failed potion

“Yes,” I said. I put as much hostility into it as I could.
Molly had been overexposed to my menace. It bounced right off her. “I just thought it would be a good time for me to work out some of the kinks on my invisibility potion. You’ve said I’m ready to use the lab alone.”
“I said unsupervised. That isn’t quite the same thing as alone.” My glower deepened. “Much like having an apprentice puttering around the basement is not quite the same thing as being alone with Anastasia.”
“You’re going horseback riding,” Molly said in a reasonable tone of voice. “You won’t be here, and I’ll be gone by the time you get back. And besides, I can make sure Mouse gets a walk or two while you’re gone, so you won’t have to come rushing back early. Isn’t that thoughtful of me?”
Mouse’s huge grey doggy head came up off the floor, and his tail twitched as she said, “Walk.” He looked at me hopefully.
“Oh, for crying out—” I shook my head wearily. “Lock up behind you before you go downstairs.”

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I got up and threw myself into the shower, bringing my razor with me. I was only partway through shaving when the explosion rattled the apartment, hard enough to make a film of water droplets leap up off the shower floor.
I stumbled out, wrapped a towel around my waist, seized my blasting rod—just in case what was needed was more explosions—and went running into the living room. The trapdoor leading down to the lab in my subbasement was open, and pink and blue smoke was roiling up out of it in a thick, noxious plume.
“Hell’s bells,” I choked out, coughing. “Molly!?”
“Here,” she called back through her own thick coughing. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
I opened a couple of the sunken windows, on opposite sides of the room, and the breeze began to thin out the smoke. “What about my lab?”
“I had it contained when it blew,” she responded more clearly now. “Um. Just . . . just let me clean up a bit.”
I eyed the trapdoor. “Molly,” I said warningly.
“Don’t come down!” she said, her voice near panic. “I’ll have it cleaned up in a second. Okay?”
I thought about storming down there with a good hard lecture about the importance of not busting up your mentor’s irreplaceable collection of gear, but I took a deep breath instead. If anything had been destroyed, the lecture wouldn’t fix it. And I had only fifteen minutes to make myself look like a human being and find some way to get rid of the smell of Molly’s alchemical misadventure. So I decided to go finish shaving.

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The bombshell blushed, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her . . . toes.
“God, that’s just . . . so wrong.” I shook my head. “But to answer your question, yes, I think that—”
“Harry?” Molly called from the lab. “Um. Do you have a fire extinguisher?”
“What!?”
“I mean, if I needed one!” she amended, her voice quavering. “Hypothetically speaking!”
“Hypothetically speaking?” I half shouted. “Molly! Did you set my lab on fire?!”

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“Harry?” Molly called out, her voice higher-pitched than ever. “Acid doesn’t eat through concrete, right?”
I blinked at the trapdoor and screamed in frustration, “Hell’s bells, what are you doing down there?!”

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I had no time for pain. I lunged for the pipe bomb and nearly wet my pants as another explosion shook the floor— only this one was followed an instant later by an absolute flood of bright green smoke that billowed up from the lab.

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I couldn’t see what Molly had done to my lab, but the fumes down there were cloying and obviously dangerous. I hauled myself over to the trapdoor.
Molly hadn’t made it up the folding staircase and just lay sprawled semiconscious against it. I had to grab her and haul her up the stairs. She was undressed from the waist up. I spotted her shirt and bra on the floor near the worktable, both of them riddled with acid-burned holes.
I got her laid out on her back, elevated her feet on a stray cushion from the smashed easy chair, and checked her breathing. It didn’t take long, because she wasn’t, though she did still have a faint pulse. I started rescue breathing for her—which is a lot more demanding than people think. Especially when the air is still thick with the smell of God only knows what chemical combinations.
I finally got her to cough, and my racing heartbeat subsided a little as she began breathing again, raggedly, and opened her eyes.

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