The girl was in her late teens. She wore combat boots, black fatigue pants, and a tight, cutoff grey T-shirt. She was tall, most of a foot taller than Murphy, and built like a brick house. Her hair had been cut into a short, spiky style and dyed peroxide white. A tattoo on her neck vanished under her shirt, reappeared for a bit on her bared stomach, and continued beneath the pants. She had multiple earrings, a nose ring, an eyebrow ring, and a silver stud through that spot right under her lower lip. On the hand Murphy had twisted up behind her back, she wore a bracelet of dark little glass beads.

"Harry?" Murphy said in that tone of voice that, while polite and patient, demanded an explanation.

I sighed. "Murph. You remember my apprentice, Molly Carpenter."

Murphy leaned to one side and looked at her profile. "Oh, sure," she said. "I didn't recognize her without the pink-and-blue hair. Also, she wasn't invisible last time." She gave me a look, asking if I should let her up.

I gave Murphy a wink, and squatted down on the carpet next to the girl. I gave her my best scowl. "I told you to wait at the apartment and practice your focus."

"Oh, come on," Molly said. "It's impossible. And boring as hell."

"Practice makes perfect, kid."

"I've been practicing my ass off!" Molly protested. "I know fifty times as much as I did last year."

"And if you keep up the pace for another six or seven years," I said, "you might—you might —be ready to go it alone. Until then, you're the apprentice, I'm the teacher, and you do what I tell you."

"But I can help you!"

"Not from a jail cell," I pointed out.

"You're trespassing on a crime scene," Murphy told her.

"Oh, please," Molly said, both scorn and protest in her voice.

(In case it slipped by, Molly has authority issues.)

It was probably the worst thing she could have said.