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    The Bone Artists
    The Bone Artists
    The Bone Artists
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    The Bone Artists

    By Madeleine Roux

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    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 behind his family's New Orleans antique shop for good. And if his job just happens to involve robbing graves for a group calling themselves the Bone Artists, well—money is money, and it's only for now. But Oliver soon learns that the Bone Artists don't take kindly to deserters. And there are some debts that can never be repaid.

    With a mounting sense of dread that builds to a terrible end, The Bone Artists is a thrilling installment in the Asylum series that can stand on its own for new readers or provide a missing piece of the puzzle for series fans.

    Epic Reads Impulse is a digital imprint with new releases each month.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperTeen
    Release dateAug 4, 2015
    ISBN9780062367280
    Author

    Madeleine Roux

    Madeleine Roux is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Asylum series, which has sold over a million copies worldwide. She is also the author of the House of Furies series and several titles for adults, including Salvaged and Reclaimed. She has made contributions to Star Wars, World of Warcraft, and Dungeons & Dragons. Madeleine lives in Seattle, Washington, with her partner and beloved pups.

    Read more from Madeleine Roux

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      Book preview

      The Bone Artists - Madeleine Roux

      >

      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

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