The Bone Artists

  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

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Catacomb Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Books by Madeleine Roux

  Photo Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  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 leane
d 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.”