The Bone Artists Read Free

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 towardthe 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