“It’s superficial,” Jackaby said. I glanced up to see him adding kindling to a little campfire. “You’ll be fine, I’m sure, but have it looked at in the morning, if you like. You’ve lost some blood, but I imagine it was exertion, not injury, which ultimately did you in. You should try to exercise more often.” He propped another branch across the flames. “You’ve been out for a couple of hours. It took longer than I anticipated to get the fire going, and, of course, I’ve had to attend to both of you myself. I’m afraid our friend’s condition is rather more bleak.”

I looked around. Beyond the campfire, Charlie, still in the figure of a hound, lay in an immobile heap. The blade had been removed, and in its place a crude compress made of torn strips of fabric had been applied. I recognized amid them the hem of Jenny’s formerly beautiful shirtwaist. His breath was so shallow that the movement was almost imperceptible in the flickering firelight.

On the opposite side of the fire lay a pile of darkness that could only be the commissioner, draped in his charcoal gray coat with hints of its crimson lining visible amid the shadows. Jackaby tossed a few final twigs onto the flames and walked over to the body.

I shivered and gingerly pulled the coat back over myself, pushing the aching sting to the back of my mind. “Is he . . . ?” I began.

“Dead? Not yet. He won’t be dashing about any time soon with those lead rounds in his chest, but until this thing is neatly burned, the creature will live.” He knelt beside the commissioner’s head.

I looked at Jackaby’s meager campfire. It was not a bad job, downright impressive given the wet, frozen landscape, but it was no funeral pyre. Tossing a body onto that would only smother the thing. Swift’s coat, alone, would probably choke it out. “We’re going to need a lot more wood if we’re going to—” I swallowed my last words. Swift was not a good man, not a man at all, but my mind still recoiled at the thought of burning someone alive.

“Not at all.” Jackaby stood. He held the commissioner’s crimson derby in front of him by a finger and thumb, as one might carry a gift left on the doorstep by an overzealous cat. “We may not reduce it entirely to ashes, but I think we’ve more than enough to render it charred to a crisp and bone dry.”

“His hat?” I asked.