“I see you’re awake, dear. Good,” she said. “Drink plenty of liquids in the next few days, and try to rest while you heal up, understand?”

I nodded.

“Lovely. You’ll be fine. A nice, soft bed would do you more good than this slab, if you feel up to stairs.”

She collected her coat and hat, and Jackaby saw her out. He turned back to me after he had closed the door.

“She really is quite talented,” Jackaby said casually. “She has competent hands, although I found her bedside manner somewhat rough. Then again, I imagine most of her patients don’t unconsciously metamorphose into animals and then back in the middle of her care. She had to be a little creative with her use of force.”

“He’ll be all right, then?” I asked. My chest felt tight and sore as I spoke, but the pain had dulled considerably. I propped myself up on my pillow carefully, keeping the soft blanket wrapped around my shoulders for both warmth and dignity.

“He will heal, but the real question is whether we can get him safely away from here before Marlowe decides to come looking for him.”

“Marlowe?”

“The man’s prejudice is infuriating. After the fine service the good detective rendered, the self-sacrifice and personal injury he sustained, that stubborn oaf still wants to call Mr. Cane a werewolf and a public enemy and have him trussed up in chains!”

“Well, can you entirely blame him? If Charlie isn’t a werewolf, then what . . . ?”

“ ‘Caini,’ they call themselves. ‘The Dogs.’ In Romania they are sometimes called the ‘Om-Caini,’ or the ‘Caine Barbati.’ They are a nomadic tribe—therianthropic, yes, but not lycanthropic—and not malevolent, although much maligned.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

My employer sighed heavily and dragged his hand across his face. “Charlie is a member of a very old, very reclusive family of shape-shifters. The House of Caine has no permanent home, rarely settling anywhere for long, and you can see why. They are gypsies, feared and misunderstood, and constantly on the move. The Caini are less fiercely powerful than werewolves, but more fiercely loyal.

“I saw him at once for what he was, of course, and was immediately impressed to find he had made a life here in New Fiddleham. I did my best not to expose the fellow, but I suppose it’s too late for that, now. The Caini’s powers wax and wane with the cycles of the moon, but a full grown Dog like Charlie should have been able to maintain either form at will at any time of the month. It was his own stubborn loyalty that pushed him into overexertion after the banshee was killed, and you saw what came of that. I knew he was losing control, the fool. Now, thanks to his devotion to this ignorant town and its superstitious people, it seems Charlie Cane must follow in his ancestors’ footsteps and flee.”