The Bone Artists (2 page)

H
e 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.

“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?