I just lay there on the snow for a moment. I tried the whole “there is no spoon” thing again, but apparently there was perception of reality and then there was hard-core, undeniable, real reality. It took me several seconds to recover and sit up again, and several more seconds to realize that I had been hit by something specifically engineered to stop intruding spirits.

Murphy’s house had been warded, its natural defensive threshold used as a foundation for further, more aggressive defenses. And while I was only a shade of my former self, I was still wizard enough to recognize my own damned wards—or at least wards that were virtually identical to my own.

The door opened and Murphy appeared in it. She was a woman of well below average height, but built of spring steel. Her golden hair had been cut into a short brush over her scalp, and the stark style showed off the lines of muscles and tendons in her neck, and the pugnacious, stubborn set of her jawline. She wore jeans and a plaid shirt over a blue tee, and held her SIG in her right hand.

Something stabbed me in the guts and twisted upon seeing her.

A rush of memories flooded over me, starting with our first meeting, on a missing-persons case years ago, when I’d still been doing my time as an apprentice PI and Murphy had been a uniform cop working a beat. Every argument, every bit of banter and repartee, every moment of revelation and trust that had been built up between us, came hammering into me like a thousand major-league fastballs. The last memory, and the sharpest, was of facing each other in the hold of my brother’s boat, trembling on the edge of a line we hadn’t ever allowed ourselves to cross before.

“Karrin,” I tried to say. It came out a whisper.

Murphy’s brow furrowed and she stood still in the doorway, despite the cold wind and falling snow, her eyes scanning left and right.

Her eyes moved over me, past me, through me, without stopping. She didn’t see me. She couldn’t hear me. We weren’t a part of the same world anymore.

It was a surprisingly painful moment of realization.

Before I could get my thoughts clear of it, Murphy, still frowning, closed the door. I heard her close several locks.

“Easy, lad,” said Sir Stuart in a gentle, quiet voice. He hunkered down to put a hand on my shoulder. “There is no need to rush regaining your feet. It hurts. I know.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. I swallowed and blinked away tears that couldn’t really be real. “Why?”

“As I told you, lad. Memories are life here. Life and power. Seeing the people you care for most again is going to trigger memories much more strongly than they would in a mere mortal. It can take time to grow accustomed to it.”

I wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my chin on my kneecap. “How long?”