Disclaimer: Nothing is mine except the Christmas spirit; and if the Mutant Enemy wants that, well, hey, Merry Christmas!

It was the last thing he expected--the very last. Months spent in the hellish confines of Wolfram & Hart, and he had become mentally prepared (he thought--the fool!) for anything. Anything at all. The rain of blood when the emergency sprinklers accidently engaged, late one stormy night. The things that were kept in the cells in the sub-sub-parking-level dungeon. The fact that there was a dungeon on the premises. Anything. No matter how diabolical.

But not this.

"Lorne!" Angel bellowed, holding up a fistful of fancy curly ribbon. "Why is there a Christmas tree in my office!?"

"Well, it looks nice, innit?" That was Spike, who had come up on the elevator with Angel; all the way up, they had argued ferociously about Buffy's phone number. "Adds a bit of cheer to the place. Which," he added, "it damn well needs. In my humble opinion."

"I don't care about your humble opinion. Lorne!"

"He's not here, Angel." Wesley appeared in the doorway. "I believe he's downstairs, drawing names for, er, the vengeance-gift exchange in the lobby."

"Well, he'd better hump his horns up here and explain himself. Tell me why my secretary is decorating my office with—Harmony? Stop right there. No, don't hide what you're holding. Now, come over here." Angel crooked a finger, dreadfully. Harmony sidled up to him, pale with fear. She wore a shimmering pink wild-silk skirt-suit, with a sash patterned with autumn leaves in burnt orange and yellow, and looked cute as a kewpie doll, towered over by her thunderous employer. "Hold it up, Harm. Just as I thought. Tell me that's not mistletoe."

"It's not real mistletoe," Harmony ventured. "It's trick stuff. One of the typing pool girls gave me half of hers. Good for a laugh at every office party, she said, and . . . and . . ." She skittered away from him. "It's all in the spirit of innocent fun! Oh, don't be such an old fuddy-duddy, it's like you were born centuries ago--" Then she retreated in haste.

"There's no place for any spirits of innocence at Wolfram & Hart."

Spike drawled, "Strikes me there's mighty few where it's more called-for."

"I liked you better," Angel growled, "when you were just a ghost of Christmas past."

"So give me what I want--" Spike fluttered his hands, "--and I'll fade away."

Angel said, "But you won't, will you? Because you don't have the guts. If you did, you'd already be in Europe looking for Buffy. Not here, begging me for her phone number. It's pathetic. Worse than that--it's inconsistent. As for all this--" He swept out one arm, ignoring Spike's annoyance. "I want it gone within the hour. And no excuses, Harmony."

"Still you have to admit it's rather, ah, fascinating." Wesley began to stalk around the office, hands joined behind his back. "In an academic way. Look, Angel--this so-called Christmas tree is an oak. Perhaps meant to appease the Druidic believers amongst your staff. I know they make up a sizeable percentage."

"Fourteen percent, according to Personnel," piped up Harmony.

"And this . . . tinsel. Tinsel?"

"Looks more like tentacles," remarked Spike.

"Chthonic worship," Wesley nodded. "The religion of the Old Ones. Virtually the entire remaining eighty-six percent, of course."

The topper on the Christmas oak was an effigy of a serpentine god with many flexible arms holding various weapons on high. It had been tastefully highlighted with green and gold glitter. Angel and Wes contemplated it gloomily. There were silver-foil icicles hanging across the broad windows, but their strands were writhing with a constant slow motion, creeping tortuously through the shapes of blasphemous runes. Harmony had taken advantage of the general distraction to circle around toward Spike, mistletoe upraised.

Ornaments decorated the oak tree: more mistletoe, along with hanging snowglobes and what appeared to be glistening human hearts, and small wrapped giftboxes tied up with ribbon. "This is a travesty," Angel declared, leaning close to a snowglobe. Instantly, the surface of the globe swarmed with frenzied movement--a zillion white flakes trying to get out and at him. He recoiled in haste.

Vivid snake-green garlands adorned the doors. Wreaths were everywhere (though it was best not to look too closely at the scenes painted on the ornaments). And, in one corner of the big office, there was a pile of presents--

Halfway to the ceiling!

"Is it my imagination, or are those hearts real?" asked Wesley.

"It's not your imagination," Angel said. He pulled a gift off the tree, yanking savagely at its bow. "I can smell them. Can we trust any of this? It could be booby-trapped. There's no knowing what our employees may be plotting."

He opened the small box, tipped out its contents. "A disposable camera," he said in disgust. Then: "How very peculiar."

"Don't touch that, Angel!" Wesley said sharply. "As you said, it may be--"

Too late. The tiny camera emitted a sharp click, and Angel stiffened like a marionette. His face went blank. He put the camera down on its desk, aligning it to shoot a picture of the office: the tree, the gifts, the scene. Then he wheeled and, with relentless steps, advanced upon Harmony. And Spike.

She had just raised her mistletoe over Spike's head, dangling it with a provocative smile, and Spike was leaning toward her, saying, "Why, love, what happened to ‘Lips that kiss Slayers shall never touch mine'--"

"Well, ‘tis the season after all, and--" She saw Angel coming--his lips already puckered--and uttered a squeak. "Ooh, boss--don't go wild--" Then she was shoved ruthlessly aside, as Angel seized hold of Spike.

The camera clicked and its flashbulb popped.

"Bloody buggering hell!" yelled Spike, recoiling from Angel, while wiping his lips with the back of one hand.

"Ohmigawsh," said Harmony.

It had all happened under the mistletoe.

"I certainly didn't," Lorne protested, with reproachful red-rimmed eyes. "Why, I'm wounded to the heart that you suspect me." This, confronted with the evidence, at the scene of the crime. A constant train of workmen trotted in and out of the office, dismantling the decorations and hustling them off. But one solitary enchanted camera sat accusingly on Angel's desk. Lorne slapped a hand on his own buttock, illustrating where he was wounded. "I blame the girls in the lobby. They're a vicious lot of schemers--why, you wouldn't believe the gossip I've just--"

"I didn't do it," drawled Spike. "Isn't like I've got a motive anyway, mein kampfiness. Think I want you laying your lips on me? In fact, I feel a deep sense of violation and personal injury. I may never recover from the trauma. Is there a lawyer in the house?"

"Don't look at me, big guy," said Gunn, holding up his hands. "I didn't do it either. Look, you know man-on-man porn ain't my kink--"

"Porn?" shouted Angel, overcome.

"--sounds like a girly kind of trick to me. Go looking for girls, I'll say you've got your suspects."

"I didn't do it!" cried Harmony, with Angel looming over her. "Nobody can prove I didn't!"

No matter who he interrogated, there were no leads and no clues.

"I've asked around," Wesley volunteered, "and apparently there are young women in our secretarial pool who--according to the grapevine--would pay money for, ah, such a picture. Trick cameras such as the one you fell victim to were very popular around here last Christmas. They're imbued with a simple mesmeric magic, making whoever touches them go through some embarrassing antic for posterity. Chicken dances are the usual choice."

Lorne added with a titter, "My sources say that later, the photo can be messaged to a handy cell phone and from then on the possibilities are simply endless--why, I've heard stories--" He shut up. Wisely.

"Yes, it's fascinating," Fred chimed in, very pink-cheeked but outwardly solemn. But her eyes were a bit large at the thought. "So this magik camera made Angel go for Spike and, blooey! Blackmailable pictures. That's terrible. Is the film still in the camera, then?" As if impelled, she took several steps toward Angel's desk. Then she said, "Where's the camera?"

The Fang Gang swivelled as one. The desk was now empty. The camera had vanished.

"Someone," said Angel, "is going to die."

Half a hundred people had been in and out of the office in the previous half hour, dismantling the Christmas oak and taking down the tinsel. Any one of them could have pocketed the camera in passing.

They searched the office, then searched it again. "We have got to find that camera," ordered Angel, pacing up and down and smacking a fist into a palm. "Because once someone with a cell- phone gets hold of that photo--no, I don't even want to think about it. We have to lock the whole building down, question everyone. Time for a little old-fashioned detective work."

Spike made a rude noise. "What, you gonna strip-search the staff roster, O.J.? Let me tell you, that every-golf-course-in-the-world rah-rah 's not worth spit here. And believe me, I want that picture just as much as you. Manly honor's on the line here--"

"You accusing me of grandstanding, junior?"

"Hey. If the glove fits."

"I can do detective work! Have you forgotten, I used to run--"

"Used to employ Wes here and Charlie to run your little Psychic Investigations sideshow, that's what I hear. And," said Spike, "don't tell me you're qualified in any way to get at the truth, Angel. You don't even have nodding acquaintance. It's Angelus used to be the truthful one, everything straightforward with him now. Soul's made you the granddaddy of all liars. Beats me how that works. Gives you proper morals--and I respect that these days--about everything but telling the truth. Pretty sad if you ask me."

Angel went on loudly, disregarding Spike: "Angel Investigations was famous throughout L.A. I remember we whupped your ass, Spike, over the Gem of Amarra affair. Ran you home to Sunnydale with your tail between your legs. That was before you got your soul back, of course- -you've made huge strides since, and I could even think you'd retrieved your brain along with it-- but if I'm no detective? You don't even make a good tomb robber!"

"Now, Angelus, I liked," Spike continued, ignoring Angel completely. "Was an upright bloke. Always knew where I was with him, once I'd sussed his ways. Always told you what was what. But you? Have to admire the things you do, the fight you're fighting, but--"

"--have to admire your taste in women. Even though your girlfriend here didn't have the moxy to keep a grip on her boobytrapped camera--"

"Hey!" said Harmony indignantly. "Not my camera, remember? Nuh-uh! Even if I did have magic mistletoe, okay--"

Wesley, aside: "Just what was that mistletoe supposed to do, anyway?"

Angel, to Spike, oblivious: "You know, when I heard you'd got the soul, I was furious at first. Then when Buffy phoned me and told me how you'd died--"

Spike: "Got a whole fresh perspective on you after getting my soul back. Did a lot of thinking about it. The uphill battle you've fought a hundred years now. I even had ideas about asking you for help back then, thought about you becomin'--"

Angel: "I even mourned you. Then I thought of the Shanshu prophecy. But you were--"

"--my best friend!"

"--my best friend!"

Then, ringing silence. The silence of too much truth.

"Purgatory mistletoe," said Wesley, with a mystic source-book open before him, "also called paradoxial or pandora's mistletoe, is grown only in a remote corner of Wales. Its qualities are extolled in Gerard's Other Herbal. It provokes truth-telling among hypocrites, according to all accounts, ‘those who invite it with a false kiss, kissing moreso with each fresh lie, till at last a true kiss breaks the spell'." He looked up; his voice was dry as dust. "Whatever that means. It was cultivated by a local Celtic tribe whose name has been lost, and who are now in any case extinct. Died out from internal quarrelsomeness, and from an inability to carry through engagements."

"So it makes anyone who kisses, I mean falsely kisses, under it . . . ?" prompted Harmony.

"It makes them tell the truth. Till a true kiss breaks the spell?"

"Well, it sure made Spikey and the boss-man cross," Harmony said, downcast. "And I was gonna ask for a raise come New Year's, too."

The approach of Angel and Spike could be heard from quite a distance off.

". . . I like this truth-telling spell, y'know," Spike was saying. "Cause this time, when you give me her phone number, it'll be the real thing. Unlike the last two times. And you've got to admit to yourself that you know why you're scared, Angel. You know it. I know it. We both know why you won't let me at her. It's because I've got the inside track. Because once this dog's in the race, you haven't got a chance."

"It's because she can do better than you!" Angel said furiously. "Better than either of us."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just keep telling yourself that."

"You listen to me, Spike." Angel grabbed the front of Spike's jacket, pinning him in place. "Repeat after me, and know it's the truth: Buffy needs a man. Not a monster. A man." He let go, strode away, dusting off his hands.

"That's a lie!" Spike called after him.

"Truth hurts, doesn't it?"

"I bet it's a lie." Spike stood in the center of the lobby, with an expression of vast concentration. "I bet you're lying. I'll prove it. Nothing stopping me from lying if I want to--'snot like I'll blow up if I go Pinocchio, is it? And if something grows, well, hell." He looked at Harmony, the only woman within reach, and got a wicked grin. "Angel, listen to this." Concentrating: "I got the hots for you, man. Real bad."

Angel merely shrugged. Then the strangest thing happened. A strange look crossed Spike's face, he choked briefly, seemed to suffer a paroxysm--then lurched three steps forward, and kissed Wesley on the mouth.

"I say!" Wesley freed himself, appalled. "Do you mind? I'm not one of those with a yen for the damned. I don't even like you, Spike." Then he too, choked briefly. "But I do like you," he said, "I admire your--your moral fortitude, which never fails to surprise, and that bloody- minded stubbornness of yours, which has taken you so far--" He shut his mouth with a snap. Then: "The mistletoe spell," he said. "It seems to have . . . Let me check this. A lie, a lie— Aha. At the Watcher Academy, I won the gold medal for fencing three years straight." He choked again, and words came spewing out: "No I didn't, I wasn't even in the finals, and in my third year I burst out crying when I was eliminated— No, wait, that's not true!"

Gunn saw the look in his eyes, and got hastily out of the way. That left Harmony within reach.

"Eyaggh!" she cried. Then: "Mmm--nice." Then: "Why, Mr Wesley, I didn't know you cared-- "

Wesley released her, saying, "I've definitely been infected."

Harmony had been fluttering and cooing; now she stopped short. "You mean— Oh. Yeah. That's why you— And now I am too, huh?" Thoughts struggled to surface on the blank canvas of her face--it was painful to watch--then languished and died. "Does this mean I hafta tell Angel how bad a boss he really is?"

"No, it means you should keep your mouth shut," said Angel grimly. "Everyone, no more conversation. And clear away that junk!" he ordered, pointing toward the huge pile of gaudy presents which had been evicted from his office. They now decorated Harmony's desk--stacked on top of it, in heaps around it, to the right and the left of it. And the very prettiest and most expensively-wrapped had been stowed out of sight behind the ledge of her desk, as Angel noted when he leaned over to look. "Get rid of it all. Every present, Harm. That's an order."

"You can't do that! They're from your workers, Angel, they're like tribute," Harmony protested. "Tribute to the big boss. It's like you'll be spitting on a longstanding tradition here at Wolfram & Hart. Why, they made sacrifices to get you Christmas-loot kissing-up points. Some of them, actual sacrifices. I hear if you offer a sheep to the god Nergal, he'll give you a gold Rolex."

"I know, I know," Angel said wearily. "Just . . . don't mention kissing-up, okay?"

"So I can keep the gifts?" Harmony asked, ever hopeful. "Or at least, pick a couple and— Hey what's that?"

A glaze had come upon the air, on the eye of the air in the center of the executive-floor lobby. A light began to glance off nothing, in shafts and shifting prisms; it was in the form of an upright spindle, swaying, spinning, winged, weird. It threw off rainbows. It doubled, and tripled, and now there were three glass-brilliant gauzy upright spinning-tops in the lobby, moving away from each other. You could see through them--Angel looked through them and saw Spike, and Spike looked back and saw Angel--but their many wings were also full of shards of mirror, reflecting everything many times over. And they sang, they sang on a thin pure note, a glass-splinter sound on the upward edge of the audible scale. Like piccolos, like wayward flutes. Like hearts breaking.

The lawyers and office staff in the lobby scattered out of their way--heading posthaste for the exits. Only Angel and his team stood their ground. "Get Lorne," Angel ordered.

"Here I am, big cowabunga, I-- Well, dip me in hot wax and stick a wick between my horns." Lorne had appeared like magic. He listened to the singing of the light, cocked his head and said, "Been a long time since I set eyes on Grigori demons. Angel, they say they're here on a quest. They've come across many dimensions, searching . . . brought here by a rumor of changes at Wolfram & Hart . . . looking for, uh . . . now that's interesting: the Chosen One. The Chosen One? For the child of the virgin, reborn in the soul, the Shanshu one, who will be the instrument of the apocalypse . . . that they may . . ." He threw a helpless look at Angel. "Angel-face, they've brought gifts for the Chosen One."

The three lights hummed. With a whisper and a glitter and a brief gust of wind, several colorful jewel-like objects materialized at the centerpoint of the triangle of demons, and fell to bounce and scatter on the lobby carpet. They were wrapped in tasteful paper.

"Prezzies for me!" said Spike brightly.

"Spike, shut up, or I swear--"

The shining Grigori swayed in place, swaying toward Spike like windblown tinsel-and-glass flowers. Lorne translated: "But we feel confusion . . . our senses tell us we are in the presence of not one but two ensouled blood-drinkers . . . which of you is the Shanshu vampire long- predicted? Is it this small one, he of the hideous white hair?"

The lights floated toward Spike, backing him against the lobby wall. He appeared to be fighting a severe internal battle. Several time, his mouth opened boastfully, and then he seemed to bite his own tongue and no actual words came out. Finally he said, "Sod it, if the only girl here wasn't already kissed, I'd lie and take my chances. But as it is . . . I gotta say no. No. I'm not your man."

The lights did an about-face, eddying toward Angel. "Or then," said Lorne, "this large and solid one whose hair is so much more natural for a human?"

Angel said, slowly and with apparent tooth-grinding frustration: "No. It's not me either."

The Grigori swelled and blazed. Wrathfully. Their music mounted to an ear-numbing crescendo.

"They demand," Lorne translated, "to be shown the Shanshu vampire, or we will face their rightful wrath!"

The wings of the demons beat brilliancy throughout the lobby, and some of the less-weighty presents bedecking Harmony's desk were blown skidding across the carpet. Then the pitch of their hum altered. Lorne translated: "No one may leave till, uh, we bring them the Chosen One." The brilliance became a floating veil, which solidified as it expanded--wafted onward like the sail of a boat. It filled the area, light that gleamed and fixed in place. Then the area was enclosed within a shimmering soap-bubble, walls, ceiling, and floor. Vivid as water, quivering. Over three feet thick where it barred the elevator and the doors.

"Now they're getting shirty," Lorne commented.

"All afternoon," Spike complained, much later, "shut up inside a giant Christmas ornament!"

The three Grigori, smaller ornaments within the large, hung over everyone like swords of Damocles. From time to time, they sang a warning note. Hours had passed without a fresh development. Spike paced. Gunn stewed. Lorne fretted, making calls out on his cell-phone. Wesley researched tirelessly through his source-book. Harmony sat at her desk, fingering the presents and guessing aloud at their contents, till everyone was ready to scream at her to stop.

Wesley had whipped out his phone and contacted Fred, and set her science staff to look for a way out. From time to time, she called back and reported her lack of progress. Meanwhile the hours dragged by.

"Stuck inside a Christmas ball," Spike repeated, "cheek by jowl with Scrooge."

In the exact centerpoint of the trap that caged them, Angel stood planted like a statue. Chin in hand, deep in thought. The Grigori gifts lay close to his feet, but he paid no attention. He had scarcely spoken a word since the demons had imprisoned them.

"What's he hiding?" wondered Spike.

He himself took a more belligerent attitude. Having discovered that he could lie, he jutted out his chin and set about defying the mistletoe spell. He did it by lying, naturally. With a blind effort of willpower he could do it; and he did. There was nothing else, by his lights, that he could do in response to the situation. Being compelled to tell the truth, he was obligated to lie.

The results were disastrous.

It was Angel he went after. "Never liked Darla, you know," he informed his grandsire. Belligerently. "Snooty stuck-up empress that she was, always thinking the sun set when she saw fit to sit up in coffin, the rest of us weren't good enough to wipe her dainty fangs. I never cottoned on to the bitch." Though agonized winces creased his face, he went on determinedly embroidering this theme. "Never lusted after Darla! Never hankered after her luscious little haute-couture tail-feathers. Resisted all her blandishments and everything. I never," said Spike, patently lying, "laid a finger on her knickers, I never, I swear." Every word was accompanied by more twitches, till at the last he was clutching his head, in obvious pain--but still he plowed on. "Never rolled in the hay with Darla. And I never--" with an obvious heroic effort, "--no matter how often she dragged me into her bed--and God, the woman had more tricks than circuses have fleas!--I never did aught but lie back and think of England. Cross my heart and hope to die!"

This last was evidently too much. No sooner were the words out of his mouth (and Angel's face had become even more wooden than it already was) than Spike was seized with a paroxysm of spell-induced madness. He groaned, doubled over, reeled in agony--and when Gunn tried to pat him on the back, he upped and kissed him.

"Did you hafta infect me too?" cried Gunn. The kissing didn't bother him; it was being snared in the magic that made him shout.

"Now there's five of us caught," Wesley complained. "Spike? You have to restrain yourself."

"Hey! Think I liked being forced to kiss Charlie?"

"Well, I think this is a lesson for you," said Harmony unexpectedly. "Because, mister know-it- all, hypocrisy never pays." She waved a finger underneath Spike's nose. "It's about time you were forced to confront your own sexuality. Who knows what damage your psyche has suffered from all the repression?" Spike's jaw dropped. Harmony sailed on, "All those other guys vamps back in Sunnydale who made advances, and you never let me accept even once. Like butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, you--you--you closet perv! I was totally taken in. You made me miss out on so much threesome fun. But now the truth has to come out."

"Harm," said Spike, flummoxed, "what kind of bug's bit your brain?"

"Well, it's all around the building, you should have been off to find Buffy the instant you got recorporealized, but did you? Nada. Big nope. No, the girlfriend took last place, and why? Cause you couldn't tear yourself away from L.A. And everyone knows who you're hanging with now, and it's not me! Me the former girlfriend. No, I'm barely worth a free drink to you. It's Angel you're stalking now."

"I am not stalking Angel!" Spike roared. "I don't even like Angel, dammit!"

Ten seconds later Lorne was infected, too.

Harmony flounced back to her desk. "I don't see why he's so cross," she said to the room at large, "I'm only saying what everyone else is."

And now they were all infected--every one of them in the same boat.

Angel had obviously had enough. He came suddenly to life, strode toward Spike, grabbed him by his collar and hauled him bodily toward the Grigori. "Lorne, translate," he ordered. "Grigori. Listen to me. Here's your Shanshu candidate." And he thrust Spike forward. "The vampire of destiny. Him. Here!"

"No it's not," Spike said swiftly. He jabbed a finger at Angel. "Angel here's your man. I, uh, uhhh--" He put a hand to his throat. Beside him, Angel was similarly afflicted: stricken with severe facial tics. "Oh, blast it, not again," groaned Spike.

There was no one else to kiss; everyone available had already been infected. Spike tilted his face up, eyes wild; Angel puckered, looking pained. They kissed, and Harmony squealed and clapped her hands. They separated. "I have to ralph," said Spike grimly. "We have to get out of here," said Angel, grinding his teeth. Then he about-faced and headed like a battering ram at the gleaming bubble-barrier.

A Grigori swept into his way. He batted it aside like a fly. The other two converged on him, humming. They whirled about him in circles; a single shrill musical note mounted over theirs, rising to the pitch of an air-raid siren. It came from the barrier itself. Office windows shattered. Spike doubled over clutching his ears, Harmony screamed with pain. Angel made it almost to the barrier--and then he retreated, staggering and holding his head.

The Grigori buzzed after him, swooping and flashing. Lorne (he had been clutching his ears like Spike) reported, "They say they demand the Chosen one! They give us an hour to give him up. Or else--" A Grigori flared like a nova, momentarily blinding everyone.

"Or else," Lorne relayed, "kablooey!"

From standing and brooding, Angel went to pacing. Spike paced in the opposite direction, on the other side of the lobby. "I didn't even get close to the barrier," Angel said once, apropos of nothing; and Spike snarled at him. The other men, especially Wesley, watched them with worried faces.

"How can I do my job when I'm compelled to tell the truth?" Lorne kvetched, wringing his hands together. "I've got egos to stroke, delusions to massage, I've got a publicity department to run. Truth is the one commodity it can't handle. I've got starlets lined up on hold, waiting for me to lie to them!"

"We have to get out of here," said Wesley grimly.

"I'm for that," Gunn said, "‘cause this whole truth virus seems to have a drama-queen clause included. No offense meant, Lorne."

"I'm getting hungry," Harmony complained. "I want to eat somebody. Gunn would be good, he's the biggest. He probably holds a lot of blood." Off Gunn's look: "What? I'm just being honest." She went off behind her desk and sat drooping. Then, getting a little smile, she began sneakily to rummage (again) through the mounds of presents.

"We have to think our way outta this box," Spike said, crooking his fingers like claws and looking longingly at the nearest Grigori demon. "Angel, I say we try a full-frontal attack. Take them one at a time, they're nothing but a pack of tinsel anyway."

"And then how do we get out of the bubble?" Wesley inquired. "It's very likely that only those who erected it can take down the magical barrier. No, we must think strategy. Brute force won't help us now . . . And I don't trust these Grigori," he added. "Fragile though they themselves may seem, I'm sure they've got something up their--sleeves. If sleeves they have."

"We have to logic our way out of this somehow," said Angel abruptly. He glared at Spike, and Spike glared back. "I for one don't feel like spending Christmas in your . . . lap, Spike."

"He's right, Angel is hiding something," Gunn whispered to Lorne. But Lorne only shook his head.

Harmony was busily and surreptitiously strewing wrapping-paper round her desktop.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, boss-man," Spike jeered. "And what're you holding back, that you've been so quiet about? Never saw you so silent before."

"Shut up, Spike. I've been thinking--something you know nothing about."

"Go on," said Spike, "I know when you're covering. Scared are you? Terrified of letting things out? Some little secret." He walked toward Angel, staring. "So what's the scoop here? Can't hold your tongue forever, Liam--if I'm any judge of you, you're sitting on dirty laundry, and if we're in here long enough, it's your knickers that'll be up the flagpole for all the world to salute--"

"I told you to shut up!"

"What's the matter, George Washington--was anything I said a lie?"

"Angel," Wesley interrupted them. He held out his phone. "F-Fred's just called me and, well . . . look at this." In a fading voice: "I'm afraid . . . it's already . . . all around the building . . ."

Everyone rushed to look--except the Grigori, naturally. And also Harmony, still enrapt with her clandestine doings behind the cover of her desk-shelf.

Angel looked. On his face, already dark with foreboding, appeared a look of utter despair. "I knew it," he said, "it was only a matter of time before it got out." But Spike looked, and let out a guffaw. "You look so natural, grandsire!"

Angel swung a fist on him. Spike ducked and backed away, hands raised sarcastically, still laughing. The other men scattered. Angel's hand flashed out, grabbed the trailing, billowing hem of Spike's black leather coat. He reeled the younger vampire in, took Spike's throat in a crushing grip. "Now we'll see if you can laugh and lie and tell the truth," he said, "once I've pulled your tongue out--"

"Bound to cramp my kissing style too, that what you're getting at?" And Spike dropped out of his hold like a greased eel, hit the floor, swung one leg in a scythe-kick. Angel crashed over sideways, rolled and came back upright. He slammed both fists, joined. Spike sailed backwards, and Angel stalked after him, growling deep, deep in his throat.

Gunn hastily backpedaled, getting out of their way. "Now, now, fightin's not gonna get us anywhere," he began. He backed right up against Harmony's desk; gifts fell and bounced. Harm squealed guiltily. Something caught Gunn's eye. "What're you--?"

In hiding, behind her computer and paraphernalia, she was gleefully punching the SEND button on her cell phone. And upon her neat pink-skirted lap, she held a formerly missing camera.

"Hey!" He dived over the desk, scattering presents like chaff, grabbed the camera and held it high. "One mystery solved, brothers!" The others turned, distracted: Angel and Spike had their hands round each other's throats. "Harm-girl, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You're the one who stole the camera, huh? Now all we gotta do is think our way outside this box--"

He was cut off in midword. "I never--" Harmony started, simultaneously and with righteous indignation--and, stiffening like a puppet, seized his face between her little hands and kissed him long and deep.

But Angel too had stiffened. "Think outside the box," he repeated, and his gaze met Spike's. Something passed between them: comprehension, inspiration, understanding. They let go, turned in concert toward the Grigori demons. "Wes, follow my lead," said Angel softly. "Lorne, translate." He raised his voice, addressed the demons. "You want your Chosen One?" He steeled himself. And pointed at Wesley. "It's him."

"Yep," Spike lied valiantly, "Percy here's the one."

"That's right," Wesley stated, "it's me."

All three of them had walked forward, toward the bobbing, mesmerized Grigori. The urge to kiss seized them irresistibly, nor did they fight it. Each man lunged as one, and with magic- propelled strength and fervor, grabbed at a target. The Grigori. And--kissed them.

With a force that was almost audible, the mistletoe spell took hold.

Everything after that was anticlimactic.

Questioned, the Grigori had to yield up the truth. "It's as I feared," said Wesley, walking away from them and dusting off his hands. "They never meant to offer homage to their precious ‘Shanshu Chosen'. The gifts are rigged to explode when opened. Anyone who accepted them-- would have been blown to kingdom come."

"But what do we do now?" whimpered Harmony, pointing at the still-intact barrier. "We're still closed in, and no closer to getting out, and I've been invited to three different staff parties, thanks to my newfound popularity--oh, drat this truth spell!" she cried when everyone rounded on her. "Okay, okay, ooookay, I give up." She threw up her hands in defeat. "Here's your dumb camera. But we're still locked in."

"Not for long," said Angel calmly. He picked up one of the explosive ‘presents'. "And after I bust us out, the first thing you'll do, Harm, is track down everyone you sent those pictures to, and confiscate their phones." He hefted the bomb, said, "Spike, grab one for yourself if you want. Everyone else, get back."

Two minutes later, they had blown their way free.

Best of all, Fred was on her way up from the science wing. In Wesley's pocket was a sprig of mistletoe. Real mistletoe, one hundred percent nonmagikal; the only spell upon it was the true magic of Christmas. In Wesley's eyes was a distant dreamy look, and in his heart was a yearning and a resolution. He had a mistletoe, and he knew how to use it.

"I suppose so," said Angel.

He was leaning against the doorjamb of his presidential office, arms crossed. Spike came striding out of the office behind him--resplendent in his everyday glossy black leather, but wearing a crown of bright tinsel in his equally bright hair and a trailing scarf of tinsel round his neck, which he thought made him look very Ghost of Christmas Present.

Angel glanced at him as he blew past, the long skirts of his coat swirling. He thought of the callow fledgling who had been Will, a hundred and twenty-five years since; of the tongue- waggling devil of a fighter which Spike had become, had reveled in being, had outgrown; of the Spike whom Angel had only seen in glimpses so far, the quiet serious man who knew about right and wrong. The modern Spike. Even his demon's face, when it came upon him, was no more ugly than a panther's snarl, a lion's mask. And Angel couldn't say as much for any other vampire in existence. That was Spike.

Spike eyed Angel sidelong, and thought of Angelus, who had been so full of exuberance that his face had been boyish with it--who had strode across the world with a spring in his step, his joy like a shout on his lips. And he thought of how the modern Angel stood with shoulders slumped, sagging inside his expensive business suits. Somehow a much smaller man. A bull trapped in the ring, worn down by an incomprehensible battle, with every odd stacked against him and the sword coming for his heart. Then he thought, poor Angel.

Even now, Wes was saying, "Now all we have to do is break this truth spell," and Angel, his brow clouding, was shaking his head. "Yes--if only we knew how," he said.

"Haven't sussed it out yet, have you?" Spike inquired. "Think I have. A true kiss, did your books say, Wes?"

"Well, yes," said Wesley. "But--"

Spike grinned at him, then addressed Angel.

"About the Shanshu? Think you know I don't give a flying fig for that." That was because Buffy wouldn't care for it, but Spike was generous enough not to say so. "You've fought the good fight long and hard. Gotta say the best man'll win." Angel was now blinking rapidly, and Spike decided it was time to blow. He headed for the elevators, breezing past Wes as if he wasn't there. Over his shoulder, hastily, he added, "Think you've earned it--champ."

Behind him, Angel's face brightened miraculously. He called after Spike, "Just don't let it outside the family go!"

Spike's swift retreat became a scamper, which became a hop, a skip and an irresistible jump. "I love you too, Yoda!" he sang out, and blew a kiss over his shoulder before he stepped into the elevator. He hit the UP button, and the doors whisked shut.

Angel put a hand up to his cheek, as if Spike's kiss had landed there. "The spell is broken," he said wonderingly. "I felt it break. Goodnight, Wesley--and merry Christmas to you." He stepped backward into his grand office, took hold of the door, and swung it to.

It was only then that he found that Spike had balanced a bucket of water atop it. "Yeeargghh!"

They never found out who had planted the camera in the first place.