[AN: Very sorry for the long delay.]
The sun shone hotly over Ryan as he crossed the fields. His suitpants and his hands were stained with dirt and bull manure, if he was to trust what Dwight said. Dwight was usually forthright about these matters, but on this occasion, Dwight had chosen to misdirect Ryan. For example, instead of taking Ryan on a sales call as Ryan expected, Dwight had driven him out to the country, made him plant a beet seed in a plowed field, and then had taken off, exhaust trailing out of the tailpipe of his Trans Am as he sped away.
Ryan had not started the day too well. He had woken up from another nightmare. He and Danica had been in the stairwell, her cold body sliding up and down against him. Like before they were interrupted; not by Kelly this time, but by the chirping of a bird. Michael appeared, pulling a bird's corpse out of the garbage can.
"Michael, don't. It's dead," his coworkers pleaded from an unseen corner of the stairwell. And Michael refused to believe the bird was dead.
"Did you check its breathing? Was its heart beating?" Michael asked.
He, and presumably the others, vanished after that, and Ryan turned his attention back to Danica. She plied her stony lips to his face. But those questions ("Did you check its breathing? Was its heart beating?") persisted, circling around in his mind.
He checked her breathing. Her kisses were long, passionate. She sucked at his skin and she never paused for a breath.
Ryan laid his hand on her chest. The thin shirt did not impede his ability to feel her ribcage, so he should have felt something moving inside her chest. But nothing moved.
The bird screeched for more blood.
Ryan shivered.
There were other dreams. Dreams of red-eyed people. Dreams of Kelly screaming in pain. Dreams of Danica leaning over her neck and drinking, and Kelly's blood dribbling down her chin.
It was just too bizarre. Like Danica was a vampire or something.
"Right, Ryan," he muttered to himself. "She's a vampire. And I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
A bird cawed as it flew over Ryan's head. Ryan ducked, thrusting up his hands to protect his neck. He looked up and the crow soared away, taking no interest in Ryan.
It's the heat getting to me, Ryan rationalized. He had been rationalizing too often lately. It's only a dream. It's only a misunderstanding. Hadn't Toby mentioned something about the radon levels in the office building? Maybe Ryan was growing a tumor in his brain.
A barn loomed ahead. Ryan was not sure when he would reach civilization; he had walked in the direction he saw Dwight drive off to. The camera crew was there; the bastards had declined to give him a ride, but their presence indicated that this was where he was supposed to be.
He strode up to the barn door and knocked on the door.
The doors burst open. "Congratulations, resourceful salesman," Dwight announced. "You have passed your first challenge. Welcome to Shrute Farms!"
Dwight seated Ryan in an old wheelchair. Footsteps pounded by. Ryan froze. "What was that?" he asked, trying to contain his jumpiness.
"Pay no attention to the spirits that haunt this ground," Dwight intoned.
"Is that your cousin Mose?" Ryan guessed.
Dwight conceded, "Yes." Ryan sagged against the chair's back. He didn't need this.
Dwight circled around the chair. He fired off the first question. "What is the greatest danger facing Dunder-Mifflin?"
Ryan closed his eyes, channeling into his test mode.
"Outsourcing and consolidation of competition," he recited.
"Wrong. Flash floods." What? "What is the true cause of Robert Mifflin's suicide?"
Okay, now this is getting surreal. "Depression?"
"Wrong. He hated himself."
Dwight fired off several more questions, flinging them from all directions. Ryan did not get any of them right. But his jumpiness had long worn off. Dwight's attempts to intimidate him failed. Strangely, he felt more comfortable in this creepy barn than he had outside, when he had been prey to vampire birds.
"Final question," Dwight announced. He circled to Ryan's back and leaned forward, his chin touching against Ryan's head. Ryan swatted him away.
Still hovering over Ryan, Dwight delivered the final question. "What is Michael's greatest fear?"
"Um, loneliness," Ryan guessed. "Maybe women."
"Wrong. He's not afraid of anything. Also I would have accepted snakes."
Dwight released his hands from Ryan's chair. "Fear is what its all about. You cannot sell while undergoing fear. You have to vanquish fear."
A furious opera CD started up.
"One must wrestle fear to the ground. You will wrestle my cousin Mose . . ."
A bearded man with the word Fear patched to his shirt burst out and crouched, ready for Ryan's attack.
Behind Mose, a pair of red eyes gleamed.
"No!" Ryan sprang up from his chair. "Okay. All right. This is over, okay?" He took a steadying breath. "I'm not doing this anymore. This is over."
He looked over, and was relieved to see the red eyes had vanished. It was his imagination. A combination of Dwight's atmospheric set-up and the radon poisoning.
"Ryan," Dwight cajoled, but Ryan was through playing with these fantasies. He stomped outside.
It turned out there was a sales call. Dwight swung the car in a u-turn and rattled off a list of tips to remember during the sale. Ryan struggled to jot them all down. As he wrote, his hallucinations about vampires vanished.
For the next few hours he was focused on the sale, and the disappointment of not closing. Angry too, so he threw some of Mose's eggs at the Axelrod Ltd. sign. The egg throwing released some of the tension he had carried around all day. So when Dwight offered to buy him a pint at Poor Richard's, he accepted.
They downed their egg and draft beer mixtures. Ryan finished a mug in one shot.
"Just think," Dwight pondered. "That temp agency could have sent you anywhere."
Ryan grinned wryly. "I think about it all the time."
He reached for his pocket for his wallet, so he could tip the bartender. A tissue dropped to the floor. Ryan dove for it, and spotted the dark brown spot on the corner.
Dwight looked over his shoulder. "Are you bleeding?"
"No." Ryan's stomach sank. "This is blood?"
"Indeed. It is mammalian blood. See how the stain coagulated . . ."
Dwight proceeded to explain the "coagulation pattern" in great detail.
"What time is it?" Kelly asked.
"Eight," Danica said, without consulting a clock. Kelly was getting more fretful with each passing hour. Danica had come to Kelly's house, to keep her company. She wished Laura was there to help her distract Kelly, but Laura had gone to a neighbor's house for a sleepover.
"There's no way a sales call would take this long," Kelly repeated.
"With Dwight, it might," Danica said, injecting some humor into her tone. "He might be making Ryan plow his beet field or something."
"Farmers work in the day," Kelly said stubbornly.
"So they do."
"What time is it?"
Danica, exasperated, drew out the last resort option. "How about we do a makeover?" she said, inwardly cringing at the M-word.
Kelly brightened a little. "Okay."
Within seconds, she had her makeup kit out and was brushing eye shadow thickly on Danica's eyelid.
"Are you sure you don't want me to cut your hair?" Kelly offered.
"I'm sure." Danica had not had short hair since she was in Sarajevo. By some miracle, the cameras had failed to catch that scene where Ryan almost caught her eating a squirrel. She could just imagine Ryan's reaction if she turned up at work with short hair, looking like a feral child.
"You're good at this," Kelly said. "Holding still. Once I tried to do Pam's makeup and she kept squirming and complaining about me almost poking her in the eyes. She wears contacts, so does it really matter if I poke her in the eyes? Contacts protect the eyes from that."
"You did Pam's makeup?" Danica asked.
"Yup. Pam was looking for makeup people for the wedding, and let me try." Kelly snapped open her compact. "You don't think the reason she canceled the wedding was because she didn't like my job? Because I was just trying to slim down her cheeks. That's why I suggested the Botox."
"I'm sure that your makeup had nothing to do with it," Danica stated. She wondered if she was the only one in the office aware of Pam's conflicted feelings for Jim.
"Damn, I need another sponge," Kelly muttered. "Danica, you're right by the drawer where I keep them. Could you open it?"
"A sponge?" Danica echoed.
"You know," Kelly held up a heavily caked compact pad.
"Oh." Danica twisted and opened the drawer. Kelly snatched a package of compact pads and tore it open.
Kelly applied the compact powder ("to make you less pale," she admonished. "Really you could do with a good suntan.") Then she did the lips and mascara. Finally she held up the mirror.
Kelly applied way too much color to Danica's eyes and cheeks, but otherwise, it looked pretty good. "It looks great," Danica said.
"See?" Kelly said triumphantly. "I don't know why Pam was so worried about me putting so much mascara on her."
"She does have lighter eyelashes than either of us," Danica allowed.
"Don't move. I'm going to find my camera. I think I left it in the car." Kelly dashed out of the room.
Danica glanced at the open drawer. Everything jumbled together. A corner of a photograph stuck out. Danica picked it out, so it would not get bent in the drawer, and flattened it onto the desk.
The image beckoned for a closer look.
In the photo, a younger version of Kelly was sitting on a bench next to another girl.
The other girl was Gita.
Ryan and Dwight popped into the office long enough to get their stuff. Pam was still at the reception desk, the phone cradled on her shoulder. She stopped chatting long enough to ask, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Ryan was confused about why she asked. Did his confusion show that much? Then he realized that the office must have expected him and Dwight back much earlier.
Pam turned back to her phone call. Dwight left after a camaraderie-like thumbs up. Ryan waved back.
He took the emergency stairwell out. His fingers closed around the bloody tissue in his pocket. Then, hit by an idea, he whirled back around and returned to the office.
Dwight was in Michael's office and Pam was on her way out. "Is something wrong?" she asked again as she draped her coat over her shoulders.
"Just getting something," Ryan said. He crossed into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
With one eye towards the door, he slipped a bottle of Danica's cranberry water under his coat.
Once he was in the car, he sampled the water, and grimaced. Definitely not cranberry.
He resealed the bottle and drove. Eventually he reached Danica's apartment.
Tanya answered the door. She was wearing a sleek dress, so Ryan had not gotten her out of bed. Her caramel eyes looked him up and down.
"Is Danica here?" he asked.
"She's at Kelly's," Tanya said. Ryan sagged. He could not talk to Kelly now. Not with all this in his mind.
Tanya sniffed. "What's that smell?" she asked.
Ryan glanced behind his shoulder. He had not noticed . . . "Oh. It's manure. Long story. Um, I guess I'll catch her later."
"Are you all right?" Tanya asked.
Ryan wished women would stop asking him that. "I'm fine." He started to leave, then jolted to a stop. He studied Danica's cousin, trying to find what exactly was so odd about her.
"You're one of them," he said.
"What are you talking about?" Tanya asked, sounding reasonably concerned about him.
"Sorry. Nothing." Tanya narrowed her caramel eyes. Ryan felt compelled to explain his revelation or insanity. "I spent the day with Dwight. Danica told you about Dwight, right?"
"She did," Tanya said, smiling congenially. "You should go home and get some sleep."
"Yeah. I should." Ryan quickly agreed. "Um, good night."
He sauntered back to the car. His eyelids weighed heavily. He fought his fatigue as he started up the motor and wheeled the car away from Danica's apartment building.
Five a. m. and still no word from Ryan. Kelly had dropped off to sleep long before.
It could be that Ryan simply went home after getting back from Dwight's sales call. Danica was sure that was what happened. But in case Kelly's fears had resonated - in case Jane or a stray vampire had come across him - Danica went to check.
She set Kelly's alarm clock and sneaked out to her car. Her photographic memory captured Ryan's address from Kelly's PDA long ago, so she had no trouble finding it.
Ryan's house was large, but in a more traditional continental style. It had three stories and a two car garage. Danica parked a block away then crept up to the front porch. She mounted the porch roof and sniffed. Ryan's smell emanated from the window to the right.
She tiptoed to the window. Ryan's smell, intermingled with alcohol and manure, concentrated so that she was sure he was there. His window was open.
Danica planned to leave once she was reassured that Jane had not made a meal of him, but she stayed by the window. She recalled that Edward had crept into Bella's room at night when Bella was still human. To watch her sleep.
The window screen stuck. Danica applied more pressure and it squealed. She stopped and listened, but no one in the house stirred. So she squeezed through the opening.
Once she landed on the carpeted floor, she stopped to explore her surroundings. Ryan's room was clean, with white walls and ceilings. His desk was at the opposite wall; above it a couple of shelves full of school trophies and fraternity memorabilia. He had two closets. One was parted open a crack. At the wall closest to her was floor-to ceiling bookshelf: the center of which held a flat screen TV. A row of hardcovers bordered the shelf above the TV.
Ryan slept in a large king sized bed. He lay on his belly, his arms flung over the side. He did not snore, but his shoulders twitched as he dreamed.
Danica sat at his desk chair. She tried the watching him sleep, and frankly, she wasn't seeing much appeal in it. It must be a guy thing, she decided. She was more interested in exploring his room, in finding out what Ryan was like in college or as a child.
Which brought to mind her other revelation of that night. Of Gita. Danica had no idea what to do about that knowledge, or even if she should do something. Was she right to deduce that Gita and Maggie were the same vampire/person?
Ryan turned. Danica retreated to the darkest corner of the room and prayed that Ryan would not awaken and flick on the light. But he quickly settled into his sleep.
Then Danica's phone rang.
Of all the amateurish mistakes.
Danica cursed as she dove out the window.
Ryan bolted up.
He reached to his lamp and turned on the light. The lampshade hung slightly off center. He nudged it back into place.
It was amazing that he got any sleep at all, assuming that the events of the previous day were not all a dream. To be sure, he trudged to the bathroom, where Danica's water could still be found under the sink. Well, there was still the possibility that he had gone insane from radon poisoning. Because otherwise he would have to conclude that Danica was a vampire.
Ryan sat down on the toilet and tried to calculate how many bottles Danica drank a day. A vampire would need more than one bottle a day, particularly if it was diluted with water. Where did the blood come from? Ryan doubted it was human, but killing enough of squirrels, rabbits, and rats had to be time-consuming. Then he thought of the wound on Kelly's neck. Did Danica use Kelly as a food source? Did Kelly allow it or was she unaware?
Why the hell was he thinking like this? He must be insane.
He grabbed his phone and punched the speed dial to Kelly's number. After several rings, Kelly groggily answered.
"Kelly?" Ryan asked.
"Ryan!" She shot to wakefulness. "Oh, god, what happened? Where did Dwight take you? You should have called. I was so worried."
"Long story," Ryan said. "Look, was Danica at your house last night?"
"Yeah." Kelly rustled through her covers. "Her car's not here now. I guess she left."
"How are you?" Ryan asked. "Are you feeling tired or anything?"
"Of course I'm tired," Kelly snapped. "I stayed up until three in the morning waiting for you to call and say you were all right. Why didn't you call when you finished the sales call? I thought Dwight might have hunted you with a crossbow or something."
"Look, I can explain everything once I see you. Let's go out for breakfast. My treat."
"Really?"
"It's the least I could do," Ryan posited modestly.
When Ryan saw Kelly, his panic subsided. Kelly was a bit tired, as she had said, but she did not seem to suffer from . . whatever it was that he feared she was suffering from. He did not remember what had sparked his urge to check up on her. But Kelly was fine and Ryan let himself be satisfied with that.
He explained about Dwight's initiation and scare tactics. Kelly laughed and murmured sympathy when she learned he lost the sale.
"You'll get one soon," she said confidently. Then she launched into what Ryan had missed: Pretzel Day and Pam keeping track of Michael's productivity.
"So that was what Pam was doing in the building so late," Ryan commented.
"What?"
He mentioned that Pam was talking on the phone when he and Dwight finally came back to the office.
"She was?" Kelly grinned. "I bet she has a lover."
"Why would she be talking to her lover on the office phone?"
"Because she had to stay late because of Michael," Kelly theorized. "So instead of going out on a date like they planned, they talked on the phone instead. That is so romantic."
"Hmm." Kelly had certainly never thought it was romantic when he canceled a date with her.
"I have something to ask," Kelly said.
"Sure."
"My family is having a big Diwali celebration this year, and I want you to come with me."
"What's Diwali?"
"It's this holiday we have. And there's food and dancing and music and costumes and it's a lot of fun. I've already chosen your costume."
"Uh, okay."
"You will?" Kelly jumped out of her seat and squeezed Ryan in a hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you! This will be so exciting!"
Ryan was still unsure that it wasn't a mistake to agree to this. After all, her parents had not been receptive to him, and he still knew nothing about Diwali. He hoped this would not turn into a disaster.