The Bone Artists (2 page)

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.

“H
ey, 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?

“Y
ou 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 . . .