn’t just tinker with cars for a living, he would design them. Austin was close enough that Oliver could zip home for any holidays or family emergencies, and it was far away enough to escape the long, long shadow cast by Berkley & Daughters.

The family business. Oliver could hear said business booming next door. The Berkleys liked to keep work and home close together, their second-story suite of apartments just one door and two dozen steps away from the shop.

Correction—Nick Berkley liked to mingle business and family. Oliver wasn’t in love with the shop the way his dad was.

“That’s what I told your granddaddy, too,” Oliver muttered under his breath. His father had informed him as much the last time they’d had the same old dinner conversation about Oliver’s future. It always ushered in a tense silence. Forks and knives were never so loud screaming across plates.

Oliver opened the closet, grabbed a light canvas coat, and pulled it on, patting the pockets to make sure the acceptance letter from UT was still there. Its reassuring bulk on the left breast gave him a smile. Dad didn’t know yet, and frankly, Oliver wasn’t eager for that confrontation. But screw it. Today was about feeling good. It was about spring break.

The closet was wallpapered in news clippings, magazine pages, and posters, some glossy, some faded. It was like a living timeline of his life and interests—flaking LEGO ads taped over with Catherine Zeta-Jones posters taped over with cheesy fantasy dragon illustrations taped over with muscle cars taped over with Saints pennants. An odd little time capsule to hold his simple wardrobe.

The corridor leading from his attic-like bedroom down the hall to the kitchen was narrow and dark. Nobody smart had designed the layout of the apartment—the halls all turned out pokey and far, far away from any natural light. On the kitchen counter, the last two bananas were about to go bad, so Oliver took them both, peeling one and pocketing the other as he grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge.

Coffee would come soon, but not until he had Sabrina and Micah with him. Then he could push the crisp, white paper across a café table to them and sit back to sip his morning brew with everything just a bit righter in his world.

He didn’t expect her to call on his way to pick up Sabrina.

Oliver pulled his beloved Challenger over, idling it safely against the curb, too nervous to juggle the phone, banana, and steering wheel all at the same time. Not with her on the line. Not with her voice slithering into his ear.

“Oliver, dear, it’s been six whole days. That’s practically a lifetime in my line of work,” she said.

Sucking in a deep breath, he tried to let the hum of the vintage engine put him at ease. This was just a phone call. At least Briony the Dragon Lady wasn’t sneering down at him in person. Christ. That was an experience he dreaded with every cell in his body.

He tossed the half-eaten banana into the passenger seat. The almost too-ripe smell was making his stomach go queasy.

“Hello, Briony,” he said with singsong mock enthusiasm. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Do I need bloody cheek from you? No, I certainly do not.”

The first time Oliver had met Briony Kerr, balanced on her knife-dagger high heels, he had made the mistake of thinking her attractive. Objectively, she was, but the wife of his boss was all angles—blunt cut, peroxide-bottle white hair; frosty-gray eyes bearing down on him like lasers. . . . He shuddered at the most recent memory. A six-day-old memory, in fact.

Oliver watched the tourists going up and down the sidewalk. “We’re finishing up tonight. You’ll have what you asked for tomorrow, all right?”

Shit. Tomorrow. In the wake of his good news, Oliver had managed to push away the thought of the Part-Time Job he and Micah needed to finish that night.

“I see. Tomorrow, then.”

“Yup!”

“You’re lucky I’m such a patient woman.”

Patient! What a crock of . . .

“So lucky,” Oliver chirped. “The luckiest.”

“Right. You can dispense with the sarcastic commentary, Mr. Berkley. I’ll expect to see you at seven tomorrow at your family’s charming establishment.”

He waited until the other end went dead before releasing a huge sigh. There was no telling if it was from relief or irritation. Oliver chucked his phone onto the passenger seat and eased his car back out onto the street, wary of the heavy foot traffic that tended to spill over into the roads. Chewing the edge of his thumb, he did his best not to gun the engine and smash into a few pedestrians. It might have helped his mood. Then again, he was already flirting with the wrong side of the law by working for Briony; the last thing he needed was anyone looking too closely at his after-school activities.

His phone buzzed on the seat and Oliver swept it up, keeping one elbow balanced carefully on the steering wheel. It was Sabrina’s ringtone.

Don’t tell me you have to cancel, he thought.

“We finished early,” the text read, “meet u at CC’s.”

That suited him fine, since the crosstown drive to grab them from the dojo and get back to CC’s was a pain. But from where he idled at a stop, it wasn’t far to the locals-only coffee joint on Esplanade. Finding parking was a nightmare, especially for a muscle car, one that didn’t exactly fit the sizing standards of the narrow old New Orleans streets. An honest-to-God thundercloud hovered over his head by the time he pushed open the door to the cafe and inhaled the bitter, exhilarating scent of fresh coffee grounds.

That early in the morning and that frustrated, he could bathe in that smell.

Oliver swung his keychain around his forefinger while he waited in line, eyes focused on nothing in particular. He knew what he wanted, but his mind kept drifting unhelpfully back to their impending obligations.

From the start, Oliver had kept Sabrina out of it. She knew what he and Micah were up to, but only in the sparest sense. It was Micah who’d pulled him into it in the first place, some family connection through one of the kooky old swamp dogs related to his friend. At first it seemed like a joke. Dig up a few musty pocket watches for extra cash? Sure, count him in. It wasn’t all that different, after all, from what his own family did at their antique shop.

He rolled his eyes at the thought. All right, that was pushing it. There were, of course, unethical people in the salvage and antiques world, but that wasn’t how the Berkleys operated. They didn’t steal, they didn’t swindle, and they certainly didn’t rob graves.

God, but Oliver hated putting it that way.

He just had to keep Sabrina out of it and hope that while she and Micah taught the kids classes at the dojo, Micah never spilled more than was appropriate.

You’re robbing graves together for the Dragon Lady, none of this is appropriate.

“How ya doing today?” Grace, the girl behind the counter, practically pierced his eardrum with her greeting. She beamed up at him, knuckles to the countertop, wiggling like she was at the start of a race.

Nobody should ever be that cheerful at this hour. . . .

“He’s grumpy, apparently, Grace, so you better make it a double shot Americano today.” Micah had crept up on him, clapping a hand roughly on Oliver’s back. He yelped and jumped, shooting Grace a sheepish smile. Damn karate-jiu-jitsu-ninja skills.

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed. “What he said.”

“The usual for you two cutie pies?” Grace asked, turning her same bright smile on Micah and Sabrina. They had changed out of their teaching clothes, but still looked like they had come from working out, Micah in a loose gray tee and track shorts, Sabrina in a Lycra sport top and sweatpants.

“That’ll do nicely, Grace,” Micah said, turning on the charm. He matched her smile, leaning onto the counter by the register and winking. “When are you going to go out with me, Grace? It’s just not fair.”

“Oh, you big fool, stop teasing.” Grace rolled her eyes, shaking her head of thick, red ringlets before passing their orders on to another barista. “Y’all been teaching this morning? Aren’t those kids in their little white outfits just the cutest darn thing? Melts your heart.”

“You should come around sometime. You know, take a class. I could show you. . . .”

“Mega gross-out,” Sabrina muttered.

That was Oliver’s cue to take her aside, away from Micah’s hot pursuit, and clear of the line forming behind them. Customers were already grumbling about the holdup. Fit and tall, clean smelling even after teaching kids karate all morning, Sabrina always made him feel like a slouch. The luckiest slouch. It felt like sheer, dumb luck that she even went out with him. Micah had introduced them a few months back and somehow it all just clicked. It had been a rare stroke of romantic genius to pick her up in his Challenger, take her to Raising Cane’s to grab some chicken fingers to go, and then perch near the river on a bench.

They’d talked until it was dark and angry texts started pouring in from her dad.

Months later, the smell of french fries and Texas toast still made him think of that afternoon and made his heart beat a little faster.

“You need to talk to Micah,” she said, shattering his olfactory stroll down memory lane. “He’s being a total shithead about Diane.”

“Diane?” Clearly he was a few steps behind. “Is she ticked at him or something?”

“No! Oliver, come on, baby, you know where this is going. It’s Micah.”

Oh. Oh!

“Yeah okay, I can see that . . . that it would be weird for him to go out with your sister.”

“Practically incestuous, okay?”

“Well, hey, slow down, no . . . We’re not brothers or anything.” Oliver was beginning to realize he had no leg to stand on in this conversation, as he himself found the idea of he and his best friend dating sisters to be weird. “But I take your point,” Oliver finished, and he was rewarded with a brief flicker of a smile from his girlfriend. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Thanks, baby.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek, then breezed by to pick up the coffee orders that had just been called.

Damn. Already off on the wrong track for the day. It wasn’t supposed to be about Micah. It was supposed to be about him. His news. His future.

“Hey, so, I wanted to show y’all this,” Oliver said, lurching up on his seat to take out his acceptance letter. He had finally yanked Micah away from the counter, luring him to a nice, airy table by the windows with the promise of good news. Fans whirred overhead. The bright, naked bulbs lighting the coffee house glimmered off the newly washed table.

Micah reached for the letter at once, grabbing it before Sabrina could get a look.

“Ass,” she muttered.

“Oh, pipe down, would you? You’ll get your turn.”

“Yeah, but why you always gotta be first? What is with that? Compensating for something, big man? And what’s all this shit with you and Diane? Don’t think I didn’t hear about that.”

“As I was saying,” Oliver interrupted. He shifted his glass across the table, the soft screeching sound making his friends fall silent. “I got in. Austin. They said yes.”

“Hell yes they did!” Laughing, Micah thumped his fist on the table, shaking their cups. “That’s what I’m talking about, brother. That’s fantastic.”

“Like there was ever any doubt.”

Oliver cleared his throat, rubbing nervously at the scar on his upper lip. It felt good, real good, to get this kind of acknowledgment. Especially from Sabrina. God, he just hoped they could keep their relationship going when he moved away. Maybe she could come with . . . No, that was asking way too much. She had her own life to think about, and Austin wasn’t so far away.

Sabrina reached over and touched his shoulder, smiling at him while Micah leapt up to buy them a round of celebratory chocolate chip cookies.

“Seriously, baby, I’m real proud,” she said, rubbing his arm. She paused to take a sip from her steaming cup of coffee. She looked up from the mug and smacked her lips, gazing out the window, the bright sunlight making her smooth, dark skin glitter. “We should celebrate. I’ve got tonight free. What do you think? Cane’s? Diane’s got a fake ID, she could score us some champagne.”

“’Cause we can afford that.” Oliver chuckled and tossed his head.

“Just the cheap stuff, nothing crazy.”

“And anyway, I can’t,” he said. “I promised Micah I would . . .”

I promised Micah I would help him rob a grave.

“That I’d help make gumbo for his church thing. He needs like three giant batches and it’d take him forever on his own.”

“You two idiots don’t know how to cook a good gumbo. I can stop by,” she said with a shrug, but she had looked away, retreating a little. She wanted to celebrate and damn it, now Oliver had to lie to protect her.

It really is for your own good.

Briony and the others he saw sometimes at drop-offs never did anything, per se, but Oliver got the distinct impression they could. There was something unnatural, something vicious about that woman. Nobody ought to be able to walk in heels that high and that pointy without falling over. And the others? Well, they were worse, in a way, often so silent, just hunched over, working, working, scraping, carving. . . .

“Babe, you know how his people are,” Oliver said softly, meaningfully, in the voice he hated to use, the one that always made him feel like he was naked and screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Ha. Yeah. His grandmother and black people. Just one more reason he should keep his crazy ass away from Diane.”

“You know how he is when he gets an idea in his head,” Oliver said, hiding behind his glass. Micah was on his way back to the table, cookie-heaped plate in hand, a smile on his face like he needed to seduce the whole world, including his best friends.

“Yes,” Sabrina said with a sigh. “Yes, I do.”

“I don’t know why he’d listen to me over you.”

“Because your bro-code bullshit has reached peak levels,” she muttered. “And he never listens to me anyway.”

“I’ll talk to him, Bri, I promise. Tonight, okay? We’ll have the whole night to talk, just two bros making gumbo.”

Making gumbo. Robbing graves. What was the difference, really?

“You know, Briony called me today. She call you at all?”

Micah hurried along next to him, thumbs hooked into the straps of the backpack bouncing on his shoulders. “Me? No.”

They both hunched over, heads partially obscured by dark hooded sweatshirts. Parking on Derbigny, they walked the rest of the way to the cemetery’s entrance. A big, flashy muscle car sitting right by their destination wouldn’t exactly have been subtle.

“What did she want?”

“She’s impatient. She wants the Roland job finished. I’m supposed to drop everything off at the shop tomorrow. . . .” Make that today. Two in the morning. He’d probably look a tired mess, just grabbing a few hours of sleep before he had to be up and helping in the family shop. “I hate when she calls. It’s like she can see me through my damn phone.”

“Maybe she can.”

Oliver swatted his friend on the shoulder, sticking close as they rounded the corner, following the jagged outline of wrought-iron fencing that outlined the cemetery. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Who’s being an idiot?” Micah threw a quick glance toward the aboveground mausoleums rising like dunes in the darkness. “Oh. Of course. Mr. Skeptical . . .”

Oliver lowered his voice, checking to make sure nobody was following them as they neared the gates of St. Roch’s. “What? You think she’s a witch or something? That’s farfetched, even for you.”

“Not a witch, no. But ain’t nothing wrong with having a healthy fear of what you don’t understand.”

“I understand that she’s rich and that she has us by the balls until we get this done and she forks over the cash.”

Any fear Oliver had of that woman was grounded in reality. She probably hid guns and worse in her fancy little blazers.

The entrance to St. Roch’s stood guarded by two white statues, pious women with their hair braided around their heads like crowns. But Oliver and Micah weren’t going in the conventional way, not when the gates would be shut for the night. They stopped well shy of the main entrance, stooping in the looming bulk of a crenellated brick building. Micah knelt and made a cradle out of his hands, helping Oliver step before hoisting him up, holding there until Oliver could scramble safely over the top of the fence. He landed with a thud, remembering to bend his knees to make for a softer descent. Micah climbed the iron bars with no trouble at all, practically a monkey from his years of athletic training.

Once inside, surrounded by waist-high monuments and graves, the boys fell silent. Oliver didn’t believe in any of the old-school, mystical, Voudon junk Micah did, but graveyards spooked him all the same. The thought that there were bones everywhere beneath their feet, eyeless skulls watching them just below the surface of the earth, spindly fingers crossed over their chests or at their sides, or reaching . . .

Micah smacked him on the chest, nodding toward the path to the left, and farther down that way, the chapel. Not a single tree broke up the line of sight between the gates and the chapel itself, giving the cemetery a stark, desolate feel. No oaks hung with moss and resurrection fern, just open air and the profile of the chapel rising against the moon and stars. Someone down the block had cooked barbecue that night, a smoky, tangy scent lingering over the graves. Oliver’s stomach turned at the combination of cooked flesh and what he knew lurked below his sneakers.

His friend led the way, dodging nimbly around stone markers and mausoleums. By day, St. Roch’s wasn’t much cheerier, not in Oliver’s opinion. It was an institution, and a kind of macabre mecca for Southern loreseekers. He had never been inside the place before, but Micah had. They swept clear of the front doors of the narrow, tall, white building, keeping to the right side. As they’d previously discussed, both of them stayed low, Oliver turning to keep an eye out for security guards or curious pedestrians on the sidewalk. The spring heat worked in their favor, coaxing most folks, even those keen for an evening stroll, to stay inside by a fan or AC unit.

Micah, meanwhile, did what he did best.

A latch clicked over his shoulder, and Oliver braced. It just seemed wrong, sneaking into a chapel, into a place of worship, poking around where people had prayed and where the two boys didn’t belong.

Or maybe just he didn’t belong.

Micah held the crooked old window open long enough for Oliver to squeeze through and then slid in behind him, chuckling softly as he did so. Breaking in, sneaking around . . . It came to Micah as naturally as breathing. He had gotten busted for stealing little stuff when they were younger, a candy bar here, a CD there, but Micah always found a way to talk himself out of it and walk away with a slap on the wrist.

But that was Micah through and through, changeable with the wind. The good little church-going, God-fearing kid one week and the big bad influence the next. Oliver never knew which one would show up on any given day.

And without him you wouldn’t be even close to affording tuition. Suck it up.

Two thousand bucks to dig around for a few pocket watches and necklaces was too good to pass up.

“Did you bring the list?” Oliver whispered. The chapel had to be empty at that time of night, but he kept his voice low all the same. Micah walked quickly to what looked like a low shelving unit and a bunch of lumps on the wall opposite from where they had broken in. His boots crunched over cockroach shells.

“It’s in here,” his friend replied, tapping his left temple. He pulled a box of matches from his pocket and struck a light, then leaned forward and touched the flame to a half dozen candles of varying heights scattered across the lowest shelf.

Oliver gasped as the room and all that was in it flared to life.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

“Kind of inappropriate, mm? Given the circumstances,” his friend chided playfully. “Stop gawking, we have shit to take care of.”

“Sorry, it’s just . . .” Horrifying.

The word died on his lips but stayed vivid in his mind. The wall was covered in pieces of human beings, or rather, plastic and wood and glass parts of former owners. Prosthetics. Plaster feet, plaster hands, masks, arms, even glass eyeballs skewed and directionless, watching him under the warm glow of the candles. Most of the hands and feet hung from metal hooks pushed into the plaster.

A chipped, yellowed statue of Mary presided over the collection from a nearby corner.

“I’d heard about this place, just didn’t realize it would look like this,” he said, approaching the abandoned relics slowly.

Micah, meanwhile, had shoved his face close to what appeared to be a carved wooden peg leg. He squinted, peering over his glasses and twisting his head, trying to read something on its side. “Yeah. Freaky, huh? They’re mostly just repros. Thanks for healing my hand, Saint Roch, here’s a model of it. It’s a little easier to swallow in the daylight.”

Somehow Oliver doubted that.

Not that he was a stranger to odd artifacts—his father’s shop was full of the stuff, little taxidermied raccoons and alligator claws and bird skeletons. . . . But there was something different about these left-behind pieces. He reached out and, with trembling fingers, touched one of the smooth, white hands. He shuddered; it was warm to the touch, heated by the candles, but felt as if it had just been plucked from a living owner.

“So who was this Roland person anyway?” Oliver murmured, recoiling from the wall.

Micah didn’t seem to mind doing the bulk of the work, searching along the wall for his target. “Does it matter? We just need to find his hand thingie and his fingers.”

“Wait. Fingers? You don’t actually mean—”

Snorting, Micah shot him a wry look, finally unhooking a plaster-cast hand from the right corner of the shrine. “Do you honestly think grabbing this thing off the wall is worth two grand to someone? Come on, Oliver. Use your head.”

He felt suddenly queasy, watching Micah stuff the hand in his backpack, the open zipper revealing a sliver of a small garden trowel. The other boy leaned down and blew out the candles, leaving them abruptly in darkness, the shrine filtered through coils of smoke.

“I thought we were just taking stuff, not bones. That’s messed up.”

And it’s not what I signed up for.

Micah crossed to him, his face hovering just an inch or so away, his eyes a dull, dark gray as they roamed over Oliver’s face. Then he clapped Oliver on the shoulder and shrugged, nodding toward the jimmied window behind him. “I don’t like it either, man, but do you honestly want to back out now?”

Immediately he thought of Briony, of getting on her bad side.

“These aren’t good people, Ollie,” Micah was saying, going to hold the window open for him to crawl through. “They do shit I do not agree with. There are forces they play with that guys like you and guys like me do not get. That we have no business trucking in. They ain’t called Bone Artists because they carve wood.”

Oliver nodded, pulling in a shaky breath. “I get it. I’m just not sure I can—”

“I’ll do it,” Micah told him in a soft, strange voice, pitying, maybe. “Just keep watch. It’ll be slower that way, but at least we won’t get caught.”

Oliver was beginning to sweat heavily in his sweatshirt.

It was the humidity, sure, but it was also the sounds. He listened to the scraping of Micah’s trowel as he dug out the corner grave in the cemetery. Try as he might, he couldn’t drown out the sounds—the shhesh-shhush as Micah made piles of the displaced dirt, the louder breathing as the heat and the work took its toll, the sudden bursts of loud, cackling laughter from a house down the street. . . .

“Are you almost done?” It was a stupid question. Oliver wasn’t foolish enough to think unearthing a coffin was a moment’s work. He shifted, trying to stay low enough to blend with the gravestones and mausoleums. With no trees and little shadow, they were completely exposed to the night and to whoever might come looking.

That smoky, unsettling barbecue smell drifted over the cemetery, mingling sickeningly with the heat.

Micah said nothing, continuing to dig.

“Listen, I told Sabrina I’d talk to you about this Diane thing. She’s not happy about it. Y’all are grown-ups and it’s none of my business, I know that, but like . . . Don’t you think with your family and everything it’s just not a great idea?”

“I wouldn’t exactly be bringing her around for supper.”

“That’s what I mean. Don’t you think that’s wrong?”

“Could you shut up? I’m trying to work here. . . .”

Oliver winced, turning to make sure nobody was watching them from the rear fence of the cemetery. Silence. Silence and then that sudden laughter and the smell of cooked, smoked flesh filling his nose . . . He tightened the muscles over his stomach, forcing down a wave of nausea. Closing his eyes, he visualized that two grand. He pictured getting his first tuition bill, setting up loans, trying to make this degree work with what little he could scrape together.

And anyway, Micah was taking the bullet, doing the worst of the work.

“Sorry,” he whispered, wiping at the sweat pouring off his temples.

He rested his arm against the stone of a stout, rectangular mausoleum, feeling the stone gradually warm against his overheated skin. With no trees there were no strange shadows to wreak havoc on his imagination, but without that cover he felt watched, and maybe he should. If all the mystic mumbo-jumbo Micah believed in was even half true then surely their actions were stirring up the dead.

Shivering even in the humidity, he grew still, hearing the trowel make a hollow cracking noise, bumping against more than dirt.

Micah mumbled something, maybe a prayer, and then Oliver heard a rusted latch giving way to metal snips. He had to wonder just how many tools of the trade Micah had in his bag; Oliver had never asked for a tutorial. If he knew how to break into a secured building or pick a lock, then he’d have no reason to bring Micah along on these jobs. He’d have to go alone, and that, he thought with a noisy swallow, was not an option.

He turned and knelt in the disturbed dirt heaped beside the grave. Micah hadn’t dug very far. Oliver wondered if maybe the hurricane had left the graveyard with less topsoil and therefore less to cover the grave. St. Roch’s had been under standing water just like everywhere else. The coffin was old, or maybe that was just what earth, wear and tear, and a flood did to a wooden box. Almost all of the other marked graves were above ground, corpses safely covered by stone or within the mausoleum itself, much smarter for flood country.

This grave, he noticed, wasn’t marked at all.

“Are you going to keep watch or help?” Micah asked, out of breath. He jammed the trowel between the lid and side of the coffin, wiggling it.

The lid began to give and Oliver felt his courage waver. “Keep watch, I guess. Um, let me know if you need help.”

But actually please don’t.

He swiveled, closing his eyes again as the sounds continued, painting almost as vivid a picture as if he were watching the robbery itself. His mind filled with sudden doubts. He really should have read up on the penalties for getting caught doing this stuff. Was it better or worse that they were stealing from a dead person? No injured parties, really, but trafficking in body parts couldn’t be nothing in the eyes of the law, either. Shit. Maybe he should have told Sabrina more about this. She was clever, clever enough to stay away from shady crap like this. . . .

But not clever enough to stay away from me.

“Bingo,” he heard Micah whisper. There was another sound, the worst one, listening to the quick, meaty chop as Micah severed the fingers from the hand. Flesh. Jesus, that meant the body couldn’t be that old. Micah winced, trowel scraping along the bottom of the box as he scooped up the bones.

“This is so disgusting,” Oliver hissed.

“There’s no blood or anything.”

“Not the point, man.”

“I’ve got what we need,” Micah said, ignoring him. “Let me cover this back up and we can—”

“Hey!” Oliver froze at the sound. It was a man’s voice, loud and clear, calling to them from across the yard and back toward the entrance gate. “Hey there! Is someone there? What do y’all think you’re doing over there?”

“Shit! Run!” Micah shoved the trowel and a plastic baggy into his backpack and took off running, closing the gap between the unearthed grave and the back fence of the cemetery.

Oliver tripped into a sprint, chest squeezing with sudden panic. They were caught. It was over. That guy would call the police and they would get picked up, bye-bye, Austin. . . .

“Faster than that, moron!” Micah whispered, dropping to his knee and motioning for Oliver to hurry his ass up. Oliver pumped his legs faster, listening to the man bang his fists on the iron gate, shouting at them still and getting louder. He didn’t hesitate, grabbing the closest bars and using Micah’s hands to vault over the tall, sharp points of the fencing. Micah landed beside him a second later and grabbed him by the sleeve, yanking him along a weedy, paved plot to cut diagonally back toward the car.

Was that a siren? Was his mind messing with him?

As they fled, Oliver took one last look behind him, breath lodging in his throat as he noticed the figure in the distance. Just a shadow, maybe, just a trick of the eye, but it looked like a tall silhouette stood over the unmarked grave, watching them run.

Oliver dragged his feet as he went to the back room. Six forty-five p.m. Briony would be there any minute to pick up the package. He shouldered the curtain aside near the register of the shop, vaguely aware of his dad trying to sell a customer on a refurbished coffee table. Ugh. Coffee. He could use a gallon right about then.

He hadn’t slept. Not at all. When he’d closed his eyes he’d heard Micah’s trowel hitting the coffin lid. He’d heard the fingers separating from the hand, so much severed meat. He’d heard that man shouting and the rattle of the iron fence. He’d seen the shadow watching them, right by the grave. Too close to the grave.

Sirens sounded all the time during the night in the city, but each siren that blared last night he’d been certain was coming for him.

Stifling a yawn, Oliver caught a glimpse of himself in an antique mirror in the supply room. Yikes. He looked dire. Scruffy was usually a good word to describe him, but this was something else. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. His hair stuck up, unwashed and oily, greased from the night spent roasting in his hoodie and sprinting for safety. He had stuffed his messenger bag next to a cabinet, hyperaware of what was inside of it.

Micah was teaching martial arts until close, leaving Oliver to do the hand-off. The first time around had been so much easier. Micah had deciphered the coded ad for fences on craigslist and then they’d gone to the designated drop-off area to pick up an assignment in an old mailbox. That time they’d just had to pick up some watches, a pair of spectacles, and some other old junk that nobody would miss. Then they’d done the delivery in the same anonymous way.

The next time they answered an ad, Briony was there to meet them and showed them to what she called “an office,” which turned out to be little more than an old garage in Bywater. Oliver had gotten the feeling that Briony certainly didn’t live there and maybe didn’t even spend much of her time in the dingy hovel. It gave him a distinct serial killer vibe, but a dozen or so people were there, busily working away at cramped desks. Oliver couldn’t get close enough to see just what they were doing. At any rate, Briony had announced she was pleased with their work, and thought they might be good for something a bit more challenging.

Challenging enough to be worth two grand.

Oliver knelt and grabbed his bag, running his hand listlessly back and forth through his hair. It was over. They had done the work. He’d give the package to Briony and that, he decided, would be that. No more jobs. He didn’t care how good the money was, it wasn’t worth this stress.

It only remained to be seen if he could actually say all of that to Briony’s face.

The bag vibrated in his hands and he fished out his cell phone. His dad never liked him to have it in his pocket while “on the floor.” Two messages. One had come from Sabrina, another offer to celebrate his big news. The other was from Briony. He clutched the phone harder, a reflex.

Change of plans. Meet me by 8.

Directions followed. Oliver knew the place. It wasn’t far at all. An easy walk, in fact. He debated taking the car, but figured he’d be able to get in and out faster if he made up some excuse to Briony about needing to pop right back to work, that this was his break and he needed to finish his shift.

He shouldered the bag and ducked by the curtain again, stepping out into the showroom of the shop. His dad was still working an old lady by the postcards. A few Tulane kids had showed up to set up tables and chairs for a poetry reading they were having later. Oliver mumbled hello to everyone, waving bye to his dad.

“Just gone for a minute,” Oliver said, hoping it was true.

His father was almost a carbon copy of Oliver, longer in the face and with a few more wrinkles, but with the same shaggy dark hair and thick brows, same dark blue eyes and crooked smile.

“Where you headed?” Nick Berkley asked, jotting down a price offer for the customer on his little lined notepad.

“Just around the block. Didn’t sleep much, need a coffee.”

“We’ve got a pot in the back—”

“Real coffee.”

His father shot him a mock-scandalized look and tucked his pencil behind his ear. “All right. Get back soon, okay? I want to talk about that big news of yours.”

Oliver nodded, the door jangling shut behind him, the bells tacked to the frame announcing his exit. He wasn’t sure that his sleep-deprived brain was ready for that talk with his dad. It had been a mistake to mention that he had news at lunch, but his mind hadn’t been firing on all cylinders.

The city lamps had come on, washing the cobbled streets in pretty, welcoming light. Vintage light. It gave the sidewalks a surreal glow, something meant to give tourists that sense that they were stepping back in time, that none of this was real, that anything they said or did in their drunken journeys down Bourbon Street would be left behind in another world altogether.

No such luck, Oliver mused darkly. He’d be fortunate if he ever managed to scrub the night before from his mind. And even if he picked up and left for university, New Orleans would still be his home. That would never change. It had been a misstep to get wrapped up in this Part-Time Job with Micah.

For God’s sake, this was his city, his neighborhood, and now he was traipsing across it with a guilty hunch to his shoulders, human bones rattling around in his bag.

Just as he thought, the GPS brought him to Briony’s chosen spot after a ten-minute walk. A flashy, polished black luxury car was parked by itself on the block, the license plate reading PRNCPL1. A forest-green sticker with white type covered the bottom right of the bumper.

PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT

The rest of the street was mostly empty save for the odd lost, drunk tourist. By then the clammy evening humidity clung heavy to his shirt, and he plucked at it to keep it off his damp skin as he double-checked the address, loitering outside of a wooden door down a soggy, sour alley.

He began to grow nervous as the minutes crawled by. Did he knock? Did he text Briony? Then the hinges of the door squealed and a face appeared in the gloom beyond, the stark white face of a painted mask.

Oliver turned in a slow circle, gazing at the shelves upon shelves lining the walls of the facility. Facility? Office? He had no idea what to call it, but it was just like the last place Briony had told him to go, only this time it wasn’t a crappy garage but a larger, multiroom apartment with tobacco stains yellowing the ceilings. The smell of cigarettes and cheap booze had steeped into the walls and floor, a scent that some kind of powerful cleaner or chemical was trying to overtake.

It was not a place that ought to be brightly lit, he thought, every sign of water damage, age, and decay showing starkly under the near-medical lighting. The Dragon Lady’s crisp, cornflower-blue pantsuit was the cleanest thing in the room by far.

But just like in the garage, Briony didn’t hang around the place alone. At the edges of the room, men and women bent over desks. These were sturdier and shinier than those at the garage. Oliver blinked, anxious, rocking on his heels while he waited for Briony to finish a phone call. The distinct buzz of a bone saw came screaming through a closed door to his left. The screech was like nails on a chalkboard, a cold sting zinging down his spine.

He couldn’t overhear Briony’s conversation, but he could hear the soft lilt of her voice. Not the tone she ever used with him, not in person and not on the phone. He pulled off his backpack, and the weight of it—of what was inside of it—felt like a barrel of lead bricks.

Casting an eye around the room again, he tried to peer at what the closest desk person was doing. It was a man, and he wore rubber gloves, but that was the extent of his professionalism. His leather jacket and skinny jeans had him looking right at home among the grunginess.

Under the sound of Briony’s voice ran a constant murmur of soft sounds. These were the Bone Artists—the actual ones—Micah had been going on about. He wondered if the fingers in his backpack would end up on one of those desks soon.

But for what?

Don’t ask questions. This is the last time, remember?

Briony spun on one high heel, giving him an acid smile while she hid her phone in both hands, cupping her palms around it and taking a few clicking steps toward him.

Without prompting, Oliver thrust the backpack at her. He had already taken out his phone and anything valuable. She could keep the bag. He didn’t want it.

“Eager to be rid of me?” Briony smiled. She didn’t take the bag, however, waiting until the man in the leather jacket paused his work to stride over and grab the backpack for himself.

“I heard there were complications.” She drew out the word, watching Oliver intently.

The bone saw next door grew louder. Oliver clicked his teeth together, clenching.

“We got what you asked for. Isn’t that what matters?”

“Yes, but you were seen.” She lifted a thin, arched brow. “Or do you not read the news, Mr. Berkley?”

Shit. He hadn’t. Just getting down to the shop without dropping to sleep on his feet had been a chore.

He swallowed and gave his best nonchalant shrug. “We got away, nobody saw our faces.”

“Are you certain of that?” The other brow went up.

Was this a trick question?

“Positive,” Oliver said, beginning to sweat. “We took off before the guy could get close.”

She nodded, her brows returning to a neutral position. Her entire face iced over, unreadable. He wished that damn saw would stop screeching next door, it was putting him on edge. More on edge. “So?” he prompted. “It’s all there, right? We’re square now.”

“Are we?” She turned her head to the leather-jacket guy, who gave a quick nod. “Very good, Mr. Berkley. I think I like you.” Leather Jacket disappeared for a moment into the room with the saw, the sound growing so loud with the door open that Oliver had to fight to keep from covering his ears. Muffled voices joined the racket and then Leather Jacket returned, replacing Oliver’s backpack with a wad of bills held together with a rubber band.

“Try not to get into the papers next time, mm?”

Oliver blinked. “I don’t think there will be a next time.”

“No?” She stared at him steadily, a tiny muscle quivering in her chin. Then she smiled, but there was nothing behind it. Just teeth. Just a bright, white sliver carved across her face. “Not even, say . . . five thousand dollars could tempt you?”

Five thousand . . . ? Jesus.

“I can’t,” Oliver ground out.

She turned away, wandering with Leather Jacket toward the room with that infernal bone saw still whirring away. “Your friend might say otherwise.”

“He might,” Oliver allowed.

Briony’s cold laughter chorused with the high-pitched saw, and Oliver’s spine went rigid again. Her pale eyes caught him and snagged as she glanced over her shoulder. “I think you’ll change your mind, Mr. Berkley. In fact, I know so.”

He tapped out a manic rhythm on the steering wheel as he careened toward the dojo. His phone chirped every now and again on the passenger seat, alerting him to an unread text message from his father. Whatever guilt trip awaited him in that message could be kept on hold.

He didn’t have the balls to face his father, not when he felt sick to his stomach. Five thousand dollars. That was more money than he had ever possessed at one time. Who was he kidding? The two grand in his dash compartment was hard to wrap his mind around, too. But this was grave robbing. It had to be way more illegal than taking a few family heirlooms. That made him feel crappy enough, but taking bones? Taking parts of people?

What were they doing in that creepy place anyway? So busy, bent over their desks, little worker ants going about their business so single-mindedly. His skin tightened just thinking about the possibilities. But that five grand would get him so much closer to his goals. . . . His fingers beat faster on the wheel as he waited for the light to turn. One more block and he’d be at the dojo. Micah might not have answers, but he would at least have sympathy and maybe a bottle of booze to make the whole thing easier to bear.

Micah’s place of work didn’t actually look anything like a dojo. It looked like the kind of blah storefront in a strip mall that might have once been a furniture warehouse or a doughnut shop. All but two windows were frosted over, but you could walk by and peer inside at whoever was chopping or kicking the air. Oliver was early—well, technically he wasn’t anything, since Micah wasn’t expecting him—and so two rows of little kids, swimming in their starchy white outfits, were still doing their best to punch at nothing under Micah’s instruction.

Oliver pulled into the narrow parking lot and stopped the car under a flickering streetlamp. The electric glow of the strip mall was plenty, but some well-meaning city planner had tried to gussy up the place with cutesy benches and lamps, green, quaint, like there weren’t a grimy tobacco store and an AutoZone in plain view.

He grabbed his phone and blanked out the message. He’d read it later, when he wasn’t feeling so scattered. Sighing, he pulled open the dash compartment and took out the roll of cash, just holding it. Just feeling it. It felt heavy, and he knew exactly why. He shoved it back in the compartment and glanced up at Micah, wondering what two grand meant to the guy. Of course he had applied to colleges, too, some heavy hitters, in fact, but everything in Micah’s life just seemed so breezy. So easy. His grades weren’t the best but he usually got them bumped up by magical extra-credit projects wheedled out of exasperated teachers. He volunteered. He worked. His teachers could hardly blame him for missing an assignment now and again. Didn’t make much money so he found a way to get more. Wink and a smile. Sure, they were essentially grave robbers now but it was two grand. Things would work themselves out.

Maybe Oliver could fix his attitude and whistle a merry tune for five thousand dollars.

Maybe.

A hard, quick tapping came at the driver’s side window. Oliver jumped and shrieked, not in a manly fashion, feeling his heart jam into his throat as he turned and saw a silhouette at the window. His pulse calmed a little when he found it was Diane, Sabrina’s older sister, leaning over and peeking in at him.

“Hey, stranger,” she said as he rolled down the window to talk to her. “You waiting on Micah?”

“Yeah. Hey, let me get out of this thing. Stuffy in here.”

Great. Diane. Not someone he was hoping to meet here. He grabbed his phone and ducked out of the car, locking up and following her to the sidewalk outside the dojo. She leaned against the glass, smirking as she watched the mini martial artists inside. Taller and leaner than her sister, Diane also had way more hair. Sabrina tended to keep hers shaved or incredibly short, and she had piercings where Diane kept a neutral, almost preppy look. Diane was pretty, smart . . . Exactly Micah’s type.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Diane said, sipping from a half-empty diet soda.

“Been busy. Shop gets crazy this time of year. Dad gets me to take just about every shift I can,” he replied. “Aren’t you taking classes up at City Park?”

“Culinary stuff, uh-huh.” She pulled her attention away from the kids. “Sabrina says you got into the school you wanted. That’s big. Congrats.”

“Hey, thanks.” He grinned. “You know, it’s nice to hear that. Haven’t gotten to tell my old man yet. He was a wreck when I was filling out applications. I only got him to calm down because I said the whole thing was a long shot. Not sure he believed me.”

“Ugh. I hear that. It’s always the same with that family business bullcrap,” Diane said with a roll of the eyes. “Mom woulda never gotten out of Baton Rouge if Granny hadn’t died. Family business? More like family cult.”

Oliver nodded, feeling a little less like a tense mess with each chuckle. “Amen.”

“Just see you don’t go takin’ my sister off to Texas with you. I like her where she is.”

“No, ma’am, wouldn’t take her anywhere, not unless she wanted to come along.”

Diane shook her head, reaching over to slug him playfully in the shoulder. “Who would keep me honest if she went off with you?”

“I thought you and Micah were, you know . . .” Oliver cleared his throat. Lord, but this was not his favorite subject. He didn’t want to police his friend, even if Sabrina was asking him to do it. “Maybe he could look out for you.”

“Yeah, ’cause we all know that boy’s just full of good choices.” She smirked and reached toward him again, but this time she just put her hand lightly on his arm. “I know Sabrina’s been giving you shit about this whole thing. Don’t you worry. I know who Micah is. I know what I’m getting myself into. It’s just for fun, anyway. He’ll go off to college, too, and then you won’t have to worry about me getting mixed up with his crazy ass.”

Well, that at least was a relief.

“Who are you calling crazy, woman?”

Micah roared toward them from the door, pouncing on them both, pulling them in close for a hug with each arm.

“Man, you stink,” Oliver muttered, wrestling out of his friend’s grip.

“Didn’t have time to shower, all right? Saw you two dawdling outside and thought it might be polite to hurry myself along.” He stuck out his tongue, still holding Diane with one arm. “And what are you doing here? Did I miss a text or somethin’?”

Micah’s gaze sharpened, the hard set of his jaw asking the silent question. Did something go wrong with the drop-off?

“Just bored is all,” Oliver said with a shrug, shaking his head just the littlest bit for Micah’s benefit. No, everything went fine.

“Ha. Don’t let Sabrina hear you say that. She’s spittin’ mad that you haven’t taken her out to celebrate your university thing.”

“I know. I need to call her, but do you think I could borrow Micah for a sec? Just something I need to run by him real quick.”

Just a little thing called five thousand dollars.

“Sure, but see you don’t keep him too long, we had plans tonight.”

“Plans. Yeah. It won’t take but a moment.” With that, Oliver tugged Micah aside, his arm damp with sweat through his shirt. They paused outside the auto parts store and the manager inside watched them while he closed up for the day, probably worried they were two no-good kids come to rob him.

Don’t you worry, sir, we only rob the dead.

Ugh.

“What is it? You look like you been running all over hell’s half acre.” His gray eyes darkened and he glanced quickly toward Diane. “Everything okay with the, ya know, with our friend?”

“No, Micah, everything is not fine.” How could he be so nonchalant about this? Oliver ran both hands over his greasy hair, puffing out a sigh. “Look, man, she wants us to keep going with this and now she’s offering more money. A lot more money. So much money that I’m afraid I can’t turn it down.”

His friend went silent, rubbing his palm slowly over his goatee, staring at Oliver all the while. “Huh. Uh-huh.”

“Is that all you have to say about this? I just don’t get a good feeling about any of this. What are those creeps even doing? What are they using those bones for?” It came out like “using those bones fah” and it made him sound exactly like his father, with his deeper, occasionally impenetrable Southern drawl. Sabrina was always teasing him about it. She said it sounded cute, but to him it sounded trashy. Low. He was getting away from the family business, from the thing that had kept generations of his family trapped and going nowhere before. And thinking about his father just made him think of that damn text message waiting for him and for the conversation waiting for him, and how had this day gotten completely away from him to spin out of control?

Five thousand dollars. Nothing would be easy for that kind of cash, and here Micah looked like he was actually considering it.

“We can’t say yes,” Oliver said before his friend could respond. “We just can’t.”

“How much?”

He didn’t want to say it. “Five thousand,” he muttered.

“Five grand? Are you shittin’ me?” Micah reeled back, rubbing his goatee faster now, his eyes all at once much brighter. Dancing.

“Say no, Micah. We have to say no.”

“You’re not interested in this? Not even a little bit?” He looked toward Diane, giddy almost, shaking his hands out like they had fallen asleep. “Five thousand is a lot. . . .”

“I know it is.” Oliver turned away and took a fistful of his own hair, tugging. Maybe a little jolt of pain would set him to rights, put him back on the straight and reasonable path. “That shit we did is in the papers. Someone saw what we did. You have to say no,” he whispered.

“Why me? Why do you keep saying that?”

His friend was right behind him then, breathing down his neck.

“Because if you say yes I’ll feel like I should, too.” Tired. So tired. He just wanted to sleep and wake up and for none of this to have happened. “Because I can’t let you do it alone, ya know? And because, God, I do need the money. I do. Damn it all, I don’t know what to do.”

Micah’s hand fell solemnly on his shoulder and stayed there. “Don’t worry, man. I know what to do.”

Ms. Marie Catherine Comtois lived in a white, ramshackle farmhouse set far back from the road on the route running between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Heavy, lush falls of moss dripped off the trees crowding the front lawn, concealing the house itself behind a fragrant green curtain. White seeds like snowflakes drifted through the windless day, floating with eerie slowness through the doldrums of hot, damp air.

Oliver could practically taste the air, thick with honeysuckle from the garden that lined the front of the house and fanned out in a haphazard sprawl toward the overgrown, swampy forest encroaching on the property. It had obviously never been a great manor house, but at one time it was probably pretty and fresh, quaintly kept with green shutters on the windows and a turquoise blue door. Now the paint peeled off it like raw strips of sunburn, curling tight in the wet climate before scattering to join the tiny white seeds peppering the grass.

Weeds had taken over the walk up to the house, but Micah didn’t seem to notice the disrepair. He certainly didn’t apologize for it.

“Ms. Marie was like my aunt growing up,” he explained, leading Oliver to the faded turquoise door and its brass knocker. It was shaped like a mermaid. “If anyone in this damn world knows anything about these Bone Artist freaks, it would be her.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because she’s about eight hundred years old, that’s why.” Micah chuckled, winking. “And don’t let the old gal fool you. Back in the day she was a wild one. I’ve seen the pictures. Dance halls. Sailor boyfriends. The whole nine yards.”

The trip felt like a waste of time to Oliver, who had already decided, firmly this time, that he was out. Briony had texted that morning, waking him out of a fog of heavy sleep to ask about the job. He had told her, in less than polite terms, to take her offer and shove it in a very specific place.

Micah had knocked, and now, gradually, the door was opening. His friend sprang into action, holding open the screen and swiftly relieving the tiny old woman of the weight of the door. Her skin looked like water-stained paper, dark spots dotting her hands and neck in thick clusters. But her eyes were sharp, bright and searching as she looked Oliver up and down.

“A’now who’s this handsome young swain come to my door?” she asked, giggling like a teenager, even if it did sound a little croaky on the end.

“Ma’am, this is Oliver, Oliver Berkley. He’s a good friend of mine.”

“You said so on the phone,” Ms. Marie said, reaching for the screen. Oliver grabbed it for her, joining them inside the house. It was stifling, a few overhead fans doing their level best to help but failing. Not even a fresh-baked pie could cover up the scent of decay and urine that drifted through the halls.

Still, it wasn’t exactly dirty. The floors had been swept and the shelves in reach were dusted. The old lady had gone to the trouble of doing her iron gray hair in big, retro curls, clipping one piece back with a pink barrette. That was probably her best dress, too, a white sundress with a daisy motif.

Oliver paused in the front hall, looking over the black-and-white photos of generations of family. The newest shots had been taken recently, hanging in a modern frame. Micah was in that one, standing with Ms. Marie and two women in their thirties, both with Marie’s wide, brown eyes. The older photos were cluttered with many more people, all of them glaring out at Oliver with that strange, vacant quality folks seemed to have in the past, as if the bad technology rendered them utterly lifeless.

A few bunches of dried herbs hung above the pictures and a shelf with porcelain figures of Jesus, Mary, and a pair of hands clasped in a prayer pose. A cracked wooden placard swung from the front door behind him.

BLESS THIS HOUSE. PROTECT THIS HOUSE.

Trembling, shuffling, she brought them from the foyer to the sunroom on the left, motioning for them both to sit down. Cups of coffee and a cookie tray had been set out, and when Oliver went to sit down he found his cup lukewarm. She had probably set it out a half hour ago, fixing it whenever she had the energy.

“You live here on your own?” Oliver asked, trying to make conversation.

“Yes and no. My niece comes by every once in a while. Checks in on me and the like. Makes sure I ain’t fallen over in a flower bed to lie with the petunias.” She laughed at that and so did Micah. Oliver joined in, coaxed by her infectious smile. Marie settled into an overstuffed chair, leaving the two boys to wedge themselves together onto an ancient loveseat that would have comfortably fit one moderately sized girl.

Oliver cradled the little saucer with his cookies in hands that felt clumsy and gigantic.

Micah didn’t seem to notice the tiny china or the weird smells, perfectly at ease as he caught up with all the neighborhood gossip. A neighborhood that extended for some miles, Oliver guessed.

“Now I know this ain’t a social call. Nobody brings theyselves out this far just to eat cookies.” Marie narrowed her milky-brown eyes at Micah, tipping her head to the side. “You bein’ good these days? You best not be in trouble or I’ll get Sy down the street to hide you raw.”

“That’s just what I came to ask you about, ma’am,” Micah said, dusting his powder-sugared fingers off on his jeans. “Me and Oliver here been doing a little work for some folks down t’New Orleans,” he explained, his accent thickening by the minute, as if by passing through the door they had entered another segment of the state altogether.

“What kind of folks?” she drawled, studying them.

Oliver couldn’t help but shrink away from her shrewd staring.

But Micah kept his tone light, cheerful even. “Some knuckleheads calling themselves the Bone Artists. Frauds, probably. Just nonsense, but Oliver got nervous so I thought it a good idea to check. . . .”

He rambled on, but Ms. Marie was obviously no longer listening, but was recoiling, pressing herself tightly against the back of the chair. “Your family raised you better than this, boy.”

“So . . . they’re not good, then,” Oliver prompted. They weren’t, of course, he knew that, but judging by her reaction it was worse than he’d anticipated. What tipped you off, genius, the grave robbing or the creepy hideouts?

Marie flicked her gaze between the two of them, shaking her head over and over again. He couldn’t tell if she was shivering or just swiveling her head back and forth, back and forth. . . . “Back when I was a girl you didn’t say those words. You didn’t speak that name. You speak that name you get all that’s evil in t’world coming to you.”

“Whatever they do with these bones—” Micah began.

She was swift to cut him off, lifting a hand as if she could stopper his lips herself. “I won’t repeat it. I won’t say it, I won’t. These folk—these are evil folk. The Bone Artists, they steal, and then they leave—body snatchers. Body thieves. They take your bones for black magics. Witchcraft. Satan’s friend, that prince of they’s is, He curse you and you’re never right in the spirit again.” Her voice rose and then fell to a sudden hush. She shook her head one last time, frowning, on the edge of tears as she looked at them as though they had both been taken far, far away.

“You won’t never be right in the spirit again.”

“She’s a little on the religious side, if you couldn’t tell,” Micah had said, dropping Oliver back at the shop that afternoon. He had leaned over toward the passenger seat and the rolled-down window, gesturing at where Oliver stood on the sidewalk. “I wouldn’t take everything she says seriously, all right? We’re not talking a pinch of salt, here, we’re talking the whole shaker. I mean, come on . . . Princes? Satan? I might believe in some dark stuff but let’s not go crazy.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Oliver said, conjuring a thin smile. “But all the same . . .”

“No, you’re right. Let’s cut and run while we’re ahead.” Micah gave him a salute and a wink, leaning back into the steering wheel. “You seeing Sabrina tonight?”

“Maybe. It’s getting on to supper. You seeing Diane?” Over his shoulder, Oliver heard the distinctive sounds of a séance going on inside. He hated séance night at the shop but it always brought out a bunch of tourists.

“Do you really have to ask?” He laughed, waggling his eyebrows. “Catch you later, man, we still need to do that big celebration. Don’t keep stalling!”

“I’m not, I swear, just giving y’all time to plan the parade.”

Micah snorted and honked the horn on his old Chrysler, pulling away from the curb and into the empty street.

The voices inside the shop swelled to meet him, but he dodged the door, aiming instead for the family apartment. His pocket buzzed and he slipped out his phone, wincing as he read the display.

The Dragon Lady.

She had her answer, what more could she want from him?

“Your answer is no? Is that your final decision?” it read.

Oliver texted back furiously, lips pursed with aggravation. There was no doubt in his mind that he needed out. Now. She was poison and he refused to go back for another dose.

The answer is and always will be: no. Leave me alone.

He was just a few steps from their front door when her reply came, fast enough that Oliver hadn’t gotten his phone all the way inside his pocket. Just one word, and for some reason it chilled him more than her gaze or her sneer ever could.

Pity.

He jerked awake to Bon Jovi blaring into his pillow. Oliver flailed, grateful, for once, to be yanked out of his sleep. Out of dreams. A tall, dark shape had been watching him in his dreams, looming in the corner of his room, resolving into a human man but just the shadow of one. It watched him, it waited, getting closer to the bed whenever Oliver closed his eyes and opened them again.

But now he was awake and the only long shadow in the room came from the coat stand in the corner.

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART

It was Micah’s ringtone. He scrambled for the phone with clumsy fingers, rubbing at his eyes, not believing them at first when he noticed the LED clock next to his bed read 3:26.

AND YOU’RE TO BLAME

He answered with a sigh, reasonably certain this was a butt dial and he’d just hear gross make-out noises on the other end. But no, it was his friend all right, and breathing hard into the receiver, so hard it distorted the sound, painfully loud to Oliver’s half-asleep ear.

His friend’s voice was frantic on the other end of the line. Oliver had only heard him that upset one other time, when they had climbed a nasty old chain-link fence in Bywater and Micah had sliced his palm open on a jagged link at the top. The cut clearly needed stitches—there had been blood soaking Micah’s clothes, all down the front of his new Saints T-shirt. The blood was on Oliver, too, but somehow he remained calm, got Micah to pedal on his bike back through the neighborhood toward home. Then came Micah’s grandmother and a trip to the hospital, and it was all fixed.

Oliver wasn’t so sure any phone call or hospital could fix this. He could hear something sizzling and popping in the background, and his friend could barely breathe as he wheezed into the cell phone.

“Ollie? Ollie, oh shit, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. . . .”

“Sorry? What do you mean? Slow down, man, what happened? Are you okay?”

Tears. Actual tears. This was the first time Micah had cried, no, not just cried, sobbed. There were sirens in the distance, growing louder over the sound of his friend’s heaving, slobbery sobs into the phone.

“Calm down, okay? Calm down and tell me what happened. Do you need me to do something? Is there . . . Shit, Micah, just tell me how I can help!”

A long, shuddering breath. Another sob. A longer breath. The sirens were bearing down on him now, Oliver could tell, and that would mean soon Micah would have to go and deal with the police or the ambulance or whatever the hell that was.

“It’s Diane,” he whispered. “She’s going to be okay, I think . . . I think . . . I hope . . . Oh, God, oh Jesus, please Oliver, please! The other driver—I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re okay. If they’re here. I can’t see anything. The hospital. I need a hospital.”

The line went dead.

“What!?” Oliver shrieked, slapping his own forehead. “No . . . no, no, no! Micah, you shithead. You ass! You can’t just hang up, you can’t do that.”

He called back. No response. He called again. Nothing. Then he called Sabrina, shaking, knowing he would not like at all what he heard on the other end. But when she picked up there was a long, shuffling beat, the sound of bedsheets sliding around.

“Mmfffgh . . . He-hello?”

“Babe? Babe! Wake up. You have to get up now.” He could hear his voice going high and hoarse. Panicked. What the hell was he supposed to do? “There’s been an accident,” he said, stumbling out of bed and searching the dark for his jeans. “I’m coming to pick you up.”

In the end, Oliver was too nervous to drive. His father woke up from the commotion, wrenching the keys out of Oliver’s hands and forcing him to wait while he got decent enough to drive to Sabrina’s and then the hospital.

Oliver huddled in the passenger seat, on the phone with Sabrina until they reached her house, and then he joined her in the back, listening to Nick Berkley calmly call hospitals until he found Micah’s location.

It was a blur. A haze. The only constant was the steady sound of his dad’s soothing voice and Sabrina’s clammy hand curled up in his. He watched the back of his dad’s head as they jogged through the hospital halls, searching, searching. . . . How could his dad be this collected? Would he ever get that way? Did adults just wake up one day with that skill to keep a level head when everything else was going to hell?

He hated the stark, white neon of the hospital and the sickly smell. He wanted to laugh, thinking of Micah clutching his hand when he had to get stitches, both of them telling jokes to try to keep Micah from freaking out at the sight of so much blood.

There were no jokes this time.

They found Micah in an empty waiting room, oddly calm as a whirlwind of activity went on down the hall in surgery. The doors were closed and nobody was let in, but from the way Micah stared intently, too intently, at the corridor, Oliver knew that something bad had happened. Sabrina broke away, racing to Micah’s side, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking.

“Where is she?” she hissed, searching his face. “Where’s Dee?”

“I couldn’t do anything,” Micah murmured, his eyes hollow. A bandage was taped across his forehead, big enough to conceal a large gash. Bruises had already begun forming along his cheekbones. The faint smell of whiskey hung around Micah, growing stronger whenever he gave another deep breath. “The driver . . . They came out of nowhere. I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t even going that fast, he just . . . He just came out of nowhere.”

“Where. Is. She.”

Sabrina slapped him, not hard, but enough to make both Oliver and his dad reach for her, coaxing her away from Micah. But the blow stirred something in him. Light danced back into his eyes, focusing quickly and pinpointing on Sabrina.

“She’s hurt,” Micah murmured, scrunching up his face. It looked like he was going to cry again any second. “She’s hurt real bad.”

Real bad was obviously not the whole story. They got it out of him in bits and pieces, nurses running back and forth behind them in the background. Oliver didn’t want to think about what that meant. Micah’s face was ashen. He had seen something, something terrible.

And the alcohol on his breath . . . Oliver glanced toward the hall leading back toward the elevators, convinced the police would be showing up any second to question Micah.

The story came together slowly. They were driving back to Diane’s house, maybe a little faster than normal. They had broken curfew, and Micah was worried about upsetting her family. Diane didn’t care, she was having a good time. They were crossing the Causeway into the city and the driver came out of nowhere, gaining on him and then swerving, slamming into the driver’s side door before Micah could react. The car veered and hit the right-side safety rail. They skidded and skidded but didn’t go over into the water. A miracle, that. By the time the car stopped, Micah could hardly move. Airbag in his face. Car horns. Rubberneckers slowing down to see what had happened. To help. He was too dazed to get the car’s license plate. To even remember a color.

And the worst part was, Diane was just silent. She had screamed, once, on impact, and then nothing.

At that, Sabrina dropped to the floor. Oliver knew what she was thinking because he was thinking it, too. He scooped her into his arms, holding her, letting her hot, constant tears wet the shoulder of his T-shirt. The linoleum bit into his tailbone but he let it go, just holding. Just sitting.

Then Sabrina’s family began to arrive and one by one they started to guide her away, question her, and one by one they began to look at Micah like he was a cockroach. Like it was all his fault.

Oliver stood next to his father and next to Micah, none of them speaking. Sometimes Nick would pipe up to fill the air or offer to grab everyone coffee. It felt like nobody was speaking English, like nobody was making sense. Where did you put your feet when the Earth wouldn’t stop spinning? What did you say when a girl was dying down the hall?

A nurse had come into the waiting room. Sabrina and her family swarmed, understandably, and Oliver went to join them, pausing when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He’d forgotten all about it. He was so dazed he didn’t even question who would be calling at that hour, and he didn’t bother to study the display before accepting the text and staring down at it.

He couldn’t hear what the nurse was saying. He didn’t want to, didn’t need to.

“My condolences,” it read, “—Briony.”

Down the hall, the elevator doors dinged. It took Oliver a moment to focus his eyes, dazed. Just like he thought—the officers were here, two of them, striding toward their huddled group, eyes grimly determined and fixed on Micah.

Sleep was a distant fantasy. Oliver couldn’t imagine dropping into bed anyway, simultaneously wired and exhausted. There was no turning his brain off, not now, not when he was spending the rest of this miserable night at a police station.

He tore himself away from Sabrina and her family to ride with his dad over to the police station. The front of the building loomed high and pointed, the red brick facade reminding Oliver of an old schoolhouse. Traffic in and out at that hour was brisk, but the civilians being hauled in and out looked to be in varying states of drunkenness, some being taken out of the drunk tank, others going in.

Micah among them.

No, it was worse than that. He wasn’t falling over himself or slurring his words, but he was just tipsy or tired enough to belong nowhere near a moving vehicle. And he had been in one and Diane had been with him. Idiot.

“You said it,” Oliver’s father said.

He had said that last thing aloud then.

Oliver shook his head, slumped over, shuffling into the station with his dad, knowing Micah was somewhere inside. “Maybe I should have stayed at the hospital.”

“Sabrina has family, Micah doesn’t.”

“Yeah, even so . . . I don’t know if he deserves us right now.”

“Your friends don’t stop being your friends the second they screw up.”

Oliver nodded. “Sure. He said it was someone else, someone trying to run them off the road.” He thought of the text from Briony and shivered. Inside, the police station was freezing cold, the noisy AC unit jacked up to combat the humidity outside. “But I guess he would say that, given . . . Idiot.”

“Ollie—”

“No, Dad, this isn’t the first time he’s been a screw-up. Trust me on that one.”

A rumpled, coffee-stained officer directed them to the waiting area. He shrugged in response to their questions about Micah. No, he couldn’t say when he would be out. No, they couldn’t see him. Yes, a lawyer had been contacted for him. Yes, they were free to wait.

Oliver paced, his dad watching him march back and forth under the harsh lights.

“You have every right to be mad, what he did—”

“It’s not just this. It’s . . .” The lying, the grave robbing, and now this. “Diane is dead, Dad.”

“I know.”

“Because of him.”

“I know that, too.”

“And he might have been drunk. Jesus!” Oliver put the might in there for Micah’s sake. Maybe they had been drinking earlier in the night and he’d spilled on himself. There could have been a bottle in the car that shattered in the wreck. Any number of possibilities could be true, but the knot in Oliver’s stomach told him none of them really were. He stopped pacing and turned to look at his father, chewing the inside of his cheek. “If someone is dead weight, how long do you hold on? What if they’re dragging you down with them?”

Muffled voices down the hall cut short his father’s response. Oliver twisted around, jogging past the water cooler and coffee dispenser to the reception desk. He spotted Micah’s scruffy, dark head over the shoulder of a short, compact man in a trim suit. It was after five in the morning—how did anyone look that presentable at that hour?

Escorted by officers, Micah was smiling, chatting and chuckling with the guy in a suit, whose briefcase and smart spectacles broadcast lawyer loud and clear. Not just lawyer, but pricy lawyer. Oliver couldn’t imagine where Micah had found the scratch to pay the retainer on someone like this.

“Ollie!” Micah perked up the second he saw him, his brows tenting over his glasses. “You didn’t have to come here. I mean, I’m glad you did. It’s good to have someone here.”

The lawyer snorted softly at that. The officers pulled away, leaving them in the waiting room while Oliver’s father hovered in the background.

“I thought you were smoked,” Oliver said, relieved despite his misgivings. “But I knew you weren’t drunk. That’s not you. Sabrina’s going to—I mean she’s still pissed, yeah, but this wasn’t your fault.”

Micah pursed his lips, glancing at his sneakers. “Look, there’s no pretty way to put this, man, but—”

“But my client is smart enough not to comment further,” the lawyer said tartly, narrowing his eyes at Micah. “Just like we discussed.”

“Right. Just like we discussed.” Micah shrugged as if to say, what can you do? and flashed Oliver a sheepish grin, scratching his whiskery chin. “You understand.”

Understand? Understand?

Oliver flinched, opening and closing his mouth until the right words, or some of them, came to mind. “Hang on, are you saying you were drunk and you got in that car with Diane?”

“He’s not saying anything,” the lawyer replied, taking Micah in hand and jerking him toward the desk. “You need to be processed out, Micah, and this conversation is over.”

“Micah—”

“It’s going to turn out all right,” Micah said, giving another sheepish smile, one that ended swiftly. The lawyer manhandled him away, but Micah glanced over his shoulder, watching Oliver as he slid away. “Tell Sabrina I’m sorry, okay? Tell her I’ll . . . tell her I’ll make it up to her somehow.”

Freedom!

It was the first text from Micah in months. Understandable, given that he had been locked up in juvenile detention for the whole of the summer. Oliver stared at his phone, numb, tapping his foot under the table. The lunch rush had come and gone at the sandwich shop, the din of voices, laughter, and chewing rising and then falling all while Oliver waited on his dad. He hadn’t expected the text from Micah, but then none of his friend’s time in juvie made much sense to him.

There’d been no trial. Micah had pled guilty and gone away, but Oliver could swear he ought to be serving a longer sentence. First offense. Good conduct. He could imagine the answers Micah would give before even asking the questions.

Staying with Grams in Shreveport. Catch up soon?

Oliver didn’t respond. He didn’t know how. Whatever fond memories existed of Micah’s grandmother and her insanely delicious gumbo were now tainted. Sabrina was in therapy twice weekly, and Oliver had begun to wonder if maybe he should be going with her.

He flicked Micah’s message away, checking instead for word from his father. His knee bounced faster as he scanned the deli, the counter, the chairs, the back entrance, and then the sidewalk outside. An hour late was nothing for his dad, but he had only texted once to mention the delay.

“I get it,” Oliver muttered, fussing with his hair and running his tongue nervously over the scar on his lip. “Punishment. Real mature, dad.”

His father wasn’t at all fond of the idea of Oliver leaving for UT Austin, and that was just one more tally in the SUCK column for the summer. As soon as Oliver had broken the news, his dad had grown distant, cutting back Oliver’s hours at the store more and more, either to prepare for the incoming separation or to make things harder on Ollie. Oliver had gotten the hint, picking up a few jobs on the side fixing friends’ cars, clinging desperately and guiltily to the cash he had made from helping Briony.

Sometimes the urge to pick up the phone and text her, asking for work, broke his will to never, ever walk the seedy path again. But each time he almost crumbled, he remembered that text after the car wreck.

Briony was involved somehow. How else would she have known so soon? Micah might have been drunk and stupid, but Oliver absolutely believed that someone else was involved.

The waitress took another slow pass by his table, rolling her eyes when Oliver said he was still fine with ice water. He had long ago finished the brownie he’d bought to nibble on while he waited for his dad. But it was growing obvious that his father was a no-show. One last lunch together in August before school started, was that so much to ask?

It was. It definitely was when you were leaving the family business—and New Orleans—behind.

His phone jumped in his hands, and Oliver clasped it harder, fumbling before bringing it to his ear, his dad’s smiling face appearing on the display as the ring chimed.

“You standing me up?” Oliver laughed, trying to lighten the very real accusation. “Not cool, man.”

Static spiked on the other end and Oliver jerked his head away. The crackling died down, an incoherent voice rumbling through the static.

“Your reception blows. Are you in the car or going under a bridge or something?”

“. . .”

“Dad? Hello? Call me back in a sec, see if that helps—”

“. . . the bridge . . .”

His voice was just a scrape, just a whisper. Oliver could hear the pain in it. “Dad? Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I saw them. . . .” A wheezing breath. “I saw them follow me.”

The line went dead after a few seconds of breathing and then silence. Oliver shoved the table away from him and ignored the looks he got, dashing for the door, trying his dad’s number again. No answer. He tried again, swearing, tumbling out of the shop and into the thick, wet humidity of August. Clouds sat low and dark over the city, clustered, the utter stillness of the air foretelling the rain to come.

A siren began in the distance, somewhere to Oliver’s left as he tried his dad’s line again. This time someone picked up and then immediately ended the call. The siren screamed louder as it neared, cars gradually slowing and parting as one, then two, then three police cruisers sped by. Oliver sprinted to his car, palms slick with icy sweat as he struggled to back out and navigate the street choked with idling cars.

He leaned on the horn, setting his jaw, heedless of the windows rolling down so drivers could scream at him as he weaved recklessly ahead. The bridge. If his dad was returning from an antiques delivery out of the city then Oliver could bet which route he would take on the return trip. The speeding police cars carved a path through traffic, and Oliver followed as closely as he could, flying through stilled four-way stops and traffic lights. There was nothing ahead of him but his father, somewhere, murmuring with that soft, pained voice.

Their last lunch before Oliver went off to school, one cordial afternoon between father and son, was that too much to ask of the universe?

He lost track of the minutes, driving with one hand and dialing his father repeatedly with the other, leaning hard toward the steering wheel as the threatening clouds above opened up, rain driving at the windshield. Buildings and neighborhood blocks gave way to nothingness; the unobscured, open view of the Causeway unfolded under the black clouds. He was close.

The bridge. I saw them follow me.

Oliver drove as far as he could, stopped within half a mile of turning onto the Causeway. A blockade went up as he watched, disobeying the police officer who stood in the downpour, directing with his hands for cars to turn around. Another set of police cars began the process of shutting down the traffic trying to flow toward the Causeway, preventing anyone from even approaching that lane of the bridge.

His breath had caught long before he turned off the ignition. Beyond the blockade he could make out the remains of a shitty old white pickup truck. It had been pancaked into the side of the Causeway, one tire teetering precariously over the edge, a gentle nudge from dropping into the lake.

Oliver parked wherever, leaving the door to his car open as he drifted out of it, wiping the rain from his eyes only as a formality, only because he needed to see. Flares cracked to life on the road, neon red fires kindling on the pavement, doing nothing to cut through the raincloud darkness. The officer directing traffic didn’t see him as he approached the yellow tape. Oliver ducked under, sneakers colliding with debris and crystalline chunks of glass that sparkled, reflecting the red flare light.

His mind tricked him into thinking it was a different white pickup truck. Of course it was. Nothing was for sure until it was for sure. Nothing could convince him it was his dad’s truck until there was absolute proof. This was a coincidence until it was a tragedy. But he still couldn’t breathe. His pulse knew what his mind refused to accept.

“Whoa, hey kid, you have to get back in your vehicle and turn around.” An officer intercepted him, a tall, thin woman with cowlike, sympathetic eyes and yellow hair. She ducked and took a closer look at him. “Hey? Sir? Can you hear me? Did you hear what I said?”

“My dad,” Oliver murmured, staring past her. “That’s . . . that’s my dad’s truck.”

“What? Are you sure about that?” She glanced around, at the truck and then at the ambulance and fire truck parked horizontally across the lane. “I need to see some ID, kid.”

Oliver pulled his wallet out of his jeans and handed her the whole thing. He handed her his keys. He didn’t trust his hands to hold anything anyway. Her grip on him loosened and Oliver continued forward, as if he had no control over his own momentum, as if the twisted-up truck had caught him in a tractor beam. Something caught on his shoe and stuck, gluey. Oliver wiggled his leg but it wouldn’t come off. He stopped, watching as three drenched firemen cut away and wrenched off the truck’s folded-up door.

What was it they called that thing? The Jaws of Life?

A pale, limp hand slid into view, curled up on what was left of the passenger’s side seat. The flares crackled. The sirens all around him flickered and flickered, dying that single hand blue and then red. The officer behind him barked into her radio, asking for help, more help, more assistance, for Christ’s sake the guy’s kid had shown up, could she get some damn help already?

Someone grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back. That same officer.

“It’s my dad,” Oliver said, tugging against her. “It’s my dad!” He panicked, but she was strong, holding him, and soon two more officers jogged over to help her, restraining him as the EMTs hurried in after the firemen, a stretcher folded out and waiting behind them.

He didn’t know what he was screaming anymore, just that he was screaming. He didn’t know what he was seeing, only that his father was being taken away in pieces.

They carried him away. Forced him away. Wet through and freezing, Oliver couldn’t feel any of it. His throat felt raw, and when they sat him down in the back of an open ambulance, dry, brown blanket draped over his shoulders, he couldn’t even grasp the edges of the fabric with his trembling fingers.

“How did you know to come here?” an officer was asking, gently. They were all perfectly nice to him now that he had stopped shrieking.

Oliver didn’t answer. What did it matter? He couldn’t save his dad, and the reasons why seemed pointless to consider. He shifted, his sneaker scraping the pavement. That damn gluey bullshit was still stuck to his foot. Suddenly it was the only thing worthy of his attention. How dare it. How dare it annoy him right then? How dare anyone touch him or look at him or ask him anything at all?

He bent down and blindly groped at the bottom of his shoe, tearing away the plasticky strip with a ferocious tear of his fist. He almost tossed it away, but the dark green color snagged on a memory. Unrolling the wad of torn plastic, Oliver stared down at the sticker. A bumper sticker.

He couldn’t breathe again, and the cold and the rain and the officer touching his shoulder felt a million miles away.

PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT

His phone buzzed in his pocket, the one item he hadn’t handed over to the police for safekeeping. The officer sighed and wandered away, giving up on Oliver and his dazed silence. When she was gone, Oliver retrieved his phone, realizing he should call Sabrina, call Micah, call anyone at all who could make sense of this for him.

He had deleted her number, but he recognized the odd area code. Briony.

Come back to work for us, Oliver. Your debt is not repaid.

Sabrina had fallen asleep hours ago. For her sake, Oliver let her think he had done the same. Small comforts, she’d said. That was what had helped her after Diane died. A warm mug of tea. A hot shower. A familiar bed. Home. Friends. He had let her do all those things for her, culminating in the two of them cuddled up watching The Princess Bride on repeat until they both fell asleep.

Well, she fell asleep. Oliver stared at the muted film, the actors mouthing lines he knew by heart.

You killed my father. Prepare to die.

At least the tears had stopped. Oliver hadn’t realized a person could just keep crying and crying with no sound or anything else coming out, just relentless tears that triggered at the smallest, stupidest thing. They almost triggered again when he picked his half-dead phone up and shrugged out of the blanket covering him and Sabrina. She snored lightly while he dialed Micah again. His entire call log for the past three hours was filled with that one number.

Where the hell was that kid? Why now, of all times, did he decide to disappear? Micah had ditched out on the Bone Artists and Briony just as much as Oliver had, and now Oliver believed with every sinew in his body that his friend had been run off the road intentionally, just like his dad.

He almost yelped in shock when the other end livened up and Micah’s face greeted him groggily.

“Micah? Jesus Christ, dude, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all night!”

“What? What is . . . Is everything all right?” He sounded more awake at least.

“It’s my dad.” That was it. That was all he could manage. The tears started again and Oliver smothered them in the neck of his tee, trying not to wake Sabrina. “His truck. The Causeway. It’s just like . . . just like you said it happened to you.”

Micah breathed heavily on the other end. “Can we meet somewhere to talk about this, man?”

“What? No. No, it’s . . . I can’t think about driving anywhere. I’m with Sabrina.” He squeezed his eyes shut, pulling off the blankets, suddenly much too warm. Pinpricks crawled over his forearms. “I got a message from Briony,” he hissed. “More than one. One after your accident and one tonight. It’s not a coincidence, Micah. They’re watching me. They’re watching us.”

His friend gave a cold bark of laughter. “That’s insane, Ollie. That’s . . . That all ended months ago.”

“Maybe for you,” Oliver muttered. “She’s not texting you? She’s not threatening you?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, man.”

“That’s bullshit.” He winced, lowering his voice again. “That’s not an answer. My dad is dead. Diane is dead. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Me? Nothing is wrong with me. Shit. I’m waking up Grams with this. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

“Micah, wait—”

“I said I’ll be in touch.”

Oliver stayed with the phone stuck to his ear for a moment, stunned. He had never heard that voice come out of his friend. Vicious. Detached. It cut. Oliver lowered the phone, dragging his eyes from Sabrina’s huddled silhouette to the open and half-packed duffel bags in the corner. In the morning he would unpack them. He couldn’t leave now, and maybe he couldn’t leave ever.

Ollie—

I know it’s been a few days since I said I’d be in touch. Okay, scratch that, a few weeks, but I needed time. I think you did, too. But I’ve been thinking about you and your dad, and I wanted to tell you how sorry I am and that I know what you must be going through. It sucks to feel alone. It sucks even worse to think you’re alone because of something you did or didn’t do.

I’m not emailing to tell you how to live your life, but it helped me to go forward. Juvie was shit at first, then I realized it could be fine. It could be whatever I wanted it to be. So I kept my head down and I worked hard and that got me friends where it counted. Good behavior. That’s all it takes—in life, in work, in juvie, in whatever.

I heard through the grapevine that you’re not going to Austin. That’s a mistake, Ollie. You have to move forward. It’s the only thing that helped me. Look, I’m moving forward, okay? Part of that means coming to grips with the truth. The truth is, I was drunk and irresponsible that night with Diane and she died because of it. That’s my burden, and I accept it. I don’t know how your dad got into that collision, but it was an accident and that’s what killed him. Mistakes happen. Accidents happen. You have to let all this conspiracy shit go. Sometimes it’s hard to just accept that the world isn’t fair, that it’s a screwed-up place.

But it can be a good place, too. Hell, I’m going to college. Me! Can you believe it? A decent one, too. The dean at this fancy-pants New Hampshire college reached out, heard some nice things about me from an old boss. See? Good things can and will fall in your lap, Ollie. I can help them fall in your lap if you want me to, but I know you’re probably still sore and that’s fine.

Think about what I said, okay? I miss you, man.

You take care of yourself, Oliver.

Micah

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This novella wouldn’t have been possible without the inspiration and guidance provided by Andrew Harwell. Additional thanks to Kate McKean and Olivia Russo for all their hard work, and to the Wilder family in Frankfort for showing me all the haunted locals for inspiration. Claudia Gray provided valuable insight into local hangouts in New Orleans. As always, the creative team and HarperCollins deserve heaps of praise. And finally, none of my work would exist without the continued love and support of my family and friends.

EXCERPT FROM CATACOMB

WHEN DAN, ABBY, AND JORDAN TAKE A SENIOR ROAD TRIP TO THE MOST HAUNTED CITY IN AMERICA—NEW ORLEANS—SOME LONG-BURIED SECRETS AND TERRIFYING NEW ENEMIES CONSPIRE TO MAKE IT A TRIP THEY WILL NEVER FORGET. . . .

Keep reading for a sneak peek at Catacomb, the bone-chilling third installment in the New York Times bestselling Asylum series.

These were the rules as they were first put down:

First, that the Artist should choose an Object dear to the deceased.

Second, that the Artist feel neither guilt nor remorse in the taking.

Third, and most important, that the Object would not hold power until blooded. And that the more innocent the blood for the blooding, the more powerful the result.

At first the idea of a cross-country road trip had been hard to stomach. If sleeping in a tent wasn’t horrible enough, Dan had felt anxious, almost sick, at the prospect of being away from his computer, his books, his alone time for two whole weeks. But that was the deal Jordan offered when he wrote to them with the big news: he was moving to New Orleans to live with his uncle.

Perfect chance, his email had said, to have some time together. You two nerds can help me move down there, and we’ll get a last hurrah before we all traipse off to college.

Dan couldn’t argue with that, or with any reason to spend more time with Abby. She’d visited him in Pittsburgh once a few months ago, and they’d been talking online more or less every week. But two weeks away from parents and chaperones . . . He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but maybe their relationship could finally flourish, or at least survive, with some much-needed quality time together.

The Great Senior Exodus, Jordan had called it. And now, a day after leaving Jordan’s miserable parents behind in Virginia, the trip was finally starting to live up to that name.

“These are incredible,” Jordan was saying, flicking through the pictures Abby had taken and then uploaded onto his laptop for safekeeping. “Dan, you should really check these out.”

“I know it’s kind of cliché, photographing Americana in black and white, but lately I’ve been obsessing over Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams. They were the focus of my senior project, and Mr. Blaise really loved it.”

Dan leaned forward between the seats to look at the photographs with Jordan. “They’re definitely worth the stops,” he said. They really were something. Open landscapes and deserted buildings—through Abby’s eyes, they were desolate, but also beautiful. “So Blaise finally gave you an A, then?”

“Yup. No more stupid A minuses for me.” She beamed. Jordan offered up a high five, which Abby managed without taking her eyes off the road. “He actually grew up in Alabama. He’s the one who gave me ideas for sites to photograph.”

They had already stopped a few—well, many—times to allow Abby to take photos, but Dan didn’t mind the extra time on the road. He could ride forever in this car with his friends, even if his turns driving got a little tedious.

“I know it’s lame to take us so far out of the way, but you’re not in too much of a hurry to get there, are you, Jordan?”

“You’ve already apologized about a million times. Don’t worry about it. I’d say something if it was annoying.”

“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sure you would.”

If he was honest, Dan wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get there, either.

It had been nine months since they’d watched the Brookline asylum burn to the ground. The three of them had barely escaped with their lives, and they’d managed that much only with the help of a boy named Micah, who had died trying to buy them time to escape their pursuers. Micah had had a rough, short life, and he’d grown up in Louisiana—a fact Dan had never told Abby or Jordan. Now, just when it seemed like the ghosts of the past were finally content to leave Dan and his friends alone, the three of them were headed to the most haunted city in America. It felt like they were tempting fate, to say the least.

“You okay back there?” Abby asked, cruising smoothly down Highway 59.

“Yeah, I’m good, Abs,” Dan said. He wasn’t sure if that was a lie. But before Abby could call him on it, Jordan’s phone dinged—or rather, a clip of Beyoncé fired off loud enough to make all three of them jump.

Dan knew what that meant. “You’re still talking to Cal?”

“On and off,” Jordan said, quickly reading the text message. “The on part is why Mom won’t pay for school. Not sure what I’d do without Uncle Steve.”

“You could stop talking to Cal,” Dan suggested.

“And let my parents win? Not likely.” He peered around the center console at Dan, his bare feet propped up on the dashboard. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off the shiny new black lip piercing Jordan had insisted on getting in Louisville. “He says physical therapy is a real shit show sometimes, but his life feels like paradise after New Hampshire College. Hey! I just realized that at Uncle Steve’s, I’ll be able to Skype with him without my mother the drama queen bursting into tears.”

Dan shifted again, even antsier now at the mention of New Hampshire College. If he let his mind wander or dwell, he would feel the heat of the flames that had engulfed Brookline and everything in it. He wanted to believe that Brookline’s effect on him had ended that day—that the evil had died with Warden Crawford and Professor Reyes—but his last moments at the college had given him cause to doubt.

He’d had another vision. He’d seen Micah’s ghost, waving good-bye.

He hadn’t had any visions since then, and for that, Dan was grateful. It felt like a signal: it was time to let it all go and move on. Even the files and journals he had saved from the ordeal held no interest anymore.

Well, except for one small thing.

Before the trip, Abby and Jordan had threatened to subject Dan to a search of his things for any junk he might have brought from Brookline. They’d said it like a joke—like, no way Dan would really do that to them, right?

But in the end, they hadn’t dumped out his bag, which meant they hadn’t found the file he had brought along. The one that had been folded in half at the bottom of the stack they’d rescued from Professor Reyes’s things. The one labeled POSSIBLE FAMILY / CONNECTIONS?, inside which he’d found a paper-clipped pile of papers, connected by a name that had made his heart shoot into his mouth.

MARCUS DANIEL CRAWFORD.

Nine months ago, that pile of papers had seemed like a gift, the reward at the end of a long, hard search for answers about his mysterious past. A sparse family tree had confirmed what he’d already suspected: Marcus was his father, and he was also the nephew of the warden through the warden’s youngest brother, Bill. But a single line had also been drawn from Marcus to someone named Evelyn. Was that his mother? It seemed so incomplete. He’d tried to find any Evelyn Crawford online who seemed like a match, but with no promising results and no maiden name, he hadn’t had much else to go on.

There was more in the stack—an old postcard, a map, even a police report detailing a time his father had been arrested for breaking and entering—but maddeningly, nothing that would help him pick out his father from the numerous Marcus Daniel Crawfords he found online, and nothing else about his potential mother.

Still. Even after the pile of papers had come to feel less like a gift than a curse, he’d kept the folder hidden. And when he’d packed his bags for this trip, the thought of Paul and Sandy going through his room and finding the folder had been enough to make him bring it—to keep it in sight.

As if on cue, Dan’s phone buzzed, not with Beyoncé but with the more subdued jingle indicating Sandy was texting. He checked the message, smiling down into the faint glow of the screen.

How are the intrepid roadtrippers doing? Please tell me you are eating more than beef jerky and Skittles! Call at the next good stopping place.

Dan texted back to reassure her that they were doing their best to eat actual, normal food.

“How’s Sandy?” Jordan asked, craning around to look at him again.

“She’s good. Just making sure we aren’t stuffing ourselves with junk the whole way to Louisiana,” Dan replied. He flicked his eyes up to see Jordan swallowing with some difficulty—the insides of his lips were a guilty shade of Skittles orange.

“It’s a road trip. What does she think we’re going to do?” Jordan asked. “Boil quinoa on the radiator?”

“That’s not a half-bad idea,” Abby teased. “We are not stopping at McDonald’s tonight.”

“But—”

“No. I checked to see if there was anything to eat other than fast food on the route. Turns out we can avoid the Montgomery traffic and stop at a cute little family-owned diner off 271.”

“Diners have hamburgers,” Jordan pointed out sagely. “So really, that doesn’t change much.”

“Hey, I’m just providing a few more options. What you stuff down your gullet is none of my business,” she said.

“And thank God for that,” Jordan muttered. “Quinoa is for goats.”

“I’m with Abby,” Dan said. “I could use a salad, or just, you know, a vegetable of any kind. I’m starting to shrivel up from all the beef jerky.”

He heard the satisfied smile in Abby’s voice as she sat up straighter in the driver’s seat and said, “That’s settled then. The place I found is called the Mutton Chop, and the same family has owned it for generations. We can get a little local history for my photography project and a decent meal.”

“I’m still getting a burger,” Jordan muttered. He twisted to face the windshield, sighing as he slid down into his seat and began to text at lightning speed. “Soon I’ll be on the all-gumbo, all-jambalaya diet. Gotta get my burgers in while I still can.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MADELEINE ROUX is the New York Times bestselling author of Asylum, which has sold into nine countries around the world and which Publishers Weekly called “a strong YA debut.” The Scarlets, Sanctum, and Catacomb continue the series about Dan, Abby, and Jordan. Madeleine is also the author of Allison Hewitt Is Trapped and Sadie Walker Is Stranded. A graduate of the Beloit College MFA program, Madeleine now lives in Southern California.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

BOOKS BY MADELEINE ROUX

Asylum

Sanctum

Catacomb

The Scarlets

The Bone Artists

PHOTO CREDITS

The images in this book are custom photo illustrations created by Faceout Studio and feature real found photographs from New Orleans.

LOCATION | TITLE | FROM THE COLLECTION OF
here, here | Fleur-de-lis pattern | Hadrian / Shutterstock.com
here, here | Vintage postcard | Karin Hildebrand Lau / Shutterstock.com
here | Fence and trees in the mist | Jens_Lambert_Photography / istockphoto.com
here | House with graffiti | tyalexanderphotography / Thinkstock.com
here | Cemetery gate | bttoro / istockphoto.com

COPYRIGHT

THE BONE ARTISTS. Copyright © 2015 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ISBN 978-0-06-236728-0

EPub Edition © July 2015 ISBN 9780062367280

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