I've finished my first day working with the Reynolds. The son has been moody all day long. He also stinks and has been craving lots and lots of meat. Basically it seems like he's going through puberty early, except for the howling and the fact that his nails are growing faster and thicker than usual. Naturally, I wanted to make sure we were actually on the right track, so I started with tossing a little zauberstaub around. The dust all landed right on the boy, and most of it went to the scars from the attack. So either this is lycanthropy or the spirit or warlock or whatever is causing the phenomenon is doing so without leaving any magical traces. Which is impossible. I think.
Anyway, the next step was to see if there was anything that would inhibit the condition. Wolfsbane, silver, and mistletoe all worked as inhibitors, but they also caused physical irritation. As far as I can tell, the level of damage to the child is directly proportional to the effect upon the wolf. This could mean that the wolf isn't a distinct spirit after all, or it could mean that it and the child are too closely interwoven for any such basic tactics to target one and not the other.
The only really promising result came about when I put the child in a circle. I used a design the Agency uncovered a while back to block out as much arcane energy as possible from the outside world. I tried another pinch of zauberstaub (damn, this is getting expensive) and only two discernible specks were able to get through. After thirty minutes or so the kid started to get better. His heart rate went down. he got less aggressive, and the hairs on the back of my neck stopped standing at attention. I'm pretty sure some of the body hair even disappeared. I'll never understand how that part of the change works. Anyway, it all seemed to be going well until about eleven minutes after I marked down that there was a noticeable change. At that point the traits are started to come back, with the additional change that he became nauseous and tired. I was reluctant to shut down the test, but when he fell out of his chair I figured it was time to break the circle. The whole may have ended poorly. but it's still good news in my opinion because it suggests the presence of an actual actual spirit that requires a flow of arcane energy for nourishment. The trouble is that if I'm right it also can feed directly on the child if it gets cut off from the natural currents it usually taps into.
After that I went back to research, and came up with mostly horrible news. Everything I've come up with suggests we need concrete and thick, metal doors to keep the wolf locked in during the change, and the family doesn't have anything like that. The garage might with enough silver and wolfsbane scattered around, but it could still get out if it really wanted to. It would just hurt really, really bad. I told the parents that I have some sedatives that can stop it from working up the nerve for that, but I neglected to mention that those sedatives are mostly opiates. The real trouble there is that I'm not sure the amount of drugs needed to keep a werewolf calm during the change will actually be below the lethal dosage for a nine year-old kid. It could be that he'd die of an overdose the moment he changed back.
Oh, and lets not forget that other little tidbit I found in the research. Supposedly there are some ways to cure a werewolf, but they're all...let's just say they're impractical. The most common one is to kill whoever turned you and eat their heart. And according on account you have to do it on the night of the new moon, while another one says you have to do it the night before the full moon. But one thing all of them agree on is that you have to do it before the first change is complete. If we try it after the three night of lupine fun, then it won't work. According to the lore at least. My best guess is that this is the time that the curse is really settling into his spiritual/biological system, which would also explain the odd symptoms showing up during times when he's supposed to look like any other human.
Well, tomorrow's the big night. This is going to be all kinds of fun.
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