With nothing much to return home to, she decided to stay in the US a few more days and left to find a hotel.
Mica Noxx stood alone in the Oval Office with her arms folded, staring at the desk chair. It was the same one Devlin had sat in. She cringed at the slick of oil on the head cushion, left by his hair. She had yet to sit in it, having asked for a new one. But it seemed no one on staff was enthusiastic to help her. The governmental chaos hadn’t subsided in the month since Devlin’s death. If anything, it had gotten worse. Many cabinet members had resigned at her swearing in, leaving gaping holes in her support system. If she admitted to herself that she was ill-equipped for the job of president, no one was in line to take her place. She’d known when she agreed to the VP role that this could be one outcome. She just hadn’t expected it so quickly. A year or two would have been nice.
She hadn’t been the original choice for Devlin’s running mate. Sara Hendricks had fit the role much better than Mica. She was in deep pockets due to a few skeletons in her closet and could be controlled like the rest of them. But as the consciousness of the planet grew, so had Sara’s conscience. Guilt for the things she’d turned a blind eye to had started spilling out weeks before the election. She had become a liability the party had to extinguish. Without notice or permission from her family, Sara had been admitted to a mental hospital and the ballot quickly changed. They needed a woman on the ticket for appearances. Mica had not even been in the top five for choice, but after dealings even Devlin hadn’t been privy to, she’d been put on the ticket.
Devlin should never have died in office. He was a biotech giant pumped with enough medical magic to keep him young for as long as needed. Even unnatural causes would have been hard-pressed to kill him. But no one had accounted for Milicent. She, with her own dark magic deep in her veins, had been a match for Devlin’s technological immortality.
Mica had grown up in a large, affluent, African American family in the Northeast. Her Catholic roots had never sat well with her internal compass; she’d always believed her savior was within, not without. She despised the idea of needing a middleman to connect with God. So it had been no surprise, yet not happy news, either, to her parents when she rebelled in college, spat on the church, and took to alternative ideology to sink her beliefs into: Vodou. She’d attended undergrad at Loyola in New Orleans and spent much of her free time connecting with locals. She’d been enamored by their raw beauty and earthly abundance, despite their impoverished conditions. They’d had strong ties to their spirituality and needed very little material items to be happy.
Mica had also witnessed how some took advantage of the locals’ good nature and swindled them out of the very little they had. She’d turned her studies to pre-law, went on to get her law degree, and eventually served as a judge of the City of New Orleans. She’d made it her mission to protect those that needed it. She’d given back to the community that had given her so much. The community had taught her about the sovereignty in her own skin and given her a fierce sense of self and importance in the collective. This community had given her the roots she’d always felt were lacking in her family of origin.
After diving briefly into her own genealogy chart, she’d begun to suspect she belonged to the bloodline of Maria Laveau, nineteenth-century Vodou priestess. That turned out to be wishful thinking; however, her research had left her forever changed. Embracing the wisdom of the Vodou culture, she’d become convinced that the world of materialism was an illusion, and life was a game she could play for as long as she wanted.
She’d remained in New Orleans until Devlin Grayer knocked on her door, requesting her presence in Washington to run on the Republican ticket. She’d known this was absurd. She hadn’t voted in decades, knowing that at the root of the system of democracy, her vote meant nothing. She’d said no a half-dozen times before the fateful night the Great Mother of them all, Yemaya, came to her in dreamtime—or, more like, chased her through the seven seas—and commanded her to do this.
“It is your divine responsibility to clean house of the filth that has occupied Washington for one hundred years,” she told her. “This task was assigned to you. You can not say no.”
Mica sat, waterlogged and tired, on the shore of an ocean she’d never seen. “What about free will?” she asked. “I’m happy with my life. I do enough good where I am, I help enough people.”
“I am not appealing to your sense of duty,” Yemaya said. “You have already demonstrated your constitution. All of the lessons you have learned have brought you to this moment, to use that information for this final act. I am appealing to your sense of righteous indignation. The foundation of the corrupted state has cracked. It is time to kick their feet out from under them so they collapse. You must be at the helm to do this. There is no turning this down. Others will take over to rebuild. But you, child, are in charge of the Dissolution.”
With that she was gone, and Mica found herself standing in the street in her pajamas, barefoot. “I have to stop drinking red wine before bed,” she said and made her way back inside.
“With liberty and justice for all,” Ocean said, standing in the Oval Office.
“Back so soon?” Mica asked.
“I’ve been in this building too many times this year,” Ocean said. She picked up a small peacock figurine from the desk. It was Mica’s only personalization of the room so far.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Mica said, hopping on the presidential desk as if she were in grade school.
“You can keep saying that but it won’t start being true.”
“I’ll rephrase: I don’t want to be here.”
“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States,” Ocean said.
“Don’t quote George Washington to me.”
“Mica, you are working for the Goddess of Liberty now, like it or not. You have to play by some of the rules.”
“There are no more rules, Ocean. This place is under water.”
“Not yet,” Ocean said. “Vivienne is distracted for the time being. The karma of this country is finally coming due. All its tyranny, all its suppression, when it boasted freedoms. It was supposed to be liberty for all. Instead, it was liberty for those with information. Masonry lay the bricks in early America for the unity of all races. But then that fucking New Deal ruined everything. The Roosevelts were hijacked and Magus showed up. I swear he must have broken out of a pod.” She scowled. “We’ve gotten away from the principles in the Constitution so horribly. But the truth is, it’s all part of the Divine Plan. As I told Milicent, we can’t appreciate light without first experiencing darkness. The division in this country is a distraction, one that we need in order to prevent the original plan of the Masons. We have to take Magus out once and for all. If he bleeds, the rest will cave.”
“I love that idea,” Mica said. “I hate him. But I need to do it my way.”
“Why?” Ocean asked. “You can’t do this alone.” She handed Mica a gold amulet, an odd tree engraved on top. The words The Liberty Tree were inscribed below it.