Now, to be honest, some of the people you run into while working at Wolfram and Hart are special because they’re from other dimensions, or can’t go out in daylight, but the rest of us are as normal as anyone who works here can be.

The other half, the ‘not special’ half, are luckier than the rest of us because they’re pretty much guaranteed to hold onto their inferior positions for as long as they can do their jobs and are useful -- barring the sudden need for human sacrifices. The rest of us, though, we’re pitted against one another. We have to compete with mind-readers, empaths, psychics, all sorts of weird shit like that, as well as with each other. For one to rise, one must fall, and you never want to fall at Wolfram and Hart.

Two enter, one leaves.

Heh.

So you work your ass off, put in so many extra hours that you’re ready to collapse from exhaustion, before the week is even half over, and you keep tabs on your coworkers. One minor slipup for them could be your incredible gain.

At Wolfram and Hart, you don’t have coworkers and you don’t have friends. You have enemies, you have rivals, and you have people you form temporary alliances with to bring a bigger enemy crashing down.

You also do any damn thing the higher-ups ask of you, with minimal question and minimal fuss. Bonus points if you do it with a song in you heart, a smile on your face, and without messing up your hair. Which is why I’m standing in Holland Manners’ office on a Friday afternoon, only half-an-hour away from what can only be loosely termed ‘quitting time’. I wear one of my casually polite, intelligently interested smiles while Holland sorts through the papers on his desk. It’s a game, really, where the object is to keep your damn mouth shut, acting all quiet and polite until you’re rewarded with some task that’s the equivalent of getting punched in the jaw.

If you’re lucky.

Congratulations, Mr. McDonald, the senior partners are very impressed with your work on that last case. As a reward for your diligence and hard work, we’d like you to come in Sunday morning. Will 5am be a problem for you? There may or may not be flying monkeys involved.

I only have to put up with Holland’s game for a few minutes, so I know, whatever it is he wants me for, it’s pretty damn important. He pushes the papers aside into a neat, orderly pile, and smiles at me. “Lindsey.”

And it’s another game. This one’s called play-dumb-to-amuse me. If someone were in the process of foiling our apocalypse, Holland would still find time to play games. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Ah, yes. You have any plans for tonight, Lindsey?”

Do you want to have a job on Monday, Mr. McDonald?

I say a regretful good-bye to unwinding at the bar and shake my head. “No, sir. Nothing that can’t be rescheduled.”

“Excellent. I knew we could depend on you, Lindsey. You see,” he smiles at me, selecting one piece of paper from the stack, “I have a meeting with a client shortly. At least, I’m supposed to have a meeting with a client, but it’s being a bit stubborn on certain matters. You know how some demons are, they can’t look beyond their personal needs and see the big picture.”

I nod. What else can I do? Holland likes to hear himself talk.

“Now, Lindsey, I know you’re a young man who can see the big picture, so I’m sure you won’t mind going down to sub-basement three and freeing our client from this little problem. As a favour to them. As a favour to me.”

I begin to not my assent, because at Wolfram and Hart morals are a luxury someone in my position can’t afford. Then I stop, Holland’s words reaching my brain. Doing favours for clients often lead to messy things, but . . . “Sub-basement three, sir?”

Holland smiles at me, looking far too happy with the way the game’s playing out, and hands me the solitary sheet of paper he’s been playing with.

I skim it, then go back and reread it carefully. Much as I’d like to, I don’t raise my eyebrows. Such indications of surprise are unprofessional.

I turn it over to see if there’s anything on the back.

When I look up, Holland’s still smiling.

You have to sell your soul to work at Wolfram and Hart, pretty much. What does your pride matter after that?

I look over the piece of paper once more to make sure the few, brief instructions on it are committed to memory before lowering it. I nod to Holland, I smile to Holland, I am nothing but delighted to free the client from other obligations so they can meet with Holland.

“Your dedication is a credit to us all, Lindsey.”

I was getting out of the elevator just as someone – the client Holland’s supposed to be meeting with, I guess – got in. The brief glimpse I have of him (her? it?) is reassuring. The client could pass for a very tall human quite easily, if it was dark out and you squinted a little.

The speed with which it was entering the elevator only to vanish upward? Less than reassuring.

The lights in this part of the basement are currently quite dim, although they don’t have to be. But one of the few things the piece of paper had made clear to me before I stuck it in a locked filing cabinet with several other things I’d rather no one ever find out about, was that they were not, under any circumstances, to be touched. So I ignore the lights like a good little lawyer and squint, moving forward slowly and carefully, because I’m really not big on tripping over God knows what and falling on my face, even if there are no witnesses.

That’s when I saw it, rattling the bars of it’s crib and trying to get out.

I consider it, frowning. I guess it looks like any other baby, almost, as long as you think your average infant has glowing, pulsating red eyes and skin that was constantly secreting layer after layer of protective mucus. It kind of glows in the dark, too, sort of like those start stickers little kids decorate their rooms with. Not me, of course, but one of my luckier cousins . . .

Anyway, it glows like that.

I sigh. Babysitting is not in my job description.

It’s not that I don’t like kids – I like ‘em fine, don’t’ mind them at all, hell, I was surrounded by them when I was growing up – but eversince I started working at Wolfram and Hart I have never connected ‘baby’ with my job, or the firm itself. Not unless it’s followed by ‘eater’. Even when the baby, kid, spawn, whatever looks like something from a bad horror movie, it still doesn’t look like something that belongs in Wolfram and Hart.

Grimacing, I force myself to remember the client who smelled like rotting flesh and apparently thought maggots were an acceptable fashion statement. This isn't as bad as that time. Really. It isn't. I look at it and try to imagine that it’s one of Aunt Selma’s kids. It looks almost as messy as I remember them being.

I crouch in front of the crib to get a closer look at the spawn, starting at it. It stares back at me with sulky red eyes. Then, it hits the bars of the crib with a toy duck, producing a painfully loud, metallic clang.

Shit!

I cringe, putting a hand to my ear, which makes the spawn’s face split into a gummy, mucus-dripping grin.

Great, just great. It thinks my pain is funny. I’ve known people like that before.

The sheet Holland gave me had also said that I’m not to leave the damn thing alone for a moment. I’m not even to take my attention away from it for more than a few minutes. I wonder if I’m supposed to pay so much attention to the thing because the client’s one of those demons who’s insanely overprotective about it’s demonic spawn, or if ignoring the creature would just result in the destruction of the building, or trigger an unplanned apocalypse.

A little of all three, I decide, watching it try to gum through titanium bars.

“Hey, kid,” I say by way of greeting, and hold a finger out to it.

The spawn stares at the offered digit for a minute, then clamps it’s jaws around my finger, gumming at it like it had the bars.

Mucus drips down past my knuckle, stinging and leaving little red welts like bug bites. I swear under my breath, which seems to amuse the spawn, and tug futilely at my finger. The spawn shows no indication of letting go. Its grip is like that of an acid-coated vice.

I may quite possibly be an idiot.

I sigh and lay my head against the bars of the crib. It’s going to be a long night.

I’ve done a lot of unpleasant things since coming to Wolfram and Hart. I’ve basically sold my soul and told elaborate lies to full courtrooms simply to convince people that a cannibalistic madman with a basement full of decapitated heads was innocent and misunderstood.

I won that case, too. It got me my first promotion and everything.

I’ve seen people, coworkers, killed right in front of me and, on one particularly memorable occasion, stood knee-high in blood with Lilah Morgan while a trio of shamans summoned a very wealthy client from another dimension.

Babysitting the spawn, however, makes everything else look like a walk in the park. A walk in a park of skeletal trees late at night with a shadowy figure following you and muttering your name under its breath, but still a walk in the park.

Eventually the spawn releases my finger, but that’s only because it’s hungry, I think. I think it’s been hungry for a while, but it was optimistically hoping that if it waited long enough, my finger would dissolve and it could eat that.

Stupid demon.

I wipe the mucus off on my pant leg, then wince as it stains the fabric before beginning to eat through it.

Note to self: Touch nothing important until hand has been cleaned.

I offer up a silent prayer of thanks that the mucus eats through fabric and not human flesh. After a moment of thought, I add a request that the mucus has no weird chemical reactions with water.

Maybe I’ll wash it in a sterilizing alcohol bath first.

A few feet away from the crib are the things for spawn care. I go over and open the box, keeping one eye on the spawn, which is busy violently throwing itself against the bars and wailing.

I throw a grub from one of the many bags in the box at its mouth, but the rolling insect bounces off the spawn’s head and scuttles into the darkness.

The force of the spawn’s wailing doubles, and I quickly grab the bag of grubs and go back to the crib. As I shove a grub into the gaping, dripping mouth, I wish Holland had thought to give me ear plugs.

I sit on the sub-basement floor, feeding the spawn with my injured hand until it begins spitting the damn things back at me. I wipe a grub out of my hair, seal the bag, and drop it by my feet.

You'd think that now with the spawn fed, I’d be able to just sit there quietly, listening to the damn thing gurgle and spit until the client, hopefully, comes back, but no. God forbid that this ridiculous assignment gives me anything resembling peace.

The spawn starts to fidget and whimper, pressing its face against the bars of the crib so it can stare pathetically at me. As pathetically as some mucus-covered thing with glowing red eyes can, anyway.

Even demon spawn, it seems, need to be burped.

I watch it fuss for a bit and consider just leaving it there until the client comes back. But, with my luck, the damn spawn would probably explode if it wasn’t tended to. You can never tell, with demons.

I picture myself explaining to the client why bits of its spawn are dripping from the ceiling.

I picture myself explaining any of this scenario to Holland.

Do you want to become demon food, Mr. McDonald?

I stand up and, with one arm, hoist the spawn out of its crib. I shift it to the other arm and it rests its wet chin on my shoulder. I thump it on the back with my injured hand and try not to think too much about the wet, sucking sound I hear whenever I pull my hand away from the spawn.

It’s nights like these that make me glad I don’t have a girlfriend. Easy enough to lie about the late nights when I’m just looking through the files of my coworkers, and I’m sure that, with the help of a few glasses of scotch, I could think up a perfectly reasonable explanation for pants soaked in blood up to the knee. Something like ‘I was vising a client in the hospital and someone knocked a vat of donation blood onto me. Oops.’

The welts on my hand, the weird smell the spawn left, and the holes in my suit would have required more help than scotch could bring.

‘An army of fire ants invaded the office today and . . . what? The smell? Oh, that’s just the residue of the stuff the exterminators had to use’ was a bit ridiculous, while ‘Hey, babe, sorry I’m late, my boss needed me to babysit an acid-drooling demon for one of his clients’ would probably not cut it with most women. Any woman who would accept that as an excuse would have to be crazy, or an employee of Wolfram and Hart. Both utterly undatable.

Maybe if I give the non-existent girlfriend some scotch . . .

The spawn belches and hot dampness spreads down my shoulder, narrowly missing my neck and dragging my thoughts away from the girlfriend I don’t have.

I sigh. Maybe I can charge the new suit I’ll be needing to Wolfram and Hart.

The thought of all that paperwork, available to anyone with connections in Accounting, anddocumenting exactly why I feel Wolfram and Hart are responsible for my needing a new suit is enough to dissuade me. The only people who need to know about a guy doing this kind of thing are the ones who can give him a hand up.

Reluctantly, I let the idea slide, and look at the spawn resting on my shoulder, dripping its mucus down the front of my suit. It lifts its head to regard me balefully, and belches.

I grimace, pulling my head back and wrinkling my nose. Shifting the spawn to my other arm, I wipe at my abruptly watering eyes with my good hand.

That’s when the little monster decides to twist violently in my grasp, falling to the floor. There’s a squelching noise and I snap my hand away from my face, looking down, expecting to find acidic demon spawn guts on the floor at my feet. But when my eyes have cleared enough to see, all that’s left on the floor is a splattering trail of mucus. No spawn corpse greets me.

Small mercy.

For all I know, the damn thing could be like a vampire, only instead of a pile of dust with the help of a stake, you get a puddle of acid because you’re a dumb shit who didn’t keep a tight hold on the stupid thing. I saw one demon once that exploded when salt was thrown at it. Anything’s possible.

Somewhere in th darkness there’s a disgusting, bubbling gurgle. It's the sweetest, sweetest noise ever (except for the time Lilah fell down the stairs after a disgruntled client gave her a helpful shove). This means I won’t have to explain the distinct lack of spawn to the client or to Holland.

Yet.

Explaining why the spawn is crawling around the third sub-basement of Wolfram and Hart is nearly as disturbing, though. Muttering “Shit,” I take off my ruined jacket, wrapping it around my bad hand before heading in the direction of the spawn cries.

Sub-basement three is something I never really wanted to be familiar with. The sub-basements are a collection of dark floors that go down to who knows what depth, full of creatures wandering about, eating each other, which is something I really don’t want to think about while crawling after a trail of acidic mucus in the near-dark.

Oh, and there are some old files.

You hear stories, sometimes, about people, clerks, usually, or secretaries, not one of Us, going into a sub-basement to find some kind of old file for a case and never coming back. It’s easy to roll your eyes contemptuously at stories like that, shake your head while sitting comfortably in a brightly lit office. Not so when you’re actually there, spitting dirt and dust out of your mouth, trying not to look in the direction of scuttling noises.

How long have I been crawling around sub-basement three after the little hell spawn? My muscles start protesting their abuse.

Suddenly, it's within reach. “Gotcha,” I hiss, and wrap my jacket-covered hand around one slippery leg. The spawn protests loudly, squirming, but I just tighten my grip and get to my feet, dangling the little monster in the air. It kicks at me and tries to pull itself upright, but it doesn’t seem to be in any pain – just annoyed at not having its way.

I let it dangle, holding it as far away from my body as possible, and stalk back to the crib.

The client’s there, waiting for me with an unreadable expression on its face as it stares down into the conspicuously empty crib.

Well damn.

I clear my throat and try to turn the spawn right-side up without any success as it flails wildly at me. The client looks at me, and whatever the hell it is, it’s kind of hot, in a weird, green-tinted way. I flash it a blinding smile and, after a moment’s hesitation, hold the spawn out to it. It takes the spawn back, staring down at me in some confusion.

I think.

“We were playing,” I tell the client, my smoothest smile fixed firmly in place. “Kids need exercise and it didn’t seem to mind – cute little thing, takes after you.” Now would not be the time to find out that the mucus-dripping little horror is the client’s next meal. Hopefully it has no idea what I’m saying. I hold my hand out to it anyway and keep smiling. It takes the offered hand with a very confused look on its face but, thank God, its touch doesn’t burn like the spawn’s did. “I hope you’ve found your interaction with Wolfram and Hart to be satisfying and that everything met your needs and expectations.” I say the entire thing smoothly, politely, charmingly, and, with another smile and a wave, make my way to the elevator as quickly as dignity allows.

Wanting to take the elevator directly up to Holland’s office so I could report to him, go home, and shower shouldn't be such a huge request of fate. One solitary, uninterrupted ride from the basement to Holland’s office. Wolfram and Hart is big, but it’s big enough that it often happens that you cross paths with someone one day and then never see them again.

Admittedly, some of those individuals you never see again are probably unseen because of Wolfram and Hart’s severe termination policy, but . . .

Anyway, the point is that I frequently find myself alone on the elevator, or in the company of one or two people I’ve never seen before and will never see again.

Alas, God never gives us what we want when we need it. Especially if you’ve sold your soul and work for Wolfram and Hart.

I’m just leaning against the side of the elevator, watching the number display flicker, when the elevator slows to a stop, the doors parting. Automatically I straighten up and adjust the remains of my tie as Lilah comes in, the doors shutting behind her.

She's a complete mess, her hair's in total disarray. On one hand, she's clutching, of all things, a sports bag in one hand. On the other hand, she isn’t wearing clothing with any noticeable holes or funny-coloured stains, which puts her ahead of me.

We stare at each other as the elevator continues its ascent.

“Hello, Lindsey,” she says at last, breaking the silence.

“Lilah,” I nod. “Working late?”

“Meeting with a client. You?”

“Just a bit of research in Files and Records.”

Lilah raises one eyebrow. “Really? Files and Records just keeps getting more chaotic. The senior partners should do something about it, before we need a commando squad to do our research.”

“Or bodyguards,” I agree, my eyes falling to her bag. I blink as something catches my eye. “Lilah?”

“What?”

I point to her bag. “I think your slipper is about to fall out of there.” She glares at me and snatches the slipper from where it half-hung out of the top of the bag. I smile. “I didn’t know you did ballet, Lilah.”

She frowns at me, then begins to smile. “You don’t ask about the slipper, and I won’t ask about your suit. Or why you smell like eggs,” she responds sweetly.

I shut up. It’s probably best not to know, anyway. On some level, however, I am deeply reassured.