Madame A’s, a sloped, mauve-colored storefront, was not on any street Dan could discern; it huddled between the sidewalk and a back alley, a single dingy lantern and sign whispering its presence.

A strong reek of hot garbage wafted toward them from the shadowy courtyard at the end of the alley. The familiar, discordant whine of jazz musicians warming up—fiddle and trumpet and saxophone clashing against one another—drifted just above the stench, which was so thick it seemed to have its own bitter flavor.

“What an interesting smell we’ve discovered,” Jordan mumbled dryly, sticking close to his friends, wedged right in the middle of them.

The windows of the shop were blacked out, smudged with paint or grease. A cat wandered out to meet them, a one-eyed calico with three quarters of a tail. It watched them with its little fuzzy chin tilted up and imperiously to the side. The door to Madame A’s was already open a fraction, a curtain behind the door perfectly still in the rank doldrums of the alleyway.

“After you,” Dan said, gesturing for Abby to go first. “This being your idea and all.”

“Let’s just hope it smells better on the inside,” she whispered, taking a hesitant gulp of air before plunging through the curtain.

The atmosphere inside the antique shop wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was at least well lit, and the garbage smell was replaced by the overpowering perfume of jasmine incense. The place did remind Dan a little of the back room in Oliver’s shop, but it was even more crowded here and far less organized. The ceiling was cluttered with mobiles, some made from beads and crystals, others of bone and feather. The far wall was covered with a giant display of candles, bottles, flags, and tiny tincture pots. A crooked sign had been posted above it, reading: CANDLES—OILS—DRAPO—CONJURE HAND RUBS.

Dan wandered over to inspect the display, dodging propped-up glass cases filled with pamphlets, books, and jewelry. After all the talk about grave robbing, Dan couldn’t look at valuables like this without imagining who had once owned them, and when they’d been lost. Then, another gust of jasmine-scented air rolled through the shop. A haze of smoke made the room feel small and dreamlike.

Dan picked up one of the candles, inspecting the label.

“‘Les Morts,’” he read softly.

“It’s for Voudon practitioners.”

Dan set down the candle with a quick swivel of his head. He was no longer alone at the display, but he hadn’t heard Connor Finnoway approach. The councilman, taller than Dan by a head, reached over his shoulder and took the same candle, turning it slowly in his hand.

“It’s a misunderstood religion,” the councilman added with a smile. “Most of these candles are for luck, for health, for love. Nothing sinister about it.”

Dan nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. His French wasn’t great, but he didn’t know how anything called Les Morts could be for luck, health, or love.

The councilman had changed suits, though this one was just as slick as the last. The watch on his left wrist sparkled with diamonds.

“Mr. Finnoway?” Abby joined them. “Thanks for meeting us. I had some questions for you.”

“Ah. No preamble,” he said, chuckling. He turned to Dan but pointed at Abby. “Very concise. I like that.”

Dan didn’t care what he liked. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of asking Finnoway about the poem they had found, but Abby had won the coin toss. Across the room, Jordan was busy talking to a tall, willowy woman with glittering dark eyes and skin. It was impossible to tell how old she was; her features appeared delicate, timeless. The way she seemed to rule over the shop without lifting a finger or saying a word made Dan think she must be the eponymous Madame A.

“There’s this verse,” Abby was already saying, offering the councilman a version of the poem she had copied down onto a fresh sheet of paper. “We’ve seen it twice now—once in Shreveport and once here in New Orleans. We were wondering if it means anything to locals.”

Finnoway browsed the paper, one eyebrow quirking up in interest. “And what did Steve Lipcott have to say about it?”

Abby blushed, glancing side to side. “I didn’t actually ask him. He didn’t grow up here.”

“Smart of you to consult a native.” The councilman grinned, then handed the poem back to Abby. “I’ve heard it before, but not since childhood. It’s a sort of nursery school rhyme, our version of a boogeyman. You know, eat your broccoli, say your prayers, or the Bone Artists will come and take off your toes.”

Dan glanced at Abby, but she apparently had the same thought, and she vocalized it first. “That seems awfully harsh. I mean, do you really tell children someone will take their bones?”

“Hansel and Gretel are fattened up to be eaten. Stories for children have always leaned toward the macabre.” He grinned, showing perfectly even and white teeth. “At any rate, it’s not a popular story here anymore.” He nodded toward the poem in her hand. “That’s about as vintage as anything you’d find in this store.”

“So they’re not real then?” Dan asked coolly. “These Bone Artists?”

Finnoway laughed and turned back to look at the candles. “I didn’t say that, did I?”

Abby rolled her eyes and reshuffled her papers. “Now you’re just teasing us.”

“A cautionary tale doesn’t work, my dear, if nobody believes it.”

The curtain over the shop’s door rustled, and Dan twisted to look, finding that Finnoway’s assistant had come in, too. She appeared to be looking for the councilman.

Dan didn’t mean to stare, but she was mesmerizing, so precisely coiffed and dressed she looked ready to stroll onto a movie set. He heard Abby cough lightly, then cough a little louder.

Idiot. Abby was right there.

“Excuse me for one moment,” Finnoway said, going to confer with his assistant by the entrance.

After an awkward moment of silence, Abby said, “This trip hasn’t been even close to what we were expecting, has it? But things are okay, right? Are you doing okay?”

“Sure, let’s go with okay,” he said. He raked both hands through his messy hair and dodged around the case of necklaces to the wall. There was a globbed line of paint running horizontally across the plaster. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m feeling, Abby. Sad? Confused? Angry?”

He traced the thick, painted line with his fingertips, reading the numbers penned above it. It was just a date, and Dan shivered, realizing the line was marking how high the water had risen in here during the hurricane. It was a miracle anything in the store had survived.

“Angry?” Abby paused, her fingers hovering over a rotating display of postcards and laminated newspapers. “Angry at who? Your parents?”

“A little bit, yeah. And at Oliver, too. He should have just given me that damn box. It’s not like he needs the stupid thing, and it might actually tell me something about why my parents gave me up. Maybe I’m looking too hard for something that isn’t there. Maybe they thought they were doing something good. But I just can’t figure out why I was shuffled around Pennsylvania while they were killed in a car crash in Louisiana.” He sighed and leaned against the wall. “The point is, I don’t think I should have to bargain for something that should be mine.”

He trailed off, watching Finnoway wander back to them.

“I was hoping to borrow you for a moment,” Finnoway said, but while Dan expected that to be directed at Abby, it wasn’t.

“Oh. Wait, me?”

“Yes.” The councilman nodded toward a quieter corner away from the counter and his friends. “I didn’t get a chance to say this yesterday, but when Steve mentioned you were hanging around with the owner of Berkley and Daughters, well . . .”

“Oliver?” Dan narrowed his eyes, wondering why exactly they needed to be speaking in hushed tones. “What about him?”

“He’s not exactly the most savory fellow. His father had a reputation for being a notorious drunk. And in this city, that’s saying something.” Clearing his throat, the councilman glanced over his shoulder at Abby, watching her for an uncomfortably long moment. “I’m not here to help your girlfriend pick out souvenirs, young man. I’m here to give you a bit of advice.”

“Why do you care what I do?”

“I don’t.” He put his hands in his pockets, twisting away from the shelves of knickknacks. The politician’s smile from yesterday was gone, replaced with an angry grimace. “Oliver Berkley is a pimple on the ass of this city, just like his father and his father’s father. Steve Lipcott is an old friend, and if his nephew is going to be living here, I wouldn’t want his reputation or Steve’s to be tainted by . . . unfortunate associations.”

Dan ground his teeth together, staring up into the councilman’s inscrutable green eyes. “Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Smiling, Finnoway glided away from the shelves, smoothly cutting into Abby’s conversation with Madame A. Dan abandoned his spot at the wall, joining Jordan instead. Apparently Madame A had talked Jordan into buying a large handful of candles; they peeked out of Jordan’s bag as his friend swung around to greet him.

“They’re for Steve,” he said immediately. “I thought I’d pick him up something while we were here.”

“Uh-huh.” Dan peered at Madame A behind her counter. She looked persuasive enough to get a person to buy just about anything.

“Any luck with the friendly councilman?” Jordan asked. A complimentary tea tray had been set out on a countertop near the door and Jordan was headed there, beelining for the sugar-dusted cakes arranged on a silver plate.

“Not really. Before he had some not-so-nice things to say about Oliver, he said the poem was just some dumb fairy tale used to spook children into behaving.”

Jordan’s brows shot up as he shoved a teacake into his mouth. “Really? No way, that’s not what Madame A said.”

“Oh? And what did Madame A have to say about it?” Dan lowered his voice, shooting a glance over his shoulder to make sure Finnoway and his assistant weren’t listening in. The assistant was on a phone call, hissing into the mobile and pacing.

“She said the Bone Artist thing started out as a legend, yeah, but that there was a kernel of truth to it.” Jordan matched Dan’s conspiratorial whisper. He leaned in, pouring himself a cup of pale, greenish tea. “Back during the Depression, people were so desperate for money that they started grave robbing. Apparently, around here, there was a group of people called the Bone Artists who would pay money for bones. The bones supposedly contained some of the dead person’s personality, and the Bone Artists claimed they could turn the bones into talismans to sell back for even more. So if you wanted luck, you found a lucky person’s bone and turned it over, or if you wanted money you took a rich person’s.” Jordan blew the rising steam away from his cup of tea and dunked a second cake into it. “It was big business. I guess people get real superstitious when shit hits the fan.”

Dan shivered. “Jesus.”

“Yeah. Sounds a bit like Oliver’s Artificer guy, doesn’t it?”

It did. Dan checked on the councilman again, who was chuckling in his supremely infuriating way with Abby over some article they had found. “Why would Finnoway lie about it?”

“Who knows? Maybe he legit didn’t know. I mean, he said he liked history, but I think Madame A has been here since like the beginning of time. It’s pretty awesome.”

“Well, last night, Oliver acted like he had never heard of the Bone Artists,” Dan pointed out. “And now this stuff with Finnoway? I feel like one of them is covering something up.”

“Or both of them.”

If those thugs—the Bone Artists—were still operating, then maybe that was what Micah had gotten wrapped up in. And if so, Dan really didn’t like the idea of them holding on to his bones, planning to turn them into supposed magical talismans. Which led to his next question. “So, do they work?”

“What?” Jordan coughed on his tea.

“The bone talismans they were making. Were they just superstition, or did they really do something?”

Jordan put down his empty cup, worrying his lip piercing again. “I asked, but Madame A wouldn’t answer,” he whispered. “Frankly, I think that tells you everything you need to know.”