I took a deep breath. “This is also the stage where sometimes you do some math.”

The room was very quiet for a moment.

“Yeah,” I said. “Here’s where you decide whose life to risk, or whose isn’t worth risking. Here’s where you decide who you can save and who is already gone past saving. I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while. Some of my seniors in the Council would call me foolish, or arrogant, and they could be right-but I’ve never met anyone who was breathing who I thought was too far gone to help.”

“You’ve got a boogeyman,” I told Megan an hour later.

Megan frowned at me. “A… a…?”

“A boogeyman,” I said. “Sometimes known as a boggle or a boggart. It’s a weak form of phobophage-a fear-eater, mostly insubstantial. This one is pretty common. Feeds on a child’s fear.”

Yardly’s eyebrows tried to climb into his hair.

“That isn’t possible,” Megan said. “I’d… I’d sense something like that. I’d feel it. I’ve felt things like that before. Several ghosts. Once, a poltergeist.”

“Not this one,” I said. “You’re too old.”

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Excuse me?”

“Ahem. I mean, you’re an adult.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Only kids can sense them,” I said. “Part of their nature conceals them from older awarenesses.”

“The threshold,” Meg said. “It should keep such things out.”

“Sometimes they ride in with someone in the family. Sometimes if a child has a vivid enough dream, it can open up a window in the Nevernever that the boggart uses to skip in. They can use mirrors, sometimes, too.”

“Nevernever?” Yardly asked.

“The spirit world,” I clarified.