“It might be a good idea to send the fire department, too,” I added, before hanging up.
Returning to Q, I examined his leg with more care. Because of the compound fracture, I couldn’t apply any pressure to stop the bleeding, at least not without causing him a lot of pain. I tore a strip a cloth from the bed sheets and tied a tourniquet a couple of inches above the break. I didn’t tie it too tight-I didn’t want him to lose the leg any more than I wanted him bleeding to death.
“Why did he attack you, Q?” I asked as I worked.
“It was that badass,” he said. “Remember the one Q told you about?”
“Yeah, I remember. I recognized the color of his magic. But why’d he do it? What’d you do to piss him off?”
“Q still doesn’t know. Q hasn’t even met the man.”
I paused in what I was doing. “You’re telling me that you don’t know this guy at all?”
“Brother Q told you that last time.”
“You ever hear the name Cahors?” I asked him.
“Ca-what?”
“Cahors. It’s French.”
He shook his head. “Never heard it before.”
“Then why would he attack you? Why would the guy come in here, and bust up your place, and leave you half-dead if he doesn’t even know you?”
“Q has no idea. He was just mindin’ his own business and that man came and blowed down Q’s door like the big bad wolf, y’know?”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“Brother Q saw his eyes,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “There’s evil in that man.”
“What color were his eyes?” I knew the answer. At this point I was trying to keep him talking.
“They were light. Blue. Gray maybe. They was almost white. Strange, scary, you know?”
“What else? Is he white?”
“Did you ever see a brother with eyes like that?”
I heard a siren approaching, but it kept going past. I wondered if it was a cruiser on its way to check out Antoine’s place.
“Tell me more. I need to find this guy.”
“He’s tall, lanky, you know?”
“Hair?”
“Nope.”
I laughed. “He was bald again, huh?”
“What do you mean, ‘again’?”
“I’ve seen him twice: once with hair and once without.”
“Well, he’s shaved now. To Q that doesn’t always look right on a white man, but it worked for this guy. Made him look mean.”
“All right. Thanks. That should help.”
“Stay clear of this guy, Brother J. Let someone else bring him down. He’s bad to the core.”
“I know he is. He’s had a busy night. He’s already been to Antoine’s place. Kid wasn’t as lucky as you were.”
Orestes had closed his eyes, but he opened them now. “’Toine’s dead?”
I nodded.
“Damn. Boy that young should never get mixed up with a dude like this. ’Toine wasn’t ready for big time.”
“He almost killed me, too. He attacked me at Robo’s.”
Orestes appraised me with a critical eye. “You don’t look so bad.”
“I should be dead. My runemyste saved me.”
His eyebrows went up. “You’ve got a runemyste? Q didn’t know that.” He gave a slow nod; I’d impressed him. “There’s more to Brother J than meets the eye.”
“That’s between you and me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “All right.”
I glanced at my watch. Where the hell was that ambulance? I untied the tourniquet, allowing some blood to flow into Q’s leg. Then I tied it again. I thought about trying a seeing spell, but I didn’t figure it would work any better here than it had at ’Toine’s.
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Any idea why a weremyste this powerful would be killing kids on the quarter moon?”
“Q told you already. He doesn’t know anythin’ about that.”
“I remember you saying so. But look around you. This is serious now. If you’ve got any connection with this guy, any at all, now’s the time to tell me.”
“You look around, Brother J. Q’s got somethin’ now. Least, he did. House, store. Why would Q wanna mess that up by gettin’ involved with this Blind Angel dude? That’d just be dumb.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. He was right.
“Then why’d this guy come after you?”
Orestes shrugged. I heard another siren in the distance, approaching fast.
“That’ll be your ambulance.”
“Q ain’t got money for an ambulance.”
“You need to see a doctor. We’ll deal with the rest later.”
He didn’t argue, and we listened to the changing pitch of the siren.
“The other day when I came here, what made you think ’Toine had something to do with this guy?” I asked him.
“Q hears things,” he said, his eyes closed. “’Toine was into all kinds of bad doin’s. Not just drugs. Word was he did some pimpin’. An’ word was your badass was after kids, ones who had trouble, you know?”
Something clicked into place in my mind. Of all the things that Q could have told me about Antoine, that made the most sense. A guy like Red wouldn’t want to take a chance on finding a suitable victim on the night of the quarter moon. Not if he was planning some kind of magic that had specific demands. He would have wanted to have a target picked out ahead of time, and even being able to disguise himself, he would have stood out too much in the neighborhoods he needed to frequent to find the kids he wanted for the killing spells he’d been casting. ’Toine could do that for him.
But what, if anything, did Shari Bettancourt have in common with Antoine Mirdoux? Was she finding kids for him, too? Was that why she had that necklace? And even if she and ’Toine were helping the guy identify possible victims, how had they found Claudia Deegan? I would have liked to go back to ’Toine’s house to search for something that resembled Shari’s pendant. But by now the place must have been crawling with cops.
“What are you thinkin’ there, Brother J?” Q asked.
I shook my head. “I’m playing catch-up. This guy’s been way ahead of me from the start, but I may have finally figured something out.”
The siren wailed outside the house, then died away. I heard the rasp of a radio and then, a few seconds later, the slamming of the ambulance doors.
“Hello?” a voice called.
“Up here,” I shouted in return. “Stairs are in the back.”
I could hear another set of sirens now. Probably the fire department.
Two EMTs came up the stairs and hesitated as they took in the scene.
“Man, what happened here?” one of them asked.
My eyes met Q’s. “Stove blew,” I said after a few seconds.
“How long this tourniquet been on?” the EMT asked me.
“Since I called. But I released it once a few minutes ago.”
He nodded. “Good deal.”
I stood. “You’re going to be all right, Q. I’ll see you soon.”
Orestes grabbed my hand. “Q won’t forget this, Jay. He mean it. From now on, if you need to know somethin’, Q will tell it, no charge, no shit.”
I smiled. “Thanks.” To the EMTs I said, “You’re taking him to Samaritan?”
“Yup.”
I nodded, and winked at Q.
He let my hand go, and I started down the stairs.
“Wait a minute,” one of the guys said. “The stove’s electric.”
I heard Q chuckle, low and deep.
A crowd had gathered around Q’s house, and they eyed me as I walked past to my car.
“What happened?” someone called to me.
Another voice said, “Is Brother Q all right?”
“He’ll be fine,” I answered and climbed into the Z-ster.
I started her up, but then sat idling, watching as the crowd parted and the fire trucks pulled up. Something other than that glowing gibbous moon was tugging at my mind, trying to make me see what should have been obvious. The moon was clouding my thoughts, making me feel sluggish and stupid.
“Think, Jay,” I muttered, gripping the steering wheel.
If ’Toine was finding victims for the Blind Angel Killer-and that was just a guess on my part-he couldn’t have been the only person doing so. I couldn’t imagine that Claudia Deegan and Antoine Mirdoux had ever crossed paths. Claudia wouldn’t have gone that far, no matter how much she might have wanted to rebel against her old man.