A Few Key Sunnydale Alum

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.