Catacomb by Madeleine Roux Page B

and my friends? What the hell do you want?”
    “You want to know who I am? Here.” The guy shoved a business card at him. “Meet us later. Eight o’clock sharp. I don’t want to talk here, for more reasons than one.”
    When Dan didn’t take his hands off the window, the guy flicked the card at him. It hit him in the neck and then fluttered to the ground, distracting Dan just long enough that the guy had a chance to back down the street into an alley, rolling up his window with a grim look on his face. Still full of adrenaline, Dan stooped to sweep up the card and then tookoff after the car. Immediately, he collided with a man trying to unpack his trumpet for busking. Dan apologized and tried to keep going, but the car had found a break in the foot traffic, speeding too far ahead for Dan to catch up.
    He swore under his breath.
    Close. So close.
    Dan stared down at the card, finding scrolling black print on an off-white background.
    Berkley & Daughters:
Purveyors of the antique, aged, and absurd—since 1898.
New Orleans
    No address. No phone number. Just a name and a time.
    They would have to be enough.



T he sounds of slurping and gulping were almost as loud as the music, and getting more nauseating by the second. Dan stared down at his tray of oysters and then pushed it away, unable to dredge up any enthusiasm for cold, raw shellfish.
    Jordan took what Dan refused to eat, spooning red sauce into the craggy shells before bolting it all down.
    “I think we should go,” Dan said for the third time.
    His friends seemed hell-bent on ignoring him.
    “What have we learned about this kind of thing?” Jordan asked, lowering his voice so Uncle Steve wouldn’t hear. There was little danger of that, though, since Steve was doing just about everything he could to flirt with their waitress. At the moment, he was at the bar “ordering a drink,” even though there was table service. “It’s usually a trap. Someone winds up hurt or dead. Hardly the way you want to spend your first night in N’Awlins.”
    Dan sighed, looking down at the Berkley & Daughters card sitting on the red-and-white checked tablecloth. It was barely visible in the low light. He had to wonder why it was so dark in the oyster shack, if not to keep people from actually seeing what they were swallowing.
    “Look, whoever is sending messages from Micah’s account keeps contacting me whenever these people show up,” Dan said, meeting Jordan’s eye. “Either they’re the ones behind the messages, or there’s another connection there, and I want to know what it is. Don’t you?”
    “Do you think there’s going to be a reasonable explanation?” Abby asked, chiming in from across the table. She sipped her sweet tea, then wiped at her chin, only now catching the powdered sugar stain that he’d noticed before. “Do you think it’s going to set your mind at ease? Or will it just make things worse?”
    Dan stalled, stumped. Put like that . . . “Well, I don’t know. But I really don’t think this would be that big of a risk. These two didn’t seem all that scary up close. Maybe there is a logical explanation.”
    Wouldn’t that be a change of pace?
    Jordan chewed at the inside of his cheek, sharing a look with Abby before adjusting his glasses and saying, “Felix didn’t seem all that scary at first, either. Neither did any of those students mixed up in the Scarlets. Just because someone seems okay up close doesn’t mean they’re innocent.”
    “Well, that’s a terrible philosophy to take through life,” Dan said.
    “You’re not going to drop this, are you?” Sighing, Jordan finished another oyster and then pushed his empty basket away. “Will you at least let me ask Uncle Steve about this place? It would make me feel better if he knew about it.”
    That was a bargain Dan could easily make. “By all means.”
    They waited until Steve returned to the table on his own—tohis credit, he’d actually managed to obtain a new