“Generally,” Sir Stuart said very softly, “until those loved ones pass on themselves.”

I shuddered. “Yeah,” I said. “Well. I don’t have time for that.”

“You have nothing but time, Dresden.”

“But three of my people don’t,” I said, my voice harsh. “They’re going to get hurt if I don’t make things right. If I don’t find my killer.” I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. I wasn’t actually breathing air. I didn’t need to breathe. Habit. “Where’s Mort?”

“Waiting around the corner,” Sir Stuart said. “He’ll come in once we’ve given him the all clear.”

“What? I’m the little chicken’s personal Secret Service now?” I grumbled. I pushed myself up to my feet and eyed Murphy’s house. “Do you see anything threatening around here?”

“Not at the moment,” Sir Stuart said, “other than the allegedly suspicious auto coach.”

“Well, the house is warded. I’m not sure if the defenses are purely against insubstantial intruders or if they might also attack a living intruder. Tell him not to touch the house with anything he wants to keep.”

Sir Stuart nodded and said, “I’m going to circle the place. I’ll return with Mortimer.”

I grunted absently, reaching out a hand to feel the wards around the place again. They were powerful, but… flawed, somehow. My wards were all built into the same, solid barrier of energy. These wards had solidity, but it was a piecemeal thing. I felt like I was looking at a twelvefoot wall built from LEGO blocks. If someone with enough mystic muscle hit it right, the ward would shatter at its weakest seams.

Of course, that would probably punch a hole in the barrier, but not a catastrophic one. If one portion of my wards lost integrity, the whole thing would come down and whatever remained of the energy that had broken it would come through. If someone knocked out a bit of these wards, it would send a bunch of LEGOs flying—probably soaking up all of the energy by dividing it among lots of little pieces—but the rest of the barrier would stand.

That might offer several advantages on the minor-league end of the power scale. The modular wards would be easy to repair, compared to classic integral wards, so that even if something smashed through, the wards could be closed again in a brief time. God knows, the ingredients for the spell were probably a lot cheaper—and you wouldn’t need a big-time White Council wizard to put them up.

But they had a downside, too. There were a lot of things that could smash through—and if you got killed after they came inside, the ease of repair wouldn’t matter much to your cooling corpse.

Still. It was a hell of a lot better than nothing. The basic profile was my design, just implemented differently. Who the hell would have done this to Murphy’s place? And why?

I turned and stepped off the porch to peer in a window, feeling vaguely voyeuristic as I did so. But I wasn’t sure what else I was going to do until Mort got here to do some speaking for me.