Woollard looked at him in surprise. He held a stethoscope in one hand, and an ancient cellphone the size of a brick in the other. It seemed he’d just killed the call. Rico was lying placidly on a couch, his filthy old dressings replaced with fresh bandages. He was drumming his fingers on the cracked black leather, staring at a handwritten optician’s eye chart and looking bored.

‘Who were you speaking to?’ Jasmine asked uncertainly.

‘Stacy Stein at the hospital centre,’ Woollard told her, seemingly bewildered by their behaviour. ‘I wanted her opinion on prescribing theophylline for Rico’s asthma.’

Tom wasn’t convinced. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be a doctor?’

‘I’m not a general practitioner,’ Woollard replied crossly, resting the phone on a cluttered workbench. ‘I used to be a specialist in genetics and haematology.’

Jasmine screwed up her nose. ‘Say what?’

‘Study of the blood,’ Woollard explained. ‘I led the field at Yale. But that was a long time ago,’ he added with a sigh. ‘The medicine I had in mind for Rico lists heart murmurs as a possible side-effect, and since Dr Stein is more intimately acquainted with his medical history than I, I simply sought her advice.’

‘Who is Stacy Stein?’ Tom asked suspiciously.

‘She sticks needles in you,’ chirped Rico, but speaking made him cough again.

‘Runs programs, tests, medical trials, that kind of shit,’ Jasmine added with a grimace. ‘She works with a whole lot of kids on the streets. Always on your case, always judging your ass –you using? You drinking? She don’t quit trying to get you straight. ’S’like going to see your mom or something.’

‘So you come to Woollard for treatment instead. I guess he’s not about to give anyone a hard time about that,’ Tom observed. Though he couldn’t agree with her preference, at least it made a bit more sense to him now. ‘But how come she knows Rico’s medical history? She doesn’t know about the ’wolves, right?’

Jasmine laughed in his face. ‘She knows all right. And she knows Rico’s a resister, that’s why she’s so hot on him.’

Tom nodded thoughtfully. Before this nightmare had begun, he’d have laughed at anyone who said they believed in werewolves. Now he found himself wondering just how many people knew the true situation. He and Kate had been directed here to find Jicaque, but it was feeling more and more like they had been lured into the secret werewolf capital of America.

‘Stacy’s gonna find a cure for the ’wolves,’ piped up Rico. ‘Make them just people again.’

‘She is?’ Tom looked at him, then at Woollard, a jolt of fresh hope slamming through his heart. Maybe he wouldn’t need to find their mystery medicine man; maybe a cure was closer than he could’ve dared hope. ‘Well?’