The Bone Artists Read Online Free

bad side.
    â€œThese aren’t good people, Ollie,” Micah was saying, going tohold the window open for him to crawl through. “They do shit I do not agree with. There are forces they play with that guys like you and guys like me do not get. That we have no business trucking in. They ain’t called Bone Artists because they carve wood .”
    Oliver nodded, pulling in a shaky breath. “I get it. I’m just not sure I can—”
    â€œI’ll do it,” Micah told him in a soft, strange voice, pitying, maybe. “Just keep watch. It’ll be slower that way, but at least we won’t get caught.”

O liver was beginning to sweat heavily in his sweatshirt.
    It was the humidity, sure, but it was also the sounds. He listened to the scraping of Micah’s trowel as he dug out the corner grave in the cemetery. Try as he might, he couldn’t drown out the sounds—the shhesh-shhush as Micah made piles of the displaced dirt, the louder breathing as the heat and the work took its toll, the sudden bursts of loud, cackling laughter from a house down the street. . . .
    â€œAre you almost done?” It was a stupid question. Oliver wasn’t foolish enough to think unearthing a coffin was a moment’s work. He shifted, trying to stay low enough to blend with the gravestones and mausoleums. With no trees and little shadow, they were completely exposed to the night and to whoever might come looking.
    That smoky, unsettling barbecue smell drifted over the cemetery, mingling sickeningly with the heat.
    Micah said nothing, continuing to dig.
    â€œListen, I told Sabrina I’d talk to you about this Diane thing. She’s not happy about it. Y’all are grown-ups and it’s none of my business, I know that, but like . . . Don’t you think with your family and everything it’s just not a great idea?”
    â€œI wouldn’t exactly be bringing her around for supper.”
    â€œThat’s what I mean. Don’t you think that’s wrong?”
    â€œCould you shut up? I’m trying to work here. . . .”
    Oliver winced, turning to make sure nobody was watching them from the rear fence of the cemetery. Silence. Silence and then that sudden laughter and the smell of cooked, smoked flesh filling his nose . . . He tightened the muscles over his stomach, forcing down a wave of nausea. Closing his eyes, he visualized that two grand. He pictured getting his first tuition bill, setting up loans, trying to make this degree work with what little he could scrape together.
    And anyway, Micah was taking the bullet, doing the worst of the work.
    â€œSorry,” he whispered, wiping at the sweat pouring off his temples.
    He rested his arm against the stone of a stout, rectangular mausoleum, feeling the stone gradually warm against his overheated skin. With no trees there were no strange shadows to wreak havoc on his imagination, but without that cover he felt watched, and maybe he should. If all the mystic mumbo-jumbo Micah believed in was even half true then surely their actions were stirring up the dead.
    Shivering even in the humidity, he grew still, hearing the trowel make a hollow cracking noise, bumping against more than dirt.
    Micah mumbled something, maybe a prayer, and then Oliver heard a rusted latch giving way to metal snips. He had to wonder just how many tools of the trade Micah had in his bag; Oliver had never asked for a tutorial. If he knew how to break into a secured building or pick a lock, then he’d have no reasonto bring Micah along on these jobs. He’d have to go alone, and that, he thought with a noisy swallow, was not an option.
    He turned and knelt in the disturbed dirt heaped beside the grave. Micah hadn’t dug very far. Oliver wondered if maybe the hurricane had left the graveyard with less topsoil and therefore less to cover the grave. St. Roch’s had been under standing water just like everywhere else. The coffin was old,