"Who?" he said sharply. "Was it a man made out of shadows?"

Dreams. Dreams were the key. He assumed that nightmares were just a symptom of other problems, but...

Trilby paced around the room, skirting the maroon stains. "You are awake," he said. "I can promise that. And we're still in Tadfield Manor." Probably.

"It can affect this realm," he muttered, touching the scorches on his clothes. "It can summon anything, it can affect the landscape, it can physically hurt us. What does it want?" He stopped short in the middle of the room. "Tell me," he said. "The—the boy in the lobby. Did you think he was in his twenties, or his teens?"