A Few Key Sunnydale Alum

It's not worth the effort, at this point, to make herself firmly visible.

Instead, Meg concentrates on making her voice as loud and solid and present as possible as she zips through the building, ignoring such petty obstacles as walls and floors and extremely surprised lawyers and mentally checking off sites of battle: "All out! Everybody out!" she shouts to Wells and Spoon, and "They're coming down, get ready!" to Buffy and the others in the lobby, and "We're all done, it's time to go!" to River and Spike, and "Find the others, get out now!" to Harth and Mel, and then back to the first group again, as fast as she can.

Everyone has to hear.

Things have been hectic at Wolfram & Hart over the past few days.

It's kind of understandable that there hasn't yet been opportunity to get anyone in to reglaze the broken window in one of the twelfth-floor conference rooms. There's been cardboard and heavy canvas tacked down over it with tape, against the weather, and for the moment that's all.

It's not as though it's a security risk, after all. The window's twelve stories up, and there's no fire escape nearby.

The lobby of Wolfram & Hart NYC is brightly, warmly lit against the deepening gloom of the winter afternoon. There's a tasteful wreath of pine and holly and poinsettia blossoms up over the door and another over the elevator banks, and swags of pine bough and red velvet ribbon adorning the main support pillars, and an enormous tree decorated in red and gold. There's also a white-and-blue electric menorah standing on the front desk, as well as a cheerful plastic molding of a log fire with a thin yellow glow flickering inside it.

(On a closer look, it may become apparent that those aren't logs in the plastic log fire; they're bones. Gold-trimmed brown ribbons looping across the red plastic flames read WISHING YOU A JOYOUS HRAGTHL'VAZH and MAY YOUR ENEMIES BURN.)

It's three o'clock, and the evening security shift is coming on. In addition to the stocky men in uniform, there's a handful of casually dressed young women scattered about the lobby: two by the elevators, one by the revolving door, one leaning against the front desk in desultory conversation with the man behind it.