Pulled to the Dark (The Siriena Series) (37 page)

I'd gotten better at pulling her over. She looked quite bedraggled when she appeared on the floor of my tower. I tossed a blanket over her and continued to sing to her.

She rolled over and looked at me.

"Good morning, Felicia," she said.

She stretched and looked around.

"Where is Petra?"

I put my hands together like I was praying, then held them to the side of my head and leaned over a little. She was still sleeping.

"Oh my," she said. "What did you two do last night after you got home?"

I blew on my fingernails and buffed them. She laughed. Then I pointed to the coffee. She poured a mug. "Cream?"

I held up a finger, popped to the kitchen, grabbed the cream, and popped back, handing it to her.

"Thank you." She poured the cream in and looked for a spoon. I shrugged at her, singing the entire time. She drank some of her coffee and asked, "What are we doing today."

I took a shooting stance and pointed my finger like a gun. I looked at her.

"You want to go shooting?"

I nodded and made the universal "call me" gesture.

"Once Erika wakes up," she said, "We'll clean up and come over."

I hugged her.

We hadn't taught her how to open doors yet. We hadn't even wasted time showing them to her. I walked to the wall, then did a "watch me" gesture, pointed to the wall, and made a door.

I'd gotten better, but mine still weren't as good as Petra's or Andrea's.

"Whoa!" said Sally. She walked over and looked at it. "It's a door."

I nodded.

"I can do that?"

I nodded.

I pulled her out of the opening and closed the door. Then I used big gestures to show how I thought about it. I turned my hands back to back, pointing at the wall, and spread them side, as if I were trying to open a closed elevator.

I opened and closed the wall a few times, then pointed at her.

I watched her struggle with it. She didn't get anywhere. I hadn't expected her to. None of us had gotten it to work until we'd raised the stakes. Beth, Erika and Karen had all needed to be embedded helplessly in the wall. Erika was the only one who
hadn't
need
the lemon juice in the squirt gun trick.

She turned to me. "It's not working."

I walked over to the wall and opened a door, then stood in it and closed it around me. I had misjudged my location and discovered I'd encased myself entirely except for the fingers of my right hand. I wriggled them at her,
then
pushed the rock back.

"Felicia!" she was yelling. "Oh my god! I thought you had buried yourself in the rock."

I closed the wall, this time more careful to keep my face out. I kept my right arm free and my face free, but the rest of me was completely encased. She walked over and looked at me. I was still humming and singing, holding her anchored properly in
Siriena
.

"Does that hurt?" I shook my finger back and forth to mean "no". "I'd be terrified."

I opened the door and stepped back into the room,
then
I began to position her in the doorway.

"Oh no!" she said.

I nodded, hugged her briefly, and pushed her gently towards the opening.

I closed the opening a little bit at a time, adjusting her as I did so. When it closed around her arms, she began to freak a little. I closed the rest, her head last. I had to push her head backwards slightly as she was struggling to lean forward.

"Oh god! Oh god!" she said.

I leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

I popped back to my bathroom and grabbed some bright pink nail polish. I immediately popped back to the tower. Sally was still encased in the rock.

I showed her what I had. "What are you going to do with that?"

I lowered myself to the floor in front of her feet would be if they weren't in the wall. I made a small window, found a leg, and made the window a little bigger, eventually finding her toes. She looked down at me and I grinned up at her.

"You are not painting my toenails pink!"

I opened the bottle and began applying polish to her big toe. She almost bowled me over when she exploded from the wall.

I laughed,
then
went back to singing. She was standing about ten feet away from me, looking at her offended toe.

"I can't believe you did that!" she said. "Did you bring any remover?"

I shook my head.

"I don't even have any," she said. "Damn
it, Felicia."

I smiled and pointed at the wall. She had left a dent, much like the first time I had. I capped the polish, stood up and walked to her.

"Oh no," she said. "I'm not going back in the wall."

I nodded. Yes, she was.

She played a game of keep away from me. I finally stopped in the center of the room with my hands on my hips, glaring at her.

"Promise you won't paint my toes."

I pointed to the wall again.

"Promise."

I walked over to her. She let me catch her that time. I pushed her into the wall and closed it. I stood back and crossed my arms.

She struggled, but she couldn't free herself. I began tapping my fingernails against my arm.

"I'm trying," she said.

The tips of her fingers of her right hand were sticking out of the wall. I walked over and pointedly opened the bottle of polish. As soon as I reached for her hand she broke free of the wall.

I clapped.

I closed the polish and set it on the dresser then walked to the wall and gestured her to walk over with me. She did skittishly. I pushed on the rock, pushing it back, evening out the opening a little, then gestured for her.

It took her some time, but she finally got the hang of it. I was just about to make her extend the opening all the way through the wall when she disappeared.

I
grabbed the coffee pot and
popped home.

* * *

Petra was in the shower and my phone was ringing when I got home.

"You bitch!" she said, but she was laughing. "I can't believe you painted my nails pink."

"I have remover here," I told her. "And I'll tell you what Petra did to me. I think you got the better end of the deal."

"Erika is complaining about being hungry," she said.

"For you or for food?"

She laughed and muffled the phone for
a second. "For food," she said after a moment.

"I'll make breakfast."

"Were you serious about going shooting?"

"Can we? Is there somewhere we can go? If you and Erika had plans...."

"No, she wants to go too. We'll be there in a half hour."

Petra was still in the shower. I stripped out of my clothes and joined her.

"Hey, Lover," I told her. She turned to face me and pulled me into a deep hug. She held me there for a while. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "Just feeling a little needy."

"Welcome to my world," I told her. "Everyone is coming over though, so we have a time limit."

I washed her back and her hair. She wanted to wash me, but I batted her hands away.

"Petra," I said.

"Yes, Felicia?"

"I want dates. We don't go on dates. I want us to dress up for each other and spend the entire evening building some sexual tension.
At least weekly, and not on a schedule.
Not in whatever we wore for work, or when anything like that. Real dates."

She smiled. "I'd like that, too."

"We have a long time together, and it would be easy to get complacent."

Then we stepped out of the shower and I let her dry me off.
I texted Beth and Karen to come on up.
I got dressed again and started pulling breakfast together. Petra came in and said, "Where's the coffee pot?"

"Good question. I set it down. Maybe the bedroom?"

She stepped back out and returned in a minute with the pot. She eyed the contents dubiously and poured herself a cup. "
Blech
," she said. "You make the worst coffee."

She dumped it and started a fresh pot.

"I make perfectly fine coffee," I said. "And I can't believe you would hurt my feelings like that after everything I did to you last night."

She looked over to see if I was serious. I attempted to get my lower lip to tremble. I used to practice in a mirror. "You are so full of it," she said.

"I don't know what you do differently from what I do," I said. "I kiss every coffee bean individually before I grind it and tell it, 'I love you little coffee bean'."

"Maybe it's the spit then. I don't spit on my coffee beans."

I sighed. "Seriously. What was wrong with my coffee?"

"It was cold. And I hate
rewarmed
coffee."

There was a knock at the door. Petra returned with Karen and Beth in tow. "Erika didn't come home last night," Beth said. "Do you suppose we should call the cop?"

I laughed. "The cop is on the way with the Erika."

I finished the preparations for breakfast. I decided to make my decadent special: bacon and crepes with lots of fun stuff to roll up inside them. We had several types of jam, maple syrup, butter, sugar, and brown sugar. People could go to town on them.

As soon as the doorbell rang, I began pouring batter into the crepe pan and put the bacon on. Beth got the door. I asked Petra and Karen to set the table.

Petra entered the kitchen with Erika and Sally. I demanded a hug and a kiss from Erika. "Did you have a nice night?" I asked her.

She glanced at Sally. "Best. Orgasm. Ever."

Sally actually blushed.

"Funny," said Petra. "I could say the same thing."

I grinned at her. "I wasn't sure last night," I told her.

"Oh
pah
-lease," she said. "I couldn't move for ten minutes afterwards."

"That was shock," I told her. "At how forward I was."

I flipped my crepe and fiddled with the bacon.

"What's with all the cases?" Petra asked Sally. "Moving in? Erika's
apartment
is
two floors
down."

"I brought some of my guns," she said. "For later."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Sally is taking us shooting. Anyone who wants to go
is invited
. I'm sorry, Petra, I should have asked."

"No," she said. "That sounds fun. Am I invited?"

"Of course," said Sally. "Everyone who wants to go. I brought the guns up so we could go over them here where it's quiet."

"How many did you bring?" I asked. I slid the crepe onto a plate and poured another one.

"Eight. I think." she said.

"Eight? You have eight guns?"

"Oh no," said Erika. "Way more than eight. She only brought some of them, and none of the rifles
or antiques
."

"Hey," she said. "I like guns.
Guns and cars.
A gay female cop who likes guns and cars.
I'm a walking
cliché
."

* * *

Everyone seemed to enjoy my crepes. I didn't make enough bacon, but it was what we had. Afterwards, we verified everyone wanted to go shooting.

Sally transported her guns in bright silver cases, generally one gun per case. She grabbed one of the cases from the rolling cart and set it on the table. She opened it up and began explaining about handguns. She talked about safety first and demonstrated the safety features of the gun she had.

She showed us a small gun and a big one. She verified they were empty and let us each
hold
them. I picked up the little one and wasn't at all sure I liked it. I didn't like the big one at all.

She noticed my expression. "You sure you want to do this?"

"Yes," I said. I paused. "I may decide I like my swords better though."

Then she grabbed her purse and pulled out a gun. She opened it and dropped a bunch of bullets on the table before setting it down.

"This is a small revolver," she said. "It's too small for police work but excellent for the purse."

She talked about the gun range. Then she said, "I brought three small guns, two medium ones, and two very large ones. We'll buy ammunition there. The small guns aren't that expensive to fire. The large ones run about a buck a round. No one fires a big gun without first demonstrating some competence with a smaller one."

She answered questions then said, "Is everyone still going?" We were.

"I didn't ask this. Who has fired a hand gun before?"

At first no one said anything, then Petra said, "I have." She went into the bedroom and came out with a silver case similar to Sally's cases.