Jane sneaked in through the bedroom. Her red eyes blazed in controlled anger.
Ryan jumped back.
The man in the dreams had those same eyes.
"Do you know what they did to cuckolds in the Middle Ages, Danica?" Jane queried.
"Oh, hello, Jane." Danica sidled closer to Ryan. Almost as if she was trying to shield him from Jane.
The girl was too small, too young to present a challenge. Her little-girl blonde hair wound around in buns and her robe appeared ridiculously oversized. Her voice came out like a shy whisper.
He wondered if Angela Martin had ever had a child, because this is how he imagined the evil spawn would turn out.
"I was just leaving. Danica, you'd better see what's keeping Tanya," Ryan hinted.
Not that he was afraid of her, or anything so ridiculous. No, he just did not want to make an idiot of himself.
Nonetheless, because of the red eyes, Ryan made no move to exit the room, to leave Danica with this strange child.
"I would just like you to know that your little stint at Dunder-Mifflin will soon come to an end," Jane growled. "once Alec finds out what your real interest is."
Ryan edged her to the door, so Danica took the opportunity to end Jane's visit.
"It's nice of you to stop by, Jane," Danica purposely used her name, to lessen Jane's menacing aura. She whipped open the door. Ryan needed no prodding in exiting the apartment.
She and Ryan walked to the stairs.
"I take it she's another one of your cousins." Ryan was conscious of his voice echoing down the corridor.
"Yes. Alec is her brother."
Ryan struggled to figure out the relationship between Danica and Alec and Jane, but the red eyes crowded every intelligible thought out of his mind.
The awkward lull lasted a minute or two before Ryan recalled why he had come to Danica's place. "About Kelly . . ."
"I'll talk to her tomorrow," Danica said.
"Okay."
The problems were swiftly settled the next day. Kelly spoke to Danica again, grudgingly at first. When she figured out that Danica was not going to force the subject of her sister on her again, Kelly's reception became warmer. It was clear Danica did not spread around the news about Maggie to anyone, and soon Kelly was back to normal.
When Tanya tagged along with them to the Fun Zone that weekend, Kelly had put the incident well behind her. She offered her condolences to Tanya about Irina's death ("You must feel very sad.") without sharing how well Kelly understood how Tanya might feel. As Tanya had not been told about Kelly's sister, she chalked it up to a well meaning but shallow statement made by a clueless human girl, and Danica did nothing to correct that impression.
Even Michael's Grief Counseling session did not resurrect Kelly's emotional reaction. Michael's former boss died in a car accident, and while Michael was grieving, no one else was particularly overcome with sadness. Danica had never even met the man. Nonetheless, Michael summoned them for a conference to cure them from their "denial."
"I'm going to throw you this ball," Michael instructed, " When you catch this ball, I want you to say the name of a person very important to you - somebody very special - who died. And you may cry, if you like. It is encouraged. Let me show you how it works." He then let out a long, anguished lamentation about how Ed Truck's death affected him.
He flung the ball towards Phyllis but Dwight slipped his hand in. "I got it," he announced, triumphant.
"When my mother was pregnant with me, they did an ultrasound and found out she was having twins. When they did another ultrasound, a few weeks later, they discovered that I had resorbed the other fetus. Do I regret this? No. I believe his tissues made me stronger. I now have the strength of a grown man and a baby."
He tossed the ball back to Michael, who sent it to Stanley. Stanley only tossed it back.
"Kelly," Michael chose, giving up on Stanley. He tossed it towards Kelly. Kelly wriggled down in her seat. Danica smoothly caught the toy. "I'll go," she volunteered.
At first, she just thought about preventing the ball from reaching Kelly. Once it smacked against her hand, she realized she would have to say something.
"I'm sure most of you have heard this before," she said. "But when I was fifteen, my parents died in a fire. Nedo and Elisa Simovic." She hesitated, not sure of what to say after that.
Michael said helpfully, "Because they don't have firetrucks in Alaska."
"Right," she said with a mask of sobriety. "There's no carbon dioxide either."
"Really." Michael replied, astonished.
Pam volunteered. She told them about her aunt, who died in a manner suspiciously like Hilary Swank's character in Million Dollar Baby. Everyone caught on but Michael, who asked, "Would you like to cry?"
Pam shook her head. The rest of the group, however, sat up straighter, taking notice of the new rules of the game.
Ryan raised his hand. Pam lobbed the ball to him
"Um, a few years ago, my family was on safari in Africa" Ryan began. "And my cousin . . . Mufasa . . . was trampled to death by a pack of wildebeasts. And, um, we all took it really hard . . . all of us kind of in the audience . . . of what happened." He stole a glance at Danica. She pressed a fist to her mouth, shielding her smile. Next to her, Kelly instantly cheered up. She grinned more broadly and winked at him.
Luckily, Michael's attention was riveted to Ryan.
"Do you want to talk about it any more?" he whispered.
"Oh, it would probably take an hour and a half to tell that whole story," Ryan said.
Kevin bleated for his turn, and Ryan tossed the ball to him.
"Yes." Kevin exclaimed. "Okay, I was trying to throw this party once and everyone was over for the weekend." He put a heavy stress on the word "weekend." "And then my uncle Bernie died. And so me and my best friend, we had to pretend like he was alive . . ."
Danica did not recognize the movie, but everyone else seemed to. Ryan shook his head at Kevin's poor delivery. And Michael interrupted, wagging his finger as he placed the scene. "Wait a second. That's Weekend at Bernie's. Do you think this is a game?"
"Well, there is a ball," Phyllis interjected.
"We're starting over," Michael declared, but everyone else stood and shuffled over to the door. "We have a lot of work to do," Angela told him.
Michael blocked the exit. He insisted on continuing, his pleas growing more desperate. "Ed Truck was my former boss. He sat at my desk. And he died. And he was alone when he died. And nobody cares."
The only person who stopped to listen was Toby. "Michael, look. I know this is hard for you. But death's just a part of life. I mean, just this morning, I saw a little bird flying into the glass doors downstairs and die-"
Michael raised his head, confronting Toby. "How do you know the bird was dead?"
Kelly squeezed her way to Ryan. His arm wrapped around her as a sense of deja vu engulfed him.
"Did you check its breathing? Was its heart beating?"
"It was obvious," Toby argued weakly.
"Of course not! You're not a veterinarian! You don't know anything!"
Michael raced out of the room.
Ten minutes later, Michael was desperately trying to revive the bird by pouring liquid over its beak, even though Angela declared it was dead.
"It's not dead," Michael insisted.
Kelly peered closely at the bird. "Yeah, it's dead," she said, her face folding in disgust.
Danica started at the sight. "Is that my cranberry water?" she said.
"Your magic elixir is going to cure him."
Danica snatched the bottle away. There was nothing left in that bottle, or the other bottles Michael used up in drowning the bird's corpse. That was her supply for the rest of the week.
Could she get away long enough to hunt this afternoon?
Danica gathered up her bottles and stashed them in her backpack. Ryan and Kelly's voices wafted out from the annex.
"Look if you want to go somewhere tonight, then we'll go somewhere."
"That's not the point. You always forget. Obviously our dates are not as important to you as they are to me."
"I don't always forget. This is the first time I've forgotten in a month."
"What about the time you promised to get me breakfast in bed and then you had another one of your bad dreams?"
"I didn't forget."
"No but you woke me up, and that spoiled the surprise."
"How would it be a surprise if you were expecting it the whole time . . ."
Eventually Michael accepted that the bird had died, and he scheduled a funeral. While he and Dwight searched for a place for the remains, Kelly holed up in the annex and cried because Ryan was being a jerk.
Ryan came in with a bakery box. "Hey."
"What do you want?" Kelly sulked.
"I came to ask you to breakfast tonight." He opened the box to reveal a couple of cinnamon rolls.
"You can't have breakfast at night."
"Sure we can."
The cinnamon rolls blended with Ryan's delicious aroma, igniting Danica's thirst. She held her breath.
Milo in the rubble, his bare ribs sticking out of his skin. Anja's upper torso severed from her charred legs. Anja's hand, fingerless. Mama's face melted, her jaw lying on the burned wall.
Kelly was softening. "If you think a couple of pastries are going to win me over . . ."
She did not finish, as Ryan plied her lips shut with a kiss.
Mr. Ruzic dangling from the ceiling fan, urine soaking his pants. A bare leg sticking out of the rubble that used to be her home. Milo's flayed ribs quivering one last breath . . .
Danica could not stand it another second. She swept out of the room.
Ryan almost had not noticed Danica had left. He had been so enrapt in Kelly he had not even seen her leave.
"So tonight?" he confirmed with Kelly.
"All right," Kelly answered. "Tonight." Her hand ran down and pinched at his butt.
"Later," he told her, hinting at "when we're alone." Kelly loosened her arms from around him and he sauntered back to the office.
Danica was not in the main office. On a hunch, Ryan headed towards the stairwell. He cracked open the door, only to be met with utter darkness.
"Danica," he whispered loudly.
"Don't come down here."
Danica thrust the exanguinated squirrel in a plastic bag. A squirrel was as large as anything she would find in this car park, unless she wanted to eat a stray dog. And she always stayed away from dogs and cats, in case they were someone's lost pets.
"Are you okay?" Ryan asked, clueless.
"Yes." Then more smoothly, Danica said, "Just check the doorstop. I don't want to be locked out."
Ryan checked. A sliver of wood straddled the doorjamb. Ryan shifted away from it, so he would not accidentally kick it away.
Danica jogged up the stairs and emerged from the darkness.
"What were you doing down there?"
"Giving you and Kelly privacy?"
That infusion of blood, though small, helped her regain her control, even when she stood close to Ryan and whiffed his intoxicating scent. The cinnamon smell from the bakery box clung to him, but Danica resisted him. She ceased her breathing, and circled her shoulders slightly so she appeared to breathe like a human.
"Oh." Ryan thought Danica had seemed more . . . troubled upon her exit. Her face, at the moment, showed no distress. "Well, we made up."
"Okay."
"You've got something on your face," Ryan commented. A small spot marked her lower lip. It transferred to his index finger as he brushed it off.
Danica wiped the heel of her hand aggressively against her mouth, doubting that Ryan removed all of the squirrel blood. She dared not part her lips to speak. She knew if she did, her mouth would fill with his aroma and she would be lost to his scent.
She turned away and stalked back to the office.
Ryan followed after her. He pulled a tissue from the reception desk and wiped off the substance that stained his finger. It was dark and thick, like chocolate, but it smelled different. Ryan hovered it over the wastebasket, but then, on second thought, he wadded it into a tight ball and slipped it into his pants pocket.
Michael held the funeral in the building's shade, so Danica braved the outdoors. She pulled her jacket hood over her head and faced away from the setting sun, placing herself in the back of the group.
Ryan and Kelly stood arm in arm towards the front. Danica's view was blocked but then there was nothing about this funeral she needed to see. She listened to Pam's eulogy - heartfelt and soothing to Michael - about how just because the bird died alone, it did not mean he was alone. In Danica's opinion, though, it didn't matter who was in the room with you when you died, because death divided you from the others. Thousands of vampires witnessed Irina's death, but, in the actual act of dying, she was alone.
Kelly fitted her head against Ryan's neck. As Dwight's music wound down, and Michael let go of his grief, she raised her head and planted a kiss on Ryan's cheek.
The sun had finally set and Danica gathered her purse and her tote bag full of empty water bottles and headed to her car. She called an absentminded goodbye to Dwight, who always stuck around the office to water the plants and rearrange Michael's desk, and crossed into the parking lot.
She spotted Gita standing at the ashen circle on the pavement that held the bird's coffin during the funeral.
"It must have been beautiful," Gita said, viewing the scene from cinematographic perspective. "The funeral."
"It was special," was all Danica would offer, because seeing a burned body, even in the context of Dwight's emulating a Viking funeral, would never be beautiful to her.
Danica ducked into her car. She did not want to enter into an interrogation or an argument. She started the motor, flared the lights, and crept the car around Gita as she pulled out of the parking lot.