The Bone Artists (9 page)

EXCERPT FROM
CATACOMB

WHEN DAN, ABBY, AND JORDAN TAKE A SENIOR ROAD TRIP TO THE MOST HAUNTED CITY IN AMERICA—NEW ORLEANS—SOME LONG-BURIED SECRETS AND TERRIFYING NEW ENEMIES CONSPIRE TO MAKE IT A TRIP THEY WILL NEVER FORGET. . . .

Keep reading for a sneak peek at
Catacomb
, the bone-chilling third installment in the
New York Times
bestselling Asylum series.

T
hese were the rules as they were first put down:

First, that the Artist should choose an Object dear to the deceased.

Second, that the Artist feel neither guilt nor remorse in the taking.

Third, and most important, that the Object would not hold power until blooded. And that the more innocent the blood for the blooding, the more powerful the result.

A
t first the idea of a cross-country road trip had been hard to stomach. If sleeping in a tent wasn’t horrible enough, Dan had felt anxious, almost sick, at the prospect of being away from his computer, his books, his
alone time
for two whole weeks. But that was the deal Jordan offered when he wrote to them with the big news: he was moving to New Orleans to live with his uncle.

Perfect chance
, his email had said,
to have some time together. You two nerds can help me move down there, and we’ll get a last hurrah before we all traipse off to college.

Dan couldn’t argue with that, or with any reason to spend more time with Abby. She’d visited him in Pittsburgh once a few months ago, and they’d been talking online more or less every week. But two weeks away from parents and chaperones . . . He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but maybe their relationship could finally flourish, or at least survive, with some much-needed quality time together.

The Great Senior Exodus, Jordan had called it. And now, a day after leaving Jordan’s miserable parents behind in Virginia, the trip was finally starting to live up to that name.

“These are incredible,” Jordan was saying, flicking through the pictures Abby had taken and then uploaded onto his laptop for safekeeping. “Dan, you should really check these out.”

“I know it’s kind of cliché, photographing Americana in black and white, but lately I’ve been obsessing over Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams. They were the focus of my senior project, and Mr. Blaise really loved it.”

Dan leaned forward between the seats to look at the photographs with Jordan. “They’re definitely worth the stops,” he said. They really were something. Open landscapes and deserted buildings—through Abby’s eyes, they were desolate, but also beautiful. “So Blaise finally gave you an A, then?”

“Yup. No more stupid A minuses for me.” She beamed. Jordan offered up a high five, which Abby managed without taking her eyes off the road. “He actually grew up in Alabama. He’s the one who gave me ideas for sites to photograph.”

They had already stopped a few—well,
many
—times to allow Abby to take photos, but Dan didn’t mind the extra time on the road. He could ride forever in this car with his friends, even if his turns driving got a little tedious.

“I know it’s lame to take us so far out of the way, but you’re not in too much of a hurry to get there, are you, Jordan?”

“You’ve already apologized about a million times. Don’t worry about it. I’d say something if it was annoying.”

“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sure you would.”

If he was honest, Dan wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get there, either.

It had been nine months since they’d watched the Brookline asylum burn to the ground. The three of them had barely escaped with their lives, and they’d managed that much only with the help of a boy named Micah, who had died trying to buy
them time to escape their pursuers. Micah had had a rough, short life, and he’d grown up in Louisiana—a fact Dan had never told Abby or Jordan. Now, just when it seemed like the ghosts of the past were finally content to leave Dan and his friends alone, the three of them were headed to the most haunted city in America. It felt like they were tempting fate, to say the least.

“You okay back there?” Abby asked, cruising smoothly down Highway 59.

“Yeah, I’m good, Abs,” Dan said. He wasn’t sure if that was a lie. But before Abby could call him on it, Jordan’s phone dinged—or rather, a clip of Beyoncé fired off loud enough to make all three of them jump.

Dan knew what that meant. “You’re still talking to Cal?”

“On and off,” Jordan said, quickly reading the text message. “The on part is why Mom won’t pay for school. Not sure what I’d do without Uncle Steve.”

“You could stop talking to Cal,” Dan suggested.

“And let my parents
win
? Not likely.” He peered around the center console at Dan, his bare feet propped up on the dashboard. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off the shiny new black lip piercing Jordan had insisted on getting in Louisville. “He says physical therapy is a real shit show sometimes, but his life feels like paradise after New Hampshire College. Hey! I just realized that at Uncle Steve’s, I’ll be able to Skype with him without my mother the drama queen bursting into tears.”

Dan shifted again, even antsier now at the mention of New Hampshire College. If he let his mind wander or dwell, he would feel the heat of the flames that had engulfed Brookline and everything in it. He wanted to believe that Brookline’s
effect on him had ended that day—that the evil had died with Warden Crawford and Professor Reyes—but his last moments at the college had given him cause to doubt.

He’d had another vision. He’d seen Micah’s ghost, waving good-bye.

He hadn’t had any visions since then, and for that, Dan was grateful. It felt like a signal: it was time to let it all go and move on. Even the files and journals he had saved from the ordeal held no interest anymore.

Well, except for one small thing.

Before the trip, Abby and Jordan had threatened to subject Dan to a search of his things for any junk he might have brought from Brookline. They’d said it like a joke—like, no way Dan would really do that to them, right?

But in the end, they hadn’t dumped out his bag, which meant they hadn’t found the file he had brought along. The one that had been folded in half at the bottom of the stack they’d rescued from Professor Reyes’s things. The one labeled
POSSIBLE FAMILY / CONNECTIONS?
, inside which he’d found a paper-clipped pile of papers, connected by a name that had made his heart shoot into his mouth.

MARCUS DANIEL CRAWFORD
.

Nine months ago, that pile of papers had seemed like a gift, the reward at the end of a long, hard search for answers about his mysterious past. A sparse family tree had confirmed what he’d already suspected: Marcus was his father, and he was also the nephew of the warden through the warden’s youngest brother, Bill. But a single line had also been drawn from Marcus to someone named Evelyn. Was that his mother? It seemed
so incomplete. He’d tried to find any Evelyn Crawford online who seemed like a match, but with no promising results and no maiden name, he hadn’t had much else to go on.

There was more in the stack—an old postcard, a map, even a police report detailing a time his father had been arrested for breaking and entering—but maddeningly, nothing that would help him pick out his father from the numerous Marcus Daniel Crawfords he found online, and nothing else about his potential mother.

Still. Even after the pile of papers had come to feel less like a gift than a curse, he’d kept the folder hidden. And when he’d packed his bags for this trip, the thought of Paul and Sandy going through his room and finding the folder had been enough to make him bring it—to keep it in sight.

As if on cue, Dan’s phone buzzed, not with Beyoncé but with the more subdued jingle indicating Sandy was texting. He checked the message, smiling down into the faint glow of the screen.

How are the intrepid roadtrippers doing? Please tell me you are eating more than beef jerky and Skittles! Call at the next good stopping place.