‘They push their nails into the flesh of your stomach,’ she said, ‘and disembowel you while you’re still alive. It has a visceral terror to it that is quite unlike any other; we call it Night Terror 110b. This is how it works: I’ll have you eaten alive on the hour every hour, night after night, week after week for as long as it takes. You know what the record is? The most that anyone has ever endured?’

‘Twelve?’

‘Forty-seven. But we figured they didn’t know anything. It was that orderly. What was his name again?’

‘Webster.’

‘Right. He must have been made of fairly tough material to withstand that. We don’t often miss one. So, are you ready?’

She didn’t wait for a reply and all of a sudden my feet were anchored to the ground by two blocks of clear ice. I saw a shadow move past the window of the ticket office, then another. I could hear the nightwalkers outside making soft whispering noises, the rattle of a Rubik’s cube, the soft murmur of Glitzy Tiara running through a shopping list for a meal she’d never make. I had felt the same when they had attacked me for real in the Cambrensis, a sort of dull, helpless terror that makes you hot and sweaty and nauseous. I shivered as the nightwalkers began to creep in through the door, some of them across the walls and one along the ceiling.

‘I’ll make a deal,’ I said.

‘We’re done negotiating, Charlie. The sooner you tell us where the cylinder is, the sooner this can all be over. And I mean over. There’s one of my agents waiting next door to smother your worthless wonky head with a grubby pillow as soon as I wake up and give the order. It won’t be quick, but it’ll be final. And you will tell us. They all do.’

‘Except Webster,’ I said.

‘Yes, okay, except Webster,’ she agreed in a tetchy manner. ‘We’ll up it to a hundred repeats in the future. Live and learn. So: be eaten alive once, twice, thirty times – you’ll still be dead at the end of it and we will have the cylinder. Your choice.’

The nightwalkers started to move in again with unpleasant slathering noises and in a slow, calculated fashion. I tried to jump out to the fire valleys but I couldn’t. I’d overlooked that I was thin, and tired, and slightly narced. Aurora, by contrast, was about as fit as she could be. The first nightwalker was barely a couple of feet from me, all nails and teeth and hunger, when The Notable Goodnight spoke again.

‘Something’s happened,’ she said through the medium of the shimmering Mrs Nesbit, and Aurora held up her hand. The nightwalkers stopped abruptly but continued to stare at me hungrily.