Dan pressed his nose to the window, staring out into the bleak, naked expanses of the northern neighborhood. It was immediately and terribly apparent why Sabrina had refused to let them go alone; the houses on these blocks were sparse, entire lots emptied and never reclaimed after the hurricane had washed them away.

The devastation rippled visibly across the neighborhood. The farther they went, the worse it got. It was destruction on a level Dan had never seen before, and scariest of all was the fact that they were just a few miles from the vibrant French Quarter. He watched the road wander in and out, no real edge to it, its surface so pocked with holes they could barely go above fifteen miles an hour.

The sad silence that had descended over the car was interrupted by the sound of Dan’s phone dinging. For obvious reasons, they all tensed—but it was only Sandy texting. She wanted to know how his second full day in New Orleans had gone. The empty message return box glowed up at him, so tiny and inadequate to answer that question.

We’re having tons of fun, sorry for not messaging sooner. What kind of souvenirs do you guys want?

He returned to staring out the window, turning from one unhappy thought to another.

“There’s people with heart here,” Sabrina said to no one in particular from the passenger seat, slicing through the silence. “And they don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” Dan said. He didn’t know what it was. “I just . . . didn’t expect it to look like this.”

Abby had brought her camera but hadn’t lifted it once since they’d entered the fringes of the dilapidated streets.

“You weren’t dumb enough to tell your family where you were going, were you?” she asked.

“No,” Jordan answered. “Uncle Steve wanted to take us on a barge ride. I told him you guys were taking us to a concert.”

They were quiet for the length of a few more blocks, and then Oliver slowed the old Challenger and veered to the side of the road. A light came on in the house two lots down, and Dan stiffened. A dog barked in a long, lonesome wail. The streets weren’t exactly empty, and each driver who moved to pass them gave their car a thorough look.

“Let’s make this quick,” Oliver muttered, kicking open his door.

He told Sabrina to wait in the car and left it running. Abby and Jordan chose to wait in the car, too, but that was fine. The fewer of them out in the open, the less attention it would draw. It was hard to see, but Oliver and Dan used their phones to give themselves minimal visibility.

“This area is seriously rough,” Oliver said. “I don’t know if that’s why the Artificer chose it, but there it is.” He moved swiftly to a mailbox sitting at the edge of a bedraggled lawn. A few sluggish weeds poked up from what had been a sidewalk. The mailbox was crooked, slumped over, the box perching at such a severe angle it seemed to be regarding them skeptically.

Someone dumped a bag of garbage into a bin a block or so away, the sound of shattering bottles sending a finger of cold up Dan’s spine.

“Hold this,” Oliver said, shoving his phone into Dan’s hands. He worked by the tiny bit of light, yanking on the lid of the mailbox until it gave with a screech of protest. It looked to Dan like there was nothing inside, but all the same, Oliver thrust his hand into the open box and groped around the edges. “Christ, I’m gonna need a tetanus shot after this.”

He withdrew his hand, and a tattered, waterlogged scrap of cardboard was pinched between two fingers.

“Is that it? A new assignment?” Dan asked.

“That’s it. Now we’re getting out of here.”

They swapped, Dan taking what Oliver had found and the other boy taking back his phone. That noisy dog bayed again, closer, and Dan half threw himself into the backseat. Oliver pulled away from the curb, making a messy U-turn and then picking up speed.

“Find anything?” Abby asked.

“Yeah,” Dan replied, holding up the piece of cardboard for her to see. Using his phone for light, he leaned back in the seat and examined what they had unearthed. “Looks like a postcard maybe.”

He held the light to the cardboard and then brought it close to his face. There was faded writing on it, and the pen had cut so deeply into the paper that he could see the indented slices behind the ink.

“Hang on,” he said, reading. “I don’t think this is an assignment. It’s a poem, and I’ve seen it before.”

“What? How?” Sabrina blurted.

“Listen.” He held up his hand, taking a deep, shuddering breath before reading over the familiar lines. It was longer than he remembered. This time, it sounded complete. “‘Be not too happy nor too proud, beware your luck, crow not too loud; the Bone Artist steals and then he leaves: the Bone Artist, the Conjurer, the Prince of the Body Thieves.’”