Tanya accompanied Danica to the office the next day; ostentibly she was helping Danica bring in the cake and the party supplies. Tanya's starstruck fever, however, was dispelled when the first person they encountered was Angela.
"Just set it down on the table. For pity's sake, don't shift around the tablecloth. These napkins are the wrong color. They're too bright. Did you bring the beet juice?"
Kelly waited until Angela left the room to glimpse the cake. "I thought you would at least frost it," she complained.
Danica lifted up a can of frosting from her secret stash. "We're dunking. By the way, this is my cousin Tanya. She helped with the baking."
"Hello." Tanya said shyly.
"That's weird," Kelly said. "You two have the exact same color eyes." Before Tanya could nervously reply, Kelly gabbed on. "Is that hot guy I met your brother?"
"No." Tanya said. "We're a different set."
"Do you have any brothers?"
"No. Two . . . uh, sisters." To transfer the scrutiny off herself, Tanya asked. "What about you? Any brothers?"
"No."
"Oh."
Not exactly the warmest greetings, but at least Danica did not see any disguised, or undisguised, resentment like she had when Kelly met Ryan's friend Mira.
"Angela's heading back," Danica warned. Tanya stood, torn. Wait to meet Ryan or endure another session with Angela. Tanya apparently decided not to press her luck. "I'd better get going," she said. "It's nice to meet you, Kelly." She bade a hasty retreat.
"So that's another of your cousins?" Kelly commented. "How long is she staying?"
"A few weeks," Danica said. "Is it okay if she comes out with us this weekend?" That gave Tanya another chance to meet Ryan.
"I guess." Kelly lined one foot in front of the other. "So how come you didn't tell me about the cousin who died?"
Danica looked up from the arrangement. "I don't know."
"I'm guessing that it was one of Tanya's sisters, am I right?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
Danica was unable to think of a human equivalent to "the Volturi had her executed."
"I think Tanya wants to keep that kind of thing private," she said apologetically.
"Right," Kelly pouted. "Because your family keeps these things private."
"Well you didn't tell me about Maggie," Danica pointed out.
Kelly's mouth dropped open. Then she charged out of the room, nearly trampling over Angela on the way.
Angela dodged Kelly's blind dash. She looked over at Danica. "What happened?"
"I think I hurt her feelings," Danica said vaguely. "I'll be right back."
Angela absently waved her away, as if she could not be bothered with Kelly's drama.
Danica chased after Kelly just enough to ascertain that her friend was safe (so there was no repeat of the Casino Night disaster.) After finding Kelly sobbing in the women's bathroom, Danica lingered within hearing distance in the breakroom
Ryan entered. "Is Kelly okay?" he asked, more agitated than the situation warranted.
Danica pointed to the bathroom.
Ryan plunked down at the table. She was just crying. Ryan did not know why he got so worked up about Kelly crying. Except that when that happened at Casino Night . . .
(did they have a fight?)
But Kelly was clearly in no danger from muggers here in the office. The sudden panic that had seized Ryan vanished.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I think I hurt her feelings," Danica echoed.
If Kelly had confessed the same about Danica, Ryan would have expected it. Kelly always shot her mouth off before thinking of the ramifications. Danica, however, was usually careful when speaking, except during her rare flashes of temper.
"How bad was it?" Ryan asked neutrally.
"I'm not sure." Danica knew nothing about Kelly's relationship with her deceased sibling, but that the mere mention of Maggie's name had transformed Kelly into a bawling wreck boded terribly about this situation.
Ryan stood and crossed to her. He positioned his arm over her shoulder. "Whatever it is," he said, "I'm sure Kelly will bounce back. Then you can hash out your apologies and it'll be over. That's how it's done, right?"
"Something like that," Danica said. The first step to their reconciliation loomed up. And Ryan's thundering heartbeat was distracting her. He smelled so delicious.
Danica's skin was cold through her shirt. Ryan traced his finger along a bare part of her neck. Her skin was so smooth, like marble . . . so still.
Ryan snatched his hand away. This was a dream? In the past, despite their vividness, he had always at least known when he was dreaming.
Just in case, he backed up. "Um, are you going in?"
Danica nodded. "Yes," she whispered, trying to fortify herself for the big apology. "Right now."
"Good luck," Ryan stuttered as she pushed into the bathroom.
Kelly's sobs had ebbed. Danica knocked on the stall door anyway.
"I don't want to talk to you," she said, petulant.
"I'm sorry, Kelly. Obviously I had no right to bring up your family's business."
"How did you even find out anyway? Were you snooping?"
"Laura told me."
"You don't get it," Kelly insisted. "You think that because your parents and your cousin died that it's the same but it's not."
"Of course it's not the same," Danica agreed. "If you want to talk about it . . ."
"Well, I'm not going to talk about it."
"That's up to you," Danica offered. "Would you like me to stay here or do you want to be alone?"
"I want to be alone."
"All right. The usual excuse?" The usual excuse, for Michael, was to mention women's troubles. Michael would then be too busy squealing ("Ew, ew, ew. TMI!") to interrogate further.
Sniff. "Whatever."
"All right. I'll save some cake for you."
Jane traversed the same parking lot her brother habitually took and rapped lightly on Gita's door. The rapping belied the rage that roiled within her, but it would be unseemly for a member of the Volturi to pound her fist like some brutish Gestapo officer. Besides, she wanted to take the younger vampire by surprise.
Gita was satisfactorily surprised when she opened the door, her round eyes widening when she saw Jane. Just in time, she remembered to kneel. "Signorina," she murmured. "Is Signore Alec coming?"
Jane punished her for her insolent question. Gita yelped and huddled on the floor of her trailer in pain. Jane let her huddle there, whimpering away, for a couple of minutes until she released her.
"You will not speak except to answer me," Jane ordered. "Signore Alec's business is not of your concern. I am here to conduct the business for today. Do you understand?"
Gita nodded timidly.
Jane entered the trailer without invitation. She approached the television monitors. "I want to see all of the material for this week," Jane said.
Gita parted her lips, to protest or warn, but a twinge followed Jane's stare and she retreated her comment. Instead, she fiddled with the controls and started up with the footage on the first camera.
Jane glared down at the numerous unlabeled buttons then turned to the screen. She watched as the humans dabbled with their insignificant work, tittered about blind dates, and plotted a preposterous birthday party for one of their oafish employees.
So this is how the Slav chooses to spend her day, Jane thought as she scrutinized the tape. She felt the human urge to gag when Danica offered to make a cake for the oaf's birthday party. The Cullens' influence, no doubt.
One thing that did catch her notice was how human Danica behaved. She twitched, she fidgeted, she breathed. Jane had assumed that Alec was exaggerating the Slav's acting ability; if anything, he was understating it. A flicker of something - envy, admiration - passed through her, but she dismissed it. As a vampire, the Slav was an infant; of course, she could act a part she played a little more than ten years ago.
Gita switched cameras and the blind date reenacted between four of the humans. Jane's suspicions heightened.
"What is the dark-haired boy looking at?" she asked.
"I do not know, Signorina," Gita babbled. "I was not at the scene when this was filmed."
"He looks nervous. Why is he nervous?"
"I do not know." Gita suggested, "I shall cut that part?"
"Do it." Jane watched carefully as Gita rewound the scene and erased it. Now she knew how Gita did it, so if Gita tried it without her permission, Jane could punish her.
The screens continued the play their inanity. The Denali girl appeared briefly. She had exhibited none of the human characteristics Danica did, but her presence was so brief and insignificant that not a single human noticed.
Then Danica and her human friend quibbled over the deaths of the Denali sister and of Kelly's sister, the latter of which sent the human racing out of the room bawling. Jane's lip curled up, intrigued by this revelation. Interesting. She had discovered one of the human's weaknesses. And a weakness of one of these humans was a weakness for the Slav.
Gita's eyes roved nervously to Jane. "Do you have intelligence on this scene?" Jane snapped at her. Gita shook her head, bowing. Jane pivoted back to face the screen.
Alec should have hired a more observant editor.
Then came the compromising footage. Danica and the dark-haired boy embracing in the breakroom.
"I am taking this tape," Jane announced.
"I will make a copy," Gita assented.
Jane's control left her as the scene paused on Danica with that human. Did Alec know he was being cuckolded? He must not, because he would never allow it if he knew.
Well, Jane would show him. Then they could put an end to this nonsense over the show and return to their real duties.
Gita ejected a tape from under the console and handed it to Jane. Jane pocketed it from within her robe. "I will come back shortly," she informed the girl, keeping the expected time of her next visit vague.
But when Jane exited the parking lot, she had the idea that there was something else on the tape that had glaring importance. She could not recall what it was.
"To birthdays." Tanya raised her empty hand as a toast.
"To birthdays," Danica echoed. She pressed Send.
Danica was emailing a video clip of Dwight's surprise party to Jim in Stamford. The surprise aspect had been Pam's idea, and Angela, through some lapse of judgment, allowed it. So when Dwight entered the room, all the party-goers were treated to a hilarious demonstration of jujitsu as Dwight chopped and kicked the air around him.
As for Kelly, she emerged from the bathroom, but she had not fully recovered from her crying jag. Danica noticed that her coworker kept out of the main action during the party and then lethargically attended to her work. She avoided talking to Danica at all.
"Here's Jim's office," Danica said, opening another email displaying a panorama of the wide-paned glass wall overlooking the ocean.
"It's nice," Tanya agreed.
"Yeah. Not an option for me, of course."
Tanya slid down onto the couch. "So does that mean Alice was wrong? About Jim and Pam getting together?"
"I don't think so," Danica thought out loud. "Jim had already decided to move to Stamford before I visited Forks. That didn't seem to alter her prediction."
"So they might cross paths again," Tanya concluded. "Interesting."
A knock sounded. Danica and Tanya's glances drifted to the door.
"Does Alec knock?" Tanya asked, a trace of alarm pitching into her voice.
"No." Danica pushed down her own frisson of alarm that had jumped up her spine. "It must be a neighbor."
She rounded to the door and tugged it open, to reveal Ryan standing in the dimly lit hallway.
"Hi," she said,
"Hi." He peered in past her. "Oh, you have company . . ." Then he hicccuped in surprise when he recognized Tanya. "Hi."
"Um, do you want to come in?" Danica offered.
Ryan hesitated. "Sure," he answered, after he convinced himself that his shot of deja vu did not mean he had stumbled upon some demonic lair. He shuffled in.
The predatory woman jumped up to allow him room to sit, but Ryan lingered by the entrance.
Danica made the perfunctory introductions. "Ryan, this is my cousin Tanya. Tanya, my coworker Ryan."
"Nice to meet you," Tanya said in a melodious voice like Danica's.
"Likewise," Ryan replied. Tanya had put her hand forward, but Ryan made no attempt to approach her, so she let it drop to her skirt pocket.
"Didn't I see you at Strat's?" he blurted.
"I was there yesterday." Tanya admitted, putting effort in her amazement. "How weird." When Ryan did not answer, Tanya quickly excused herself. "I'll, um, go for a walk."
She glided past Ryan.
Danica resettled on the couch.
"Sorry if I interrupted something," Ryan said, once Tanya closed the door behind him.
"You didn't," Danica said. "We were just gabbing. Would you like a seat?"
Ryan moved closer to the couch and sat at the far end.
"I was wondering what went on between you and Kelly," he told her. "I didn't bring it up at work, in case it was private. But she's acting weird. Quiet. Not like her at all."
"I noticed." Danica cast her gaze downward.
"She won't tell me about it," Ryan added. He lowered to his elbows on the couch's back. "If something happened . . . maybe if she found out about . . . the other date."
After a few seconds elapsed, Danica reassured him, "It's not about . . . that. And I'm not really in a place to reveal more. It's about Kelly's personal past, and it's up to her if she wants to tell you."
"Kelly's personal past," Ryan echoed, thinking it had to be an oxymoron. As far as he knew, Kelly kept none of her past personal. She had broadcast her entire romantic history down to her grade school crushes and her embarrassing dating scenarios. But then she lied about some of them. "What the hell could be so horrible that she wouldn't tell me about it?"
"It's not that serious," Danica said. "At least, not as far as you two are concerned. She'll tell you when she's ready."
In other words, Ryan got no answers. But did he really think he was going to pry this out of Danica? Danica who was apparently designated the president of the Everybody Keeping Secrets From Ryan Club?
"Have you talked to her since the party?" he asked instead.
"No." Danica sighed. "She's been giving me the silent treatment all day."
"She did have some of your cake. Great cake, by the way."
He had told her that at the party, whispering it clandestinely before he glued himself back to Kelly's side. His lips had brushed close to her ear this time too. His warm breath had tickled against her ear.
The couch seemed too weak a barrier between them.
She turned her head away, willing herself not to look at his face.
Another voice entered into the living room. "Isn't this cosy?"