THEN: SEPTEMBER 1st, 2015 - PRESIDENTIAL BUNKER

“You can’t move into the James and Dolly Madison House,” Donna Brazile, current DNC chair, said.

From Brazile’s point of view, Wendy and her Oval Office (albeit in the bunker) didn’t look Presidential. Wendy was in her skirt and sweater ensemble - Donna could never get her to stick to the expected pantsuit - and looked a little disheveled. Wendy argued that there was another office used for televised appearances and meetings, but she did sometimes entertain people in here, and it was unusual. There were piles of books, sketch pads (with some disturbing drawings on them), big reference books, and the desktop had a couple of computers. A side table held a few jars of herbs, mortars and pestles, more notes. There were smells, too, of incense, and something funky Brazile assumed was sex. She tried to argue with the chief of staff, but he had shrugged it off, saying she “had hobbies.”

Wendy took a deep breath. Lately, she was finding she was having problems with regulating sleep and controlling her temper. She had started taking Melatonin, which helped. She’d also started having mild migraines. Her sketchy Presidential physical hadn’t found anything too off, but she’d scheduled an MRI, just in case.

“We made an offer, and the current tenants accepted,” Wendy said back. “It’s historical. Other Presidents lived there.”

“It was premature to get the government going in Philadelphia. We told you to wait on that, but you pushed and pushed and now it’s there. Now you want to move out of the bunker? Just stay put!”

“We needed a seat of government. I like Philly. It’s already got the infrastructure,” Wendy said, doodling on a page nearby.

“We talked about keeping the government distributed until we knew more!” Brazile said, raising her voice. “That was the plan. Everybody agreed it was the safest thing to do.”

“Everyone doesn’t agree now. I’m tired of being in the bunker. I want out.”

“We don’t need you mucking up the primary. We’re forcing all candidates to declare before the holidays. That’s not even two months from now. You come out now,” Brazile growled, “the media is gonna start following you. The deal was you stay here. Once the dust settles you can go back to whatever life you want.”

“I’ve been considering running in the primary,” Wendy said.

Donna’s mouth opened, agape, incredulous, then snapped shut. “Hell, no. No! We’ve already got a nice, stable pick we’re throwing the party behind. Martin O’Malley. We need-”

“Christ. That wimp? Are you kidding me?” Wendy looked down. She had inadvertently balled up the paper she was doodling on. She deliberately unclenched with some effort. Right now she really just wanted to ping Brazile with an Authority, but she was a very headstrong woman, and had been in the presence of Wendy ensorcelling other people so often that Wendy was afraid she may have built up a bit of immunity to it. “It’s safe enough. I already got the OK from the Secret Service and General Brown,” Wendy muttered, smoothing out her drawing.

“Yeah, I heard. As always, your magic tongue pulls through. I don’t know how you get so many people to listen to your flim-flam, but it ain’t happening. You gotta stay in the bunker. Or maybe you want someone to start talking about some of the shenanigans going on down here?” Brazile smirked. “I’m not stupid. I got my own sources. How many times have you been interrupted getting down with Andrew, right here in the Oval Office? The poor man looks like he’s aged ten years in the last three months, by the way.”

Wendy scowled. “I’m a married woman, there’s nothing wrong with having sex with my husband. That was just an-”

“Uh huh,” Donna said, shaking her head. “See, that’s the kind of press the Democratic party does not need. I also heard you got caught in the Presidential bedroom with an aide, some girl barely out of college. What does Andrew think about that?”

Wendy shrugged. “We had an open marriage before.”

“Jesus, you didn’t tell me that! That’s more drama we don’t need. No way. And another thing-”

Donna kept going on but Wendy tuned her out. She was the President, for fuck’s sake. Acting President. She was busy. She was trying to get the country back up and running. There were a million demands and meetings. No time for sleep. And her dreams were pretty much always nightmares anyway - sometimes apocalypse scenarios of nuclear probes raining down on the Earth, sometimes visions of dark, shadowy things just barely held in check. The bunker itself felt cold and lifeless, all dead steel and concrete. Not living stone, very little wood. Ley lines all disjointed and interrupted due to the bunker.

Donna was still yammering. Enough was enough. Wendy finally decided to chance it and let fly an Authority.

This time the result was unexpected. Brazile had come in with a purse, which she was holding in her lap. When the spell hit her, something popped inside of the purse. Brazile let out a yelp and jumped up. The purse spilled open on the desk, and besides the usual contents, a small smoldering bag flopped out. The clothwork was burned and sizzling in a spot where, under a burn, barely-readable markings were seen.

“What…is that?” Wendy said, staring. Donna stared at it too.

“That’s my gris-gris bag,” Brazile said, weakly. “A constituent back in New Orleans gave it to me. It had writing on the outside. It’s for luck… protection...” Brazile poked it, then looked at Wendy. Wendy was staring at her, looking her up and down, through a hole in a complicated finger pattern, her hands together.

“What’s… what’s going on, Gwen?”

Wendy nodded and muttered “No more gris-gris bags.” Wendy stood up, glaring at the DNC chair. “It’s time I explain some things. First, though…” She lifted her hands in front of her, staring at Brazile, who took a step backward.

“I prefer Wendy.”

-

On September 4th, 2015, Andrew and Wendy moved into the Madison house in Philadelphia, temporarily dubbed the First Residence. The First Couple made a few trips back and forth between the residence and the Princeton house.

Andrew continued working at the Bird Labs a day a week, but it was hard to get anything done. Besides the secret service protection always hovering, he had a lot on his mind these days, and focusing just seemed impossible.

On the same day, Wendy made an announcement to the press that she was going to run in the Democratic primaries. She said that she had learned a lot, and things were improving, and there was no need to rock the boat right now, just when things were calming down. It resonated with a lot of people. Everyone expected a response from the DNC chair Donna Brazile, but she abruptly stepped down, citing health concerns, and Susan Turnbull became the new DNC chair. Susan - who visited the Acting President - said her entry was valid and that she looked forward to the debates.

-

Professor Xeniya Raptis was invited to the First Residence on Columbus Day. After a brief speech, the First Couple retired inside, and a staffer showed Xeniya to a lounge where she met Wendy. Wendy’s face lit up and she ran to hug her old friend and lover. Xeniya awkwardly looked around the room at the secret service guards, the staff asking about food, and Andrew, who looked lost, as usual. Wendy announced she was going to give her the tour, and led her off, holding her hand. Nobody seemed to react.

Once they got to the Presidential bedroom, Wendy wrapped her arms around Xeniya from behind and started nibbling on her neck. Xeniya melted - boy, lately it didn’t take much to get her going - but pulled away. “Wendy!” Xenya gasped.

“It’s OK,” Wendy said. “It’s safe. The secret service swept the house already.”

“How do you know for sure?”

Wendy grinned, then frowned a little. “You didn’t notice on the way up? You can’t see around the room?” She squinted into Xeniya’s face, then down. “You aren’t wearing the choker?” Wendy asked, frowning deeper.

Xeniya shrugged a little. “I stopped wearing it all the time. I had some concerns. Besides, I’ve been building replacements, after a fashion. See-” Xeniya rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a contraption of lenses, interlocking, studded with wire and runes. “It’s sort of like a mechanical representation of the viewing spell.”

Xeniya lifted the ocular and looked around the room. In various places, runes were drawn on the walls, ceiling and floor, glowing, pulsating, in some places linked, in another place grounded to an iron heating pipe in the wall. She whistled appreciatively.

“Yeah,” Wendy said, smiling. “I’ve got No-Harms, blocks, dead zones, Leave-Me-Alones, Not-My-Problems, all sorts of things. I protected the whole house. You could shoot the building with a tank and it would be OK, except you wouldn’t want to and you’d miss if you tried. We’re as safe as, well, houses.”

“But what powers it?” Xeniya said. “I mean… some of it comes from the background energy of the universe, sure. But some of this comes from you, doesn’t it?”

“Oh yeah. I’m OK right now, I can barely feel it, but it’s probably not sustainable. That’s kind of the reason I wanted to talk to you.” Wendy crossed the room, gesturing at the bed. Xeniya warily sat on the edge, and Wendy sat on the floor in front of her. For a moment it felt like old times. Wendy looked up at Zeniya, seriously, then nodded.

“Xen, I want to make you Science advisor and the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy..”

Xeniya’s eyes went wide. “Wha? You mean like a cabinet position?”

Wendy smirked. “I can’t make you Secretary of Magic. Or.. uh… runic technology and applications. Whatever we want to call it. But, I need someone I can trust that I can work with on this stuff.” Wendy looked down at her hands. “I can’t do things I need to… I’m gaining a lot of knowledge, but it’s slow. It’s all me doing the research. I have to start delegating it. I barely have enough time to be President, much less work on this other stuff.”

“Maybe you should just be, y’know, the President of the United Fucking States?” Xeniya said, trying to lighten the mood.

“I need to find ways to amplify things,” Wendy said, not hearing Xen. “I need to find other energy sources. Finding rune linkages is a tedious process. Discovering which spells work takes forever. We have to assume other countries are starting to do similar experiments. Somebody else has to have smuggled out some QEM or Hex fasteners. We can’t afford some other country deciding to, I dunno, nuke us magically. Or nuke the world.”

“I know,” Xen said. “But I have concerns, Wend. I’m worried about… well… I know you’ve been… ‘persuading’ people to go along with your agenda. I know you’ve been using the Authority runes. I go to a political function, I can see your rune on, like, one in every fifty politicians.”

Wendy nodded slowly. “I’m not proud of that. But… Xen… It’s all been for good reasons.” Wendy looked around the room, then back at Xen. “I haven’t done anything nuts. We would have had months of fighting, and lawsuits, and inter-party warring about who should be President and I cut all that out. Texas wanted to call a vote to secede and I got that stopped. I stopped most of the foreign aid to states that was designed to destabilize. Many of the big unions who thought this was a good time to renegotiate or strike I persuaded to hold off on doing anything.”

“I know, I get it, stability is important, but - “

“There was going to be a national teacher strike - no teachers, no schools, no kids in schools, imagine the clusterfuck THAT would have been - and now the UFT is on my side. And-” Wendy got up to a kneeling position, holding Xeniya’s legs - “I just think we’re running out of time. I have dreams, and visions now, and I see monstrous events on the horizon. I just think we need to have everything in place, fast. I just.. can’t afford to be nice. ”

“We can talk about ethics later. I’m also worried about you, Wend,” Xeniya said. “Andrew looks half-dead. You look manic. You said yourself, this is unsustainable. I’ve heard you’re getting migraines. And I saw this.” She reached out and unbuttoned the top couple of buttons of Wendy’s blouse. Wendy purred and started breathing heavier. Then Xeniya exposed the necklace, with two small clinking Hex fasteners attached.

“You’ve got two of the hexes, now? I saw a picture in a tabloid but I wanted to check. I started to get afraid of just having the one on. Now I only wear it when I’m working or get blocked. Maybe soon I won’t need to wear it at all. But two? Wendy…”

Wendy pouted and covered up. “I’m fine. Really. Maybe it affects people differently.” Wendy rested her head on Xeniya’s knee, then asked, “Will you be my advisor? This way you can be around and make sure I don’t do anything stupid. Stupider.”

Zeniya sighed, and stroked Wendy’s hair. “I…uh. OK. I’m Secretary of Magic, I guess. I mean Science Advisor.”

“Thanks,” Wendy said, standing, and hugged her. “Let’s tell the world. And then we can go over the list I have of stuff we have to work on.” Xeniya started to walk, then noticed Wendy wasn’t moving. “You coming?” Xen asked.

Wendy smiled. “I’m gonna freshen up. Give me a minute.”

Wendy left Xeniya in the bedroom, then walked into the attached bathroom and shut the door. She could feel a migraine creeping in, and her anxiety was spiked, and her heart rate was up. She was exhausted, too. She took a few painkillers, tried breathing exercises, and when nothing worked, she carefully cast a few runes on herself - one for the pain, one for the anxiety and one to calm down. After a minute she felt better, so she washed her face and came out to walk down with her new Cabinet member.