“And you’re going to swallow it anyway, aren’t you, you silly man?” She crossed the room to my field bag and rummaged through it for a moment before pulling out the jar of antiserum that I’d managed to mix before collapsing. “What do you want done with this?”

“I’ll take it,” said Helen, holding out her hand. “You don’t have to stay in here for the next part if you don’t want to. I know that seeing your mate in pain can be troublesome.”

“No,” said Shelby, in a flat tone devoid of the humor she had been forcing herself to project only seconds before. “I stay.”

“As you wish.” Helen took the jar from her and turned back to me. “Please remove your shirt and assume a neutral sitting position. If you make any hostile moves, I will strike. If I feel threatened in any way, I will strike. If you attempt to reach for a weapon, I will strike. Do you have any allergies I need to be aware of?”

The change in tenor between the portions of her speech was abrupt enough to leave me blinking as I unbuttoned my already-ruined shirt and stripped it off, exposing my bruised and bloodied chest. Shelby made a little hissing noise between her teeth as she saw the damage without anything to obscure it or make it look less bad than it really was. “I don’t intend to threaten you, but why did we just go from friendly to ‘I’m going to pump you full of venom’?”

“I’m about to start doing things that could cause you a great deal of pain.” Helen turned to Shelby. “I know you want to be here for his treatment, but I’m going to need that chair now.”

Shelby scowled, but couldn’t deny the lack of seating in the room. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Don’t start without me.” Then she was out of the room, heading into the hall with irritated quickness.

Helen turned to me immediately, dropping her voice to something more conspiratorial than her earlier staged whisper. “Are they holding you prisoner?” she asked. “My cousin vouched for you, and I am willing to get you out of here if that’s necessary. We can discuss payment later.”

I blinked at her. What tactics did the Thirty-Sixers use to keep the Covenant out of their continent? “No,” I said. “I’m here voluntarily, because they asked for help, and it seemed like a good idea to keep werewolves from getting established in Australia. Didn’t Kumari mention Shelby?”

“She said you traveled with a blonde girl from the Society, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.” She set the jar of black sludge on the bedside table, abandoning her hushed tone. “I don’t know how much you know about how things work here, but the Thirty-Six Society does not call in the local wadjet to play doctor.”

“Then they should,” I said. I moved into a sitting position as I spoke, sending the mice scattering for the relative safety of the bed, which at least wasn’t moving. “I asked them to call you. You can’t catch what I might have.”

“You are not sick,” squeaked the mouse who had diagnosed me, indignant. It took up a perch on my knee, wrapping its tail around its paws and fixing me with a stern eye. “You must learn to have Faith,” it chided.

“I do have faith,” I said. “I just have more faith in science than I do in, er, faith itself. It’s a God thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

All the mice made a low “ooo” noise, clearly enthralled by the idea of being in the presence of divine mysteries. I was going to pay for this later.

Helen looked amused. “Your life is one long theological argument, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea,” I said. “But my point stands. You can’t catch lycanthropy—which I do not have—” I added, before the mice could start objecting again, “but you understand human physiology and how to provide medical treatment. That makes you the best person for the job.”

“It’s nice of you to say so.” Helen turned as Shelby walked back into the room, now lugging a folding wooden chair. “Thank you. I apologize for sending you away before, but I needed to speak to my patient in private.”

“Gotcha,” said Shelby. She plunked the chair down next to Helen before looking at me. “You didn’t bite him. We’re fine. What do you want me to do now? I’m not leaving, so don’t even suggest that. Fighting isn’t fun when one of us is venomous and the other is heavily armed.”

“It’s just like being at home,” I said, garnering a cheer from the mice.

Helen didn’t rise to the bait, thankfully. We could be here all evening if she really got Shelby going. “If you’re not going to leave, you can help me with my equipment. I’d rather avoid any chance that you’re going to come into contact with his bodily fluids, just to be safe.”

The mouse on my knee made a small huffing noise, but otherwise didn’t argue.

“Right,” said Shelby. “I’ve already had two showers today, and I’d rather not take a third. I’m here for whatever you need.” She sat on the end of the bed, close enough to be reassuring, but far enough away to be out of the logical splash range for anything that happened to come out of me.

Helen sat down in the chair Shelby had provided, setting her medical bag on the floor between her and Shelby. She leaned over to dig around in it, producing a pair of thick-lensed glasses and a suture kit. “Now,” she said. “Let’s begin.”

I’ll spare you the process of having my wounds cleaned—again—cauterized with silver nitrate, and stitched by Helen, who had a steady hand but didn’t believe in painkillers. She was a general practitioner by trade, which meant she had an excellent grasp of human anatomy and where it differed from wadjet anatomy (like the part where I was a mammal, and not a big snake in an excellent human suit). She was a field doctor for cryptids by calling, and that meant that painkillers were something to be reserved for really serious accidents, the sort of thing where the person being worked on would be lucky to walk away, and thus didn’t need to keep their wits about them. Since I didn’t qualify as a severe trauma case, she just jumped right in and started searing my flesh.

There wasn’t much conversation during that part of the process. It wasn’t until she was putting in the stitches that she got chatty. “You’re sure this was a werewolf?” she asked, as she sewed up a long gash on the back of my arm.