The boy doesn't wait for an answer, stumbling coltlike on unsteady legs as he all but throws himself into the door, rattling the knob with furious panic. It's locked, of course, but Unthank wonders if, just perhaps-- and he has to restrain a laugh even to think of it. How delightful, if the dream-house did let him, just imagine poor pathetic Johnny's face then.

Worth a try.

He comes up behind Johnny again, bent over him like a shadow himself, and lays his hand atop Johnny's on the doorknob. His fingers curl around flesh and bone and the rusting metal beneath it, and he closes his eyes, willing the power, willing the dream to obey.

'Onspanne,' he murmurs, and in that one word, in this dream-space, divorced from the constraints of mundane reality, his voice seems almost to crackle.

The door opens on a shriek of unoiled hinges.

The effort-- both of banishing the shadow-creature and even this little magic-- has tired him more than he'd care to admit, but he's still composed enough to wait, to bend down to murmur ironically into Johnny's ear. 'At your service.'