"How did he die?" C.J asked, slipping into Press Secretary mode.

"We don't know yet," Leo said. "Caroline found his body. I don't know how much will come out or how soon…"

"But?"

"Conservative Democrat Senator Owens was having an affair. He was having an affair with his wife's secretary. The secretary, Greg Marcus, was blackmailing another of Caroline's staff. He was stealing money from her."

"There's no chance Greg is a girl's nickname?" Toby asked.

"No."

"The problem's not that he was, apparently, gay," C.J said.

"What then?"

"Given the Democratic party and the President's support of legislation to recognise homosexual relationships why is it Senator Owens felt it necessary to conceal his sexuality? Or indeed, what is the White House's comment on Senator Owens's stance on the Marriage Recognition Act, which the President opposed, given his sexuality?"

"So it's that he didn't tell anyone that he was gay?" Leo demanded.

"Of course it is. And nobody will care that he was having an affair, except all the right-wingers who wanted to make a case that homosexuality is corrupting."

"What about his wife?" the President asked, "she found the body?"

"And she was having money stolen from her, and it was her secretary," Leo said.

"I'll talk to her," C.J offered, looking to Leo for confirmation.

He nodded, "I'll set it up."

"Toby?" the President addressed his speechwriter in the 'this one word is a whole conversation' tone.

"Yeah," Toby said, understanding the possible implications of such an improbable death.

Leo glanced between Toby and the President. Then he looked at C.J. The immediate theory was that it had to do with the speech they had to write as well as all the comments the President would have to make over the next week. But C.J's nervous comprehension worried him. Something was going on, and if he couldn't know, it would be bad. He began to think about excuses he could make to see Abbey.

They all had things now that needed getting on with, so they dispersed and allowed Charlie to prep the President for a meeting with the jocks from the treasury.

Toby and C.J stepped out together. And once past the outer office stepped closer together.

"You know how this goes," Toby said.

C.J knew that he was testing her. But she thought that maybe he was letting her test him as well.

"You hit the books, I train. Well done, Pokey. But I also have a press briefing to give and a grieving widow to talk to."

"See if you can get her to get you to keep it quite. Keep it as quiet as you can. I want to see how it breaks, and if she's on our side it won't matter so much that there's no way we can claim he was. And also we don't want to make a thing about it because of what it is. Also we won't be surprised by it, but we'll have kept it quiet out of the respect for said grieving widow."

"I get it, Toby," C.J said, stopping outside her office.

"Also you'll need to train weapons. All I have is a few crosses, some stakes and three and a quarter bottles of holy water."

"Three and a quarter bottles of holy water, Pokey?"

"I'm Jewish, it's bad for me, I need to keep track of it."

"But not the crosses?" C.J asked.

"They're easy to take of."

"I want to know what happened to the three quarters of a bottle of holy water."

"You do your thing, I'll do mine," Toby said, retreating behind his worried worker wall.

"I'll take Donna out tonight," C.J told him.

"Good," Toby said. He sighed as he got back to balancing his own problems.

The afternoon briefing was uneventful. The press had not yet got wind of Senator Owens's lunchtime demise. C.J began to think that maybe it was part of a grander scheme. And even if it weren't she would have to look out for other unusual deaths.

And already her mind was putting everything in Slayer context. That's what she'd missed when she'd left, and what she loved about this job; having a clear frame you could think everything through. In the end politics had a lot to do with demons and vampires and monsters. And what was she going to do when she met Caroline Owens.

Carol was there to walk her back to her office. C.J, for once, had to think to concentrate on the list of things she had to do. At least the President knew what was going on. C.J dismissed her assistant with a list of things to do and went in search of Donna.

"Hey, Josh," she called, "can I borrow Donna?"

Josh stuck his head from around his door and looked from Donna to C.J

"Sure, what for?" he asked.

C.J glanced at where Carol would have been for inspiration.

"Carol's not here, and there's a thing," she said.

Josh just nodded waved Donna over to C.J's side. C.J suppressed a smile at the simplicity of using a 'thing' as an excuse.

Donna followed her into her office.

"So what are we doing?" she asked cautiously.

"Training," C.J said. "I don't really know what sort of demon to look up, or how. Toby's on that as well as the speech and general campaign stuff. I don't like to ask questions."

"Yes," Donna agreed.

C.J had closed both the main door and one that connected with Josh's office, as well as all the blinds in the office. Donna didn't see how any training could be done here, and that thought escaped over and above the willingness of her mind to believe the whole thing was strange dream.

She certainly never would have believed a word of it if it hadn't been Toby in his gruff, annoyed, and yet certainly knowledgeable way.

C.J took a small key out her desk drawer and used it open a small cabinet in the back of the desk.

She didn't have a large range of weapons. She tried to forget everything she knew and ignore everything she couldn't forget. She concentrated on things like hitting things so it made a noise without breaking anything and no one was any the wiser. But she still had a cross bow, several stakes, a short sword and two heavy bladed silver daggers.