The Devil's Due

Man, it's fun writing again! Especially with an idea as crazy and sometimes scary as this one. I hope you all like how the story is progressing. As always, I appreciate comments if they're constructive, but please refrain from name-calling or abuse. Those comments have no place on my stories and they will be removed. Going to start working on the next installment very soon. Enjoy!

"Governor Bailey's office," the uninterested young intern answered the phone in the reception room of the capitol building. "Oh, hello Miss Nakahara." Judy Nakahara was the hottest reporter at Channel 4's NewsFirst at Six program and she called the office at least twice a week looking for a scoop. "No, Miss Nakahara," the intern replied to the unheard question through her wireless headset, "there is no truth to the rumor that the Governor has made a decision about running for president in two years." Another pause as the next silent query came through the line, "No, ma'am, the administration has no comment at this time. Yes, thank you, Miss Nakahara. Have a good day." The intern disconnected the call from the insufferable newswoman as the Governor's Chief of Staff entered the lobby.

"Good morning, Miss Akers," the receptionist greeted Jeanette flatly and handed her a stack of paper slips without looking at her. "Just a few messages this morning, mostly from newspapers and TV stations looking for an answer about the Governor's plans for the next election."

"And what did you tell them, Emma?" Jeanette quizzed the young office worker.

"Exactly what you told us to say, ma'am- nothing." Emma answered. The staff was under a strict gag order on their boss' interest in running for the nation's highest office and all toed the line like a ballerina.

"Very good, Emma," Jeanette responded. She was dressed smartly in a grey business suit and skirt with black heels pasted to her feet. After five years of campaigns and staff work for her employer, Jeanette knew how to dress the part, complete with the requisite brown leather briefcase in one hand and cellphone in the other.

"Is the Governor in his office?" she asked the bored-looking Emma who was concentrating on scrolling the screen of her own device and blowing a bubble with her chewing gum.

"Yes, ma'am." The intern answered after the pop of the balloon in her mouth. "He's been here since seven-thirty this morning."

"Put the phone away and get rid of the gum," Jeanette ordered then walked from the desk and through the double doors that led to the office where Michigan's number one man sat at his large oak desk. Emma rolled her eyes then spit the gum into the wastebasket under her desk. When Jeanette was out of sight, the young office worker fished another stick of gum from her pocket, popped it in her mouth then went back to her scrolling cellphone.

"That girl's gotta go, Sam," Jeanette said as she closed the doors and walked to the seated executive. Sam held up an index finger and Jeanette knew he meant for her to wait a minute. Jeanette then noticed the Bluetooth earpiece nestled in her boss' left ear and silenced herself while Sam finished his call.

"Yeah, Charlie, I'm going to give that a lot of thought..." Sam said to the person on the other end. "Yep, you bet, Charlie... OK, thanks. Goodbye, Senator." Sam tapped the button on the side of the earpiece to disconnect the call then removed the device from the side of his head and tossed it on the desk in front of him.

"Pompous prick," Sam exclaimed to himself then addressed his top staffer. "Can you believe that dipshit actually thinks he can dictate to me who my running mate would be. Like I'm going to pick Aaron Portsmouth. Milquetoast at best, that one. I'm sorry, Jeannie, what were you saying?"

"I said the girl out front has got to go, Sam," Jeanette repeated. "Her handwriting is mostly illegible on these phone messages and she's barely awake out front right now."

"She's my cousin's daughter, Jeannie," Sam revealed. "I promised I'd get her some office experience. We don't have to keep her forever and we don't have to take her to Washington with us when we go."

"

If

we go, Sam," Jeanette corrected as she opened her satchel. "We're not there yet. I have the latest polling numbers here, and even though they're trending upward, we still trail in some key states, most notably Texas and Ohio."

"Texas will come around," Sam declared, "and Daniels is from Ohio so they're going to back him if he runs. But he's too extreme on the gun issue so that won't play well in the blue states. Our friends are keeping an eye on it."

Jeanette frowned slightly at Sam's last statement. She took a seat on the black leather sofa near the desk and put her hands in her lap. "Sam," she started, "do we really need their help anymore? I mean, look what you've done in the last few years. You have national attention, the backing of a dozen influential senators and representatives including the Majority Whip, and your record is spotless."

Sam rose from his seat at his executive desk and walked to the couch to sit with Jeanette. "Jeannie, who do you think influenced those 'influential' congresspeople? The national attention I'm getting isn't from my good looks. And as for my record, well... we both know that's not exactly spotless. You know who cleaned that up for me. For us." He leaned in and kissed Jeanette's red painted lips. Heading into their sixth year together, virtually no one knew of their torrid affair or the circumstances that set them on the path that had led them both to the Capitol building in Lansing.

++++++++++

Five Years Earlier

The empty auditorium on the campus of Gravel City Community College did nothing to quell the nerves Sam was feeling before the debate began. He had met the other candidates and marveled at how calm and collected each of them looked before they took the stage. Sam was a novice, and he knew the others all had experience speaking to an audience whether in person or over the airwaves. Sweat began to form on his brow as he took his place at his designated podium for the night and the bright lights shone down on him for the first time.

A man with a wireless headset stood in front of the participants and stared at a tablet, seemingly mesmerized by the information it transmitted. He suddenly looked up from the handheld screen and counted backward from five. When he got to two, the stagehand went silent and counted down to the people on the stage, Sam included, with his fingers. At zero, he ducked under the view of the camera and the red light atop the broadcasting contraption flickered to life signaling that the transmission had begun.

The moderator began the debate by announcing pleasantries and appreciation to the college for hosting the forum and the sponsors for their generosity then proceeded to introduce the candidates. When the arbiter got to Sam's introduction, he described him as "political novice and relative newcomer Sam Bailey", which did not set Sam's nerves at ease. After all the introductions had finished, the moderator, skipping opening remarks due to time constraints and the size of the candidate pool, posed his first question.

The question, which was submitted anonymously from a southside GC resident, asked how the candidates would work with the mayor and police force to combat crime in the seedier spots of the sprawling city. Seven of the twelve debate participants were allowed to answer before Sam had his chance. All answered in the standard drone of a greater police presence in those particular areas and tasking the mayor with enacting ordinances that would be tougher on drug and violent offenses.

When the moderator called Sam's name, his head snapped to attention like he had been prodded with an electric cable. He stood silent for two seconds then felt a calm wash over him. The words began to flow from him, and he heard himself speak in eloquence as if he were in the audience listening. Sam spoke of a greater need to develop hardship programs for underprivileged families and community outreach to help stem the tide of crime among the impoverished. When Sam finished, the moderator smiled slightly then moved to the other candidates who tried in vain to ape what Sam had mentioned but the panache with which Sam had delivered his answer was nowhere to be found among the other participants.

For the rest of the night, Sam shone like the North Star on a cold December evening as his answers sailed above and beyond those of his opponents. Questions about the budget, taxes and infrastructure came at the participants and all answered as best they could, but it was Sam's responses that took hold of the broadcast and the community watching. By the end of the debate, all eyes were on the "political novice and relative newcomer" and Sam's stock quickly rose the next day with a gleaming write-up in the Gravel City Gazette morning edition. Sam's picture emblazoned across the front page with the headline:

NEWCOMER DAZZLES AT DEBATE

The newsprint article recounted Sam's prowess at answering the tough questions posed at the debate and the comparative droning and banality of the other candidates' responses. What the article did not relate was how the light above Sam Bailey shone a touch brighter while the illumination above the others seemed dull and unflattering. Neither did the write-up say anything about the lone audience member sitting in the back of the auditorium, dressed in a white tuxedo and matching bowler, unseen by the attendees on stage and staff behind the scenes. The article concluded with the Gravel City Gazette's endorsements for City Council, which included newcomer Sam Bailey's name.

Three weeks to the day later, Sam won the seat receiving the most votes of any candidate running, including the five incumbents who were re-elected. Per the city charter, the candidate that received the most votes in the election became chairperson of the council and that job fell to Sam. He took his oath with the others electees then claimed the center chair at the semicircle table, four other councilpersons flanking him on either side.

True to Lilith's declaration, less than a week later, another article was published in the city paper that detailed the financial and marital indiscretions of Gravel City's good mayor, Mario Evans. Subsequent articles and televised reports of the mayor's wrongdoings solved to further tarnish the reputation of the man in charge of the city's future. Calls for removal soon followed and a month later a special recall election was initiated for May of the next year. Sam's name, among others, was bandied around as a possible candidate, and two days after the first of the year, he threw his hat in the ring for the city's top office.

The GC Gazette, along with three of the city's television stations all endorsed Sam's candidacy for mayor, including NewsFirst 4, the most watched of the local broadcasts. Even though Channel 4 put their weight behind Sam, one of their reporters, the intrepid newcomer Kelly Nakahara, had doubts about the nearly beatified Bailey. She realized that Sam had come virtually from nowhere to captivate the city, but more importantly, she noticed that no one had asked any questions about his estranged and now non-existent wife. Nakahara vowed to find the truth about Sam Bailey and promised herself that she would not relent on asking the tough queries that had gone without reply.

Sam, for his part, campaigned relentlessly with the help of his right-hand woman Jeanette. Newsprint and television ads touting Sam's forward thinking flooded the city and caught the eyes of many of Gravel City's elite who decided to back the newcomer's bid for mayor. Most everyone, including Sam himself, thought that he was an extreme longshot to win the recall election, but Sam had two things going for him that the other candidates did not: Jeanette and Lilith.

When it came to working for Sam, Jeanette was a bulldog. She made sure all his newspaper ads were twice as big as his competitors' and timed his TV spots so that maximum viewership was attained. Facebook and YouTube ads cluttered social media for those in the region so that there was no missing Sam's campaign on any computer or smartphone. Thanks to her efforts, Sam went from longshot to frontrunner in a manner of just a few weeks.

Lilith made sure that Sam's path to victory was free of roadblocks by providing the most essential part of any campaign: Money. Thousands upon thousands of untraced dollars poured into the Bailey effort from prominent backers and from sources unknown. By the time election day rolled around, Sam's campaign had raised over seventeen million dollars for their candidate, more than twice than any other opponent and the vote total reflected the astonishing monetary influx. Sam won in a walk, besting his nearest rival thrice over.

Per the city charter, the next top vote getter would be deputy mayor, which fell to Sam's mirror opposite, a sixty-seven-year-old career councilman and used car dealer who visibly showed his disdain for the new top official in Gravel City at the inauguration two weeks after the polls closed. In his speech, an eloquent Sam Bailey promised to work with the council to make the state's fourth largest city the number one destination for new businesses and jobs, to make the streets safe to walk down at night again, and to push for infrastructure reforms to rebuild crumbling roads and dilapidated buildings.

And true to his word, Sam fought for all citizens of the city, crime being the top priority on his agenda. Gravel City, once a beacon that led Michiganders and other visitors to the Lake Michigan sandy coast, was now a dim lightbulb that one hurriedly passed by due to sketchy regions that prospered in drugs, prostitution, and violence rivaled only by Chicago's southside. Continuing his promise from his previous campaign, Sam lobbied for more opportunities for the underprivileged and community outreach programs to help quash the rampant illicit activities in the city's poorer areas.

Jeanette transitioned from campaign manager to chief of staff seamlessly, but never took her eyes off the next step in Sam Bailey's career. The next gubernatorial election would be in eighteen months and Jeanette was bound and determined that her boss' name would be foremost at the nominating convention. She pulled late nights and double duty working both in the spotlight for the mayor and in the shadows to make him a candidate for Michigan's highest office.

One year later, Sam's meteoric rise continued as he secured his party's nomination and made his run for the Governor's office. Six months after the convention, the first exit polls were released and the favor was Sam's, albeit not as wide as his previous margin. At quarter to one that following morning, Sam's opponent called and conceded the election, handing Sam Bailey the big chair at the Capitol. The party erupted at Bailey campaign headquarters as Sam hung up the phone and the staff and guests reveled into the wee hours. Those partygoers included a man in a white tuxedo and bowler hat with a statuesque blonde woman in a skintight blue dress on his arm.

++++++++++

Now seated on the leather sofa in the Governor's office, Sam kissed Jeanette heatedly as they sat together, his hand groping her left breast. Jeanette backed away slightly and broke the kiss before she spoke. "Sam, I have a meeting with the House Speaker in ten minutes and you have to be in Detroit in two hours for the new plant opening."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, "not the most opportune time, huh?" Their personal time together, as brief as it was, had always been steamy and passionate as well as clandestine. Talk of marriage was bandied but a conference with Lilith made short work of that idea. Until the time was right, Sam would stay a bachelor Governor and candidate.

"Tonight. Your place. When you get back from Detroit." Jeanette stated firmly then kissed her lover once more before standing from her seat. "Oh, by the way, the reason I came in here today was to let you know that, if you do decide to run, you have the support of the former president. Not sure how that came about since you and he are so far apart on a lot of issues."

It's because he's in 'her' back pocket," Sam revealed, referring to Lilith. "Although I've never seen any pockets on her 'back'. She helped him in his first bid, but then he turned his back on her. You know what happened after that. One and done. He begged her forgiveness and she let him back in, but I've heard there was a steep price to pay."

"But that wouldn't happen to you," Jeanette countered. "The Party already said they won't support the current president and he's expected to announce his non-candidacy any day now. This one's yours for the taking, Sam. With or without Lilith."

Sam looked at his watch, a platinum beauty that was a gift from Lilith after he won the Governor's race. "You'd better get moving, Jeannie. The Speaker awaits." Sam often felt the way Jeanette felt about Lilith's help, but he also knew he would have never achieved so much without her help. "Let's stay the course for now," he uttered. "We'll need all the help we can get if we want to win the White House." He kissed her quickly then watched her beautiful backside wiggle out of his office door. Sam sat back down at the chair behind the desk and put his face in his hands. So far, the deal with Lilith had no consequences, but he knew that day would come if he won his next election.

++++++++++

Jeanette had a car waiting to take her to her meeting with Michigan's House Speaker, normally held down the hallway from the Governor's office. The Speaker, a three-term representative from the Upper Peninsula, was recovering from the flu at his apartment in Lansing and Jeanette agreed to meet him there as he recuperated. Her chauffer waited at the back door of the limousine to help her into the automobile, and he opened the door for her to slide into the backseat.

"Goin' my way?" the familiar voice from the front asked the vehicle's rear occupant. Jeanette jumped slightly as Phineas turned around from the steering wheel and smiled at the Governor's chief of staff.

"Phineas!" Jeanette shouted. "I... Where's... Where's Darren?"

"Your driver?" Phineas asked rhetorically. "Poor fella had to call in sick today. Nasty flu bug goin' round right now, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes," Jeanette agreed, regaining her composure from the jolting change in chauffeurs. "It has been a particularly bad season. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure? I'm supposed to be at a meeting soon. Will you be driving me there?"

"Well..." Phineas started, drawing out the word, "you're partially right. You do have a meeting, Miss Akers. But not the one you had expected. And driving won't be necessary. Look to your right, ma'am."

Jeanette swiveled her head and peered out the right rear window. She saw not the cityscape of Michigan's capitol, but a rugged desert sight reminiscent of the southwest. Agog, she turned to look forward at Phineas, but he had removed himself from the front of the car and now stood at her door and opened it.

"If you will, Miss Akers," Phineas stated as he tipped his bowler. Jeanette stepped out into the dry desert heat and felt the sand whip around her and lodge in her eyes and throat. She coughed slightly and waved the particles away with her hand. Phineas started toward the foot of an enormous upshoot of stone and Jeanette followed hesitantly. An arched opening appeared at the base and the duo traveled through it to the familiar cave where Jeanette had first met Lilith. The aforementioned figure sat stoically at the stone table and chairs, no longer alabaster, reflected the torch lights in its' new black onyx.

"Miss Akers," Lilith greeted Jeanette without looking in her direction. It was dressed exactly as Jeanette was, same suit, white shirt, and black heels. A near mirror image. "I'm glad you could join us this morning. Phineas, that will be all for now. Thank you."