7

All told, this was one of the fastest jobs I'd ever pulled and I was feeling pretty happy with myself for some good planning. This is where you expect the other show to drop, and it did, just not where we could hear it right away. What I was thinking about was the fee I'd get and how the hell anyone would, or could, make another soul bottle. That part bothered me. A lot.
After seeing to my fee, Mr. Cobb and his daughter left, and left me free to do a little re-arranging of all the stuff I have in the office. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was waiting for just the right moment to spring itself into my life. Magic does things like that. It's hard to believe in coincidence with magick around, coincidence can get pretty unbelievable. Kind of like having a cloud solidify over your house and drop on you suddenly coincidental.
I had been hard at thinking of getting another file cabinet to go with the other two when the lights in the building went out. The air-conditioning fans stopped also, and the building became very still. Unnaturally still. My windows let in enough of the noontime light to allow me to easily gather up my possibles bag and put on my pistol, machete, and chicken plate. After arming myself, I went into the outer office.
As I did so, a low roaring sound began back in my main office. I stepped back into the office with my machete in hand to see a inky sliver appear and lengthen, growing into a floor-to-ceiling gash in the air. Then two clawed hands thrust their way through the slit and began to widen it. I didn't wait, but dropped the machete' and pulled the pistol and fired four rounds right into the enlarging hole to no visible effect. Bullets didn't work and I had serious doubts about the machete' being any more effective, so I ran out of my office into the hallway.
The hall didn't have any window to the outside, so it was dark except for the slight glow of light coming through the frosted glass window of my door. The window still had the rebuilding spell on it, and no one had tried throwing someone through it or jumping through since Rynun did that to me. I strode quickly towards the fire stairs, figuring if the power was out, the elevators wouldn't be working either.
I heard a sound like fingernails being scraped on a slate chalkboard, only a lot louder. It spiked my ears with a sharp pain as I pulled the door open. Call me stupid but I ran for the bathroom. My thoughts here were that if it followed me into the stairwell, I was trapped in a large tube with no way out until I reached the bottom floor. We were four floors up and I think in a footrace to the bottom I'd probably lose.
I could however, change the terrain. The building had a hanging ceiling to cover up the unsightly ventilation tubing and electrical conduits, and many a time the repairmen would have to go up into the ceiling to fix a problem. Being a small woman gave me an advantage against a larger creature. Plus, if it was heavy the ceiling wouldn't support it if it tried to walk on the tiles.