Chapter 6: Speak of the Devil

A/N: Sorry for slow updates. Been drowning a bit at work and took on a couple of fic exchanges that continue to eat away at my progress here. Hoping to get back on a slow schedule soon. And thanks to Skaoi for the idea that closes this chapter!

Also, just a reminder that this went AU early in Season 1 and holds to that characterization while adding some different mythology and early Lucifer history. Shades of the graphic novels, but also not following that closely. Hope it works.

Chloe sat cross-legged in the center of her bed, the comforter rucked up around her knees and littered with case folders, loose reports, pages of hastily scratched notes, an unwrapped and forgotten protein bar, and a precariously perched coffee mug. Lit by the pale glow of her Surface tablet and the single reading lamp beside the bed, she sighed irritably and tossed yet another file aside. The thinly curtained window had faded to a cool dark grey with the beginnings of morning, but the corners of the small bedroom still held onto their late night shadows. If she listened hard, she could catch a whisper of what might have been the waves on the beach—or the first rumbles of the morning traffic rush. It must be nearing five by now, she guessed, not bothering to check.

Between the coffee, the quake, and the niggling sense that she was missing something important about these cases, sleep had so far eluded her. She also didn't fool herself; it was easier to worry about the cases than to stew over the possible horrors the quake could have brought to her and her daughter's lives. (It didn't, she found herself thinking repeatedly. Trixie is fine. She's asleep right now in her bed.)

A couple hours ago, Chloe had given up on tossing and turning and crawled out of the tangled sheets to call the night desk at the station. A muzzy-voiced clerk shared the stack of confirmations from other detectives—over half of the stale missing persons cases that the team had checked that afternoon had revealed a bizarre forgetfulness on the part of the victim's loved ones and colleagues. Her hysterical DJ joined a small but growing pile of thirteen others who acted as though they'd been drugged, responding to police solicitations first with confusion, then surprise, and finally with horror that they had moved on with their lives without their friend, mother, boss, lover, and more.

Chloe dropped her head into one hand, loose hair falling into her face. What the hell was going on? It was as if these vanished people had literally been erased from their lives and social networks with deft efficiency. Even more strange, nothing connected any of the victims or the survivors except this phenomenon. Could Lucifer's fanciful conjecture have been right in some strange way? Were all these families and friends covering for the disappearances—even for potential deaths—by acting as if they had simply forgotten? Without something linking them all together, it seemed impossible to credit such synchronized artifice, but what else explained the pattern? It couldn't just be happenstance.

Digging around in the comforter, she found her cell phone and punched in the number for Forensics. The tech on the other end of the line sounded under-caffeinated and cranky. (Chloe sympathized. She probably didn't sound much better.) "No, that's really specific action," the voice repeated over the speaker. "No street drug I know of can target individual memories for repression. No medical grade drug, either, although things like Versed can compress time pretty seriously and have a strong amnesiac effect for most patients, but that's only for the time it's in the bloodstream. And it affects everything that happens, not just a single element of the memory."

"Something else, then? A chemical or process we don't know about? Is that too far of a stretch?"

"You said they could remember again when triggered, yeah? A photo or a specific detail about mode of dress or mannerisms?"

"That seems to be what we're seeing, as far as we can tell."

A loud sigh on the other end of the line. "Look, Detective Decker, we're going to have to do some research. I know there's some experimental work being done in reconsolidation of traumatic memories using drug therapies, and there's always hypnosis. But this seems extreme as a memory loss effect. I can send a team to try to get blood samples and psych evals on some of these people if you'll give me a list of names and addresses, but it'll have to be in the morning, right?"

Just because she was keyed up and couldn't sleep, it didn't mean the rest of the world, or even the night shift at the station, would thank her for her making more work at this hour. "That's fine. I'll send a list by email after I touch base with the MPU folks. Just do whatever you can. Thanks. Good night."

After she clicked off, Chloe remembered Ms. Abigail Smythe with her frizzy purple hair and blank stare when asked about her missing brother. Was that another bizarre memory failure, not early dementia? She wasn't sure that sending a drug-testing team to the head shop would be met with a very kindly response; perhaps she would just have to go back herself to see if she could resurrect memories of brother Smythe.

Oh god, Lucifer would just love to go back to the head shop. At least he had only walked out with a book last time.

And been attacked by a homeless man.

She brushed fingers over the tablet propped beside her knee, her mind veering off down an equally frustrating line of thought: her partner. The man she had tucked away in the guest room just a few hours ago with remarkably little fuss or flirtation or trouble of any kind. He had seemed intensely curious about the upstairs of the house, eyes roving around the cramped little room like he was back amidst Smythe's collection of oddball memorabilia. He'd tossed his neat travel satchel onto the treadmill and clapped his hands. "Well, well, behind the scenes at the Decker home sweet home," he'd said agreeably. "Would this have been your room as a child, Detective?" He had dropped onto the squeaky bed and bounced a little. "Hard to get up to much on this without the parents hearing, I'd imagine. First kiss, though, maybe? First trip around the bases when she wasn't home?" If he looked a little disappointed when she'd just said goodnight and pulled the door closed behind her, she had been too focused on her own bed to care.

And then, sleep refused to come and here she was, scrolling again through the Wikipedia article she had open in a background tab. It had taken her some searching to find the name Lucifer had used in the alleyway, trying different spellings until something popped up.

"Grigori," she re-read in a low mutter. "A name given to the phalanx of watcher angels sent to guard and aid humanity in the early centuries of creation, pre-Deluge, as detailed in the Books of Enoch and several other apocryphal texts of uncertain origin or authorship. Much interpretive confusion exists, but the name most commonly emerges around a group of angels who betrayed their charge and visited great evils upon humanity. Most, if not all, of the Grigori leadership were punished, expelled from the Host of Heaven to reside in the depths of Hell. One source states that they 'along with their prince Satanail, rejected the Lord of Light and undertook unnatural congress with humanity. Their victims gave birth to nephilim who pillaged the earth until the Great Flood, and their workings and deeds so befouled the earth that God confined them underground in chains and darkness until the Judgment.'"

She stared at the black-and-white woodcuts of bat-winged, horned, satyr-like monstrosities above tiny, screaming humans and of the scrolls that supposedly held such stories in their ancient script. Further down the article, there they were—the names of the Grigori leaders, including the most cunning, "Samyaza." Then came "Azazyel," who supposedly taught humans the workings of weapons of mass destruction and terror, and then "Batraal, schooled in magics and shadows." Turel and Tamiel, the twins, chained together in their punishment. Rameel, who had once stood guard over Eden itself and whose corruption infected even his holy blade. Sariel and Ezeqeel and Shamsiel and Jomjael and more. Some accounts suggested as many as 200 fallen and cursed angels, while others listed only a handful, many with outlandishly long, unpronounceable names and hints about unique powers.

Chloe shoved her fingers through her hair, mind racing.

An entire organization of monstrous supernatural creatures that may have originally been tasked by Heaven as protectors (or at least as observers) of natal humanity, but who fell prey to their own desires and machinations. Somehow worse than the most egregious sins of humanity because they were to have been caretakers and chroniclers, agents of the Creator. Even in the quietest places of the earth, the Grigori had wreaked some kind of horror and havoc, unstoppable except by Heaven's direct intervention in the form of Noah's Flood, a cleansing of the earth that destroyed nearly every living thing.

The first and, so far, last Apocalypse.

Whistling quietly between her teeth, Chloe considered. What a legend to build a crime syndicate upon! Dark and obscure, grounded in faith and righteousness, but ultimately all about power and domination. The corruption of others and of self. Fallen angels. Followers of "Satanail." She assumed that referred to Lucifer, the first of the Fallen, the Prince of Air and Darkness himself. What did that mean for her own Lucifer's role in the family business or whatever it was? Hadn't the homeless man been gibbering about following Lucifer? Falling for Lucifer?

A tap at the bedroom door interrupted her musings. Speak of the devil, she thought, tiredly amused. Without waiting for her invitation, the door swung open on quiet hinges. "Still awake, Detective?" Lucifer's voice was soft, as if trying not to disturb the stillness of the house.

"Obviously," she replied, pushing herself up straighter, feeling weariness pool in her limbs like physical weights. She glanced at the digital clock at the corner of the tablet. 5:29 a.m. Urgh.

"Can't sleep?" Lucifer said from the doorway, his tone warming. "I know something that can help with that."

She turned a flat, disapproving stare on him, and had to concentrate to maintain her disgruntled expression when she saw him. Her displaced partner leaned against the doorframe as though he belonged there in the middle of the night, arms and ankles crossed loosely, eyes gleaming down at her with just a hint of that practiced leer. His hair showed that he'd been in bed himself, mussed and falling in soft curls over his forehead, almost invisible against the darkness of the hallway behind him. She'd demanded pajamas, so his lower half was clad in loose-fitting black sleep pants that rode low on the bones of his hips—and apparently that was all. His bare torso shone in the light from her bedside lamp, and Chloe's eyes betrayed her by tracing the smooth lines of his shoulders and chest, followed the outline of abdominal muscles and the thin trail of dark hair that vanished behind the drawstring of his pants. She moistened her lips as she tried to think of a snappy retort and heard him chuckle quietly.

"Like what you see, Detective?" His voice deepened, playful. Hadn't he asked her the same thing a few nights ago at Lux? How had she responded then?

She could hear him grinning even before she returned her gaze to his face. "I'd like you to put on a shirt," she grumbled, turning back to her files. "What part of 'bring pajamas' wasn't clear to you?"

"These are pajamas," he complained, plucking at the silken waist. "What? Worried you can't trust yourself alone with such a handsome Devil?"

"You wish."

"Oh, I do, indeed. No great mystery there, Detective." Irritatingly unfazed, he unfolded himself from the door frame and meandered in, looking around with interest. He drew a finger over the frame of one of her mom's many film posters, picked up a small grinning photograph of Trixie in her last Halloween costume (a devil, of all things—"unexpected good taste in a small human"), and finally glanced at the spines of a few cheesy romance novels stacked on the corner of the dresser. "You know, I'd understand completely if you couldn't keep your hands to yourself. You wouldn't be the first." Stopping at the foot of her bed, he stared down at her curiously, head cocked. "In fact, you're really the first I've met with this unfortunate level of self-control. I'm not sure if it's refreshing or horrifying." His brow furrowed, eyes narrowing. "You do still have a fundamental attraction to the male form and function, I assume? Detective Douche hasn't broken you somehow?"

Chloe gritted her teeth and looked at the nearest case folder intently. She was working. Not staring at her half-naked partner. Not discussing his pansexual magnetism or engaging with his direct and very honest flirtation. Not thinking about whether she found his form (and its possible functions) remotely intriguing.

Just working.

"Feel free to change your mind, though," he continued when she didn't speak. "Act on new impulses, Detective. I confess I was at least hoping for a glimpse of lingerie myself." Stooping, he lifted her bra from where she'd dropped it on the floor behind the bed and gave it a quick glance as if to say serviceable, I suppose. "Not quite what I was imagining, though. Is there actual sexy lingerie in here somewhere? What do you favor? Lacy black? Ooo, red satin?" His eyes slid over her in excruciating detail, clearly taking in her threadbare t-shirt with its ragged neckline and the soft, well-worn exercise pants she found most comfortable.

"I prefer kevlar," she finally ground out, feeling her face heat. Really, she should have known he'd barge in at some point. And it wasn't any of his business what she slept in, or about her taste in clothing at all. Especially clothing meant less for sleeping than for—okay, not going there. Not with him standing over her bed, half-clothed, appealingly ruffled. Not ever, she told herself. "Now what exactly do you think you're doing?"

He wandered around the room, inspecting the posters that filled most of the walls, stacked museum style, some of them signed by her mother or her mother's co-stars. He poked around the tiny dusty captain's desk wedged in the corner by the window, empty except for a few stray bills that refused to submit to online deposits, a large bottle of Advil, and a handful of bullets tossed into an open drawer instead of the gun safe in the corner.

Chloe watched him, frowning when the lamplight broke across his bare back, shattering into pebbled shadow across the scars. They were as massive and horrible as she remembered, gnarled and pitted like ancient burns, a violation of his otherwise immaculate skin. His father's fault, somehow. And something about Mazikeen, he'd said.

As if he could feel her gaze on his shoulders, Lucifer turned. "This is your room?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't look much like you. Not as I'd expected, at least." He nodded to her nightstand. "Badge, gun, holster, phone." He pushed the bills on the desk into a neater pile. "Some basic requirements of a human economic life." A gesture toward the paperback books. "Are those even yours?"

Chloe pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "My mother's. What gave it away?"

"The strapping shirtless men and waif-like damsels in distress didn't seem quite like your thing." He waved a hand over his own shirtless body with a wry half-smile. "More's the pity. Although I don't go for bulging muscles and porn-star hair much myself."

"You'd hate me as a damsel, too."

"Probably true. So much effort, all that bodice-ripping." Having perused everything on easy display, he eyed the drawers of the dresser, but seemed to (correctly) decide there were limits on her hospitality. "How long did you say you and your progeny have lived here?"

"Nearly a year. Since just after Dan and I decided to separate."

"The Douche got your house?"

"Apartment. We rented. Cop salaries, you know. And mom had this place standing mostly empty, so it made more sense for me and Trixie to move."

He gathered up a handful of case files, shifting them to the desk. And before she could point him to the window sill or the rug, he curled his long form across from her on her bed, looking a peculiar mix of invading hedonist and best friend at a sleepover. How he could seem so sensual and so innocent simultaneously, she didn't know. The dissonance, more than Lucifer's presence in—on, on, on—her bed, seemed so quintessentially him that she let it go without comment.

It did cross her mind briefly that she wouldn't allow Dan to do this now, or any other man she knew or probably had known. Why Lucifer? There was just something different, something safe about him-even though she knew somehow that "safe" was entirely the wrong word.

"A whole year, and yet this house is almost devoid of you," he continued, getting comfortable. "Why is that, Detective?"

"We don't all need walls of whisky or rare manuscripts or whatever else you keep in that museum of yours to be comfortable at home."

"No, of course not," he agreed. "But a fine collection of scotch and some ancient books do tell you something about my interests, yes? And if you ever deigned to look a bit closer—"

"I'd probably need a Silkwood shower and the best therapist money could afford," she cut in with a smirk, then glanced at where he'd draped her bra over the desk after inspecting it. "Some things just aren't for public display."

His eyes sparkled. "Depends on your goal, Detective. But, seriously, I'd expect something more than your gun and a photo of your spawn in here. Even the child has artwork slathered all over the refrigerator downstairs and leaves stuffed toys and ninja chemist idols all about the place as though she's marking her territory. By the way, art is not apparently her strong suit. Do tell her to keep studying maths."

"She's eight, Lucifer."

He ignored her. "But what about you, Detective? Where are you in this place?"

"This isn't actually my place. You know that."

"Yes, but after a year? The Vampire Queen didn't forbid you from bringing your things, did she?"

"Of course not. I just didn't have any need to make sweeping changes." Chloe found herself looking around, seeing the room for the first time in months. It was still very much her mother's room. But why shouldn't it be? It was temporary, even if "temporary" had turned into most of a year now.

"What do you do when you're not working?" Lucifer asked, staring at her seriously. "So far, I've really only seen you at work—except for a few lovely hours at Lux, but that was clearly an outlier. And there's tonight, but—" He pushed a notepad toward her with his bare toes. "Again, more work. What do you do for fun? Hobbies? Friends?"

"I don't really have time for hobbies." She felt strangely defensive. "I work a lot. I have to after Palmetto, especially. And there's Trixie."

"Yes, and…" he prompted, frowning when she didn't continue. "Detective, it's obvious that you're devoted to your job and your get, but surely there's a little bit of time and space for you in all of this? There's more to life than arrests and Disney princess videos."

"Like what, exactly? Whipped cream and thigh-high go-go boots?"

"If that's your thing. Is it?"

Chloe shook her head and looked up at the exposed beam ceiling. "Since the separation, things have been busy. I'll get there. Not to the whipped cream and boots," she added hurriedly before his hint of a grin turned into something more ridiculous. She didn't say aloud I'm spending a lot more of my free time with a man who imagines himself the devil than I expected. That's where some of my time is going. "And I guess I don't think of this room really as mine, any more than the kitchen or the den—where I actually slept most of the time right after Trix and I first moved in. Still do, sometimes."

"On the sofa? Your mother wouldn't let you use the bedrooms upstairs? I confess I'm beginning to wonder about your family, Detective. It sounds as coercive and inflexible as mine."

"It's a good pull-out," she argued. "And it was my choice, not my mother's. She couldn't care less where I sleep; it actually helps her just to have the house occupied while she's traveling. She's not in the city that often."

"So, you elected to sleep on the pull-out instead of this fairly comfortable bed because . . .?" He smirked, then shook his head.

"What?"

"Well, I don't always make it to the bedroom, myself, especially if my guests are particularly eager or creative. But given the proximity of your child to that sofa, I suppose I shouldn't even get my hopes up."

He looked so put out that Chloe couldn't help but laugh. "Do you know, telling me about your over-exuberant sexual exploits isn't really the best way to ask me about my life."

Lucifer gave a half-hearted shrug of apology. "Just drawing comparisons. Do feel free to share your own exploits, if you wish, Detective. Well, as long as they don't involve Daniel the Douche, thanks. After all, you're the one who brought up whipped cream and sexy shoes."

She snorted and shoved back against the pillows, stretching her legs out among the paperwork and just ignoring the almost instinctive motion of his dark eyes. Leg man. Right. "I'm afraid you're doomed to disappointment. After the separation, Trixie had a few months of pretty bad anxiety dreams. Moving to grandma's seemed to make them worse. I just wanted to be close to her in case she needed me to wake her up, and she really wanted the big room downstairs for all of her toys and things. So, the pull-out made the most sense, and it's comfortable enough."

Lucifer nodded. Chloe was surprised to see a hint of concern in his expression.

"She's gotten a lot better these days," she felt compelled to add. "Although after tonight's events, I thought about sleeping downstairs, just in case. Bad dreams and anxiety nightmares make for an exhausting night, and she has school in the morning. Before, it affected her schoolwork, her mood, her friendships. I don't want that to happen again, you know?"

He sat solemn and silent for a moment. "I don't tend to sleep much at all, myself, Detective. I do appreciate the offer of a room while the penthouse is inspected, but I'm unlikely to sleep for long in it. If—if I hear the child in any distress, I'll certainly let you know."

"Thanks." Chloe didn't look too carefully at how easy and natural it felt to leave Lucifer on guard over her child's dreams, to trust him to come and go in the house as she slept. No, 'safe' really wasn't the word, but it was something.

"Is that why you're still sitting up tonight?" he continued. "Listening for bad dreams downstairs?"

"Mmm. No. I really just couldn't sleep. I suppose." She thought about it and smiled softly. "Although maybe? And maybe you're picking up some moves from that therapist you claim to have."

He replied with a small smile of his own, but was quiet again. She watched him wiggle his long toes in her comforter, and noticed that the window behind him had begun to lighten distinctly, the shadows in the corners to recede a little.

"What's your excuse?" she finally asked. "I'm clearly not the only one still awake."

It was his turn to stretch, and she wondered if he knew the lamplight would play over his lean body in quite that way as he leaned back on his elbows. She wouldn't put it past him to show off, but his answer sounded serious. "Like I said, I don't tend to sleep much, especially not at this hour."

"You mean, the dead of night? Or the earliest hours of the morning?"

"Prime hours for the nightclub, my dear. Den of iniquity, remember? The clientele tends to be a bit less 'ladies-who-lunch' and a bit more 'ladies-and-gents-of-the-evening.' Keeps a Devil busy."

She couldn't help but needle him. After all, he seemed intent on asking her all sorts of personal things, and she was (just barely) curious. "As does sleeping with said clientele. And some of the staff, I take it?"

His eyes glittered and his lips parted in a distinctly naughty smile, white teeth, a suggestion of tongue. "Well, well. Are you actually interested in my sexual exploits, after all, Detective? I do try not to kiss and tell, but Patrick's quite athletic and original in that department, if you must know. You really should've taken me up on my offer the other night. You wouldn't believe some of the notches on that man's belt."

"Isn't sleeping with your employees a professional conflict of interest?"

"Hardly, darling. His interests coincide perfectly with mine," Lucifer said. "Just as with anyone else who comes to my bed. Or coffee table. Or floor." His sly grin widened. "As I told you before, they all have a good time. You can find out for yourself anytime you'd care to."

Chloe decided to curtail that conversation, after all. "Lucifer, what are you doing here? Really?"

"You—well, your spawn, I suppose—invited me."

"No, not here at the house. Here in my room at nearly 6 a.m. Half-dressed. Asking lots of questions."

"I saw your light." He flicked one hand, a gesture that took in the rumpled bed with its flood of documents. "It doesn't take a badge to deduce that you were awake. Working on certain missing persons cases, perhaps? Or worrying over tonight's adventure at Lux?" He reached across her legs and flipped the Surface around to peer at the screen. "Ah. Or investigating me again."

"Bit of all three, I'll admit." She sat forward, resting her elbows on her knees and looking closely at him. "Why won't you and Mazikeen report what you know? Especially if you suspect terrorism." She pointed to the bruising at the base of his throat, the dark, abraded line clearly visible without a collar to hide it. "That's assault and battery, too, by the way. But you won't even talk about it. And Mazikeen didn't break her nose and nearly lay open her entire face in the earthquake. She could have, I suppose, but she didn't."

He rubbed his neck self-consciously. "It's really simple, Detective. As corrupt as some of your colleagues on the force may be, I don't relish seeing them run afoul of these people."

"There are other homes and businesses in the Lux tower, Lucifer. People were injured in that quake."

"Not permanently. Not badly. Detective, these are people you really don't want to engage."

"So, who are they, then? These 'Grigori.' Isn't that what you call them?"

When he looked away as if seeking another line of conversation in the wallpaper, she rested one hand lightly on his leg, the touch more intimate on the thin silk sleepwear than she intended, but she left it there. Nighttime conversations were for confessions and secrets, or so it had seemed when she was a kid sleeping over with friends, or even when she and Dan had been growing serious about each other. Something about the intimacy of darkness and quiet seemed to strengthen newly-forged relationships, ease boundaries that were impenetrable during the day. She waited.

Beneath her fingers, his leg twitched, muscle cording as if he considered and rejected moving away.

"Please, Lucifer," she said. "Talk to me. Why are you so reticent about this? You'll gladly share your sex-capades with your staff, but not this? You waited for days before telling me about your wings in that stolen shipping container—and I was able to help, a little at least. What are you so concerned about this time?"

"This time is more dangerous." A cautious glance, black eyes lingering on her hand. "You also didn't really believe me about the wings. You still don't, do you? Story of our working relationship."

"Lucifer—"

"No, it's fine, Detective. Perhaps for the best, indeed. But it does put constraints on honesty, no matter that I won't lie to you."

"You're not worried about me not believing you. That hasn't stopped you before. What, then?"

He sighed and tucked his feet up beneath him as if they were suddenly cold. Her hand dropped away. "Who do you think they are, Detective?"

She answered as directly as she could, hoping it would encourage him. "I don't know. If I had to guess, they're some sort of global mafia—a syndicate that uses mythological names as a scare tactic and an internal code to signal chain of command. One that you, and possibly your father or your family, have been associated with in the past. One that you might still be entangled in—or might have run from five years ago. I'm not making judgments," she added quickly when she saw his shoulders hunch a little. "I'm not asking officially in any way."

He chuckled, but this time it was a dark, dry sound. "Off the record, then?"

"As a friend. I told you that before. Is this you refusing to believe me, now?"

"Not at all, Detective. I—I just don't want you mixed up in this when I'm not entirely sure I understand it myself."

"Why not?"

His jaw worked a moment, as if the words refused to come, as if he had to think and feel his way into some kind of shareable truth. "Their efforts so far seem entirely directed at me and mine. They won't be a problem for anyone else unless they are blocked. Right now, they don't know you or even really see you," he said, a little wonderingly, a man discovering his motivations in the act of giving them voice. "But if you pursue them, they'll have no choice except to pay attention. And unlike my annoying siblings, they won't have a care for you and yours. Humans are not off-limits to them. They will use you as canon fodder, if they must. Nothing is beyond them. So, until I know what they truly want, I'd rather you weren't a part of it."

"I can protect myself, Lucifer. Not a damsel, remember?"

"Not at all," he agreed, the light in his eyes briefly approving before they hooded again, defensive, distant. "But even so, I'd prefer the LAPD and especially you to stay out of it. This is not work for the police—or for any human"

He looked so somber that Chloe just nodded, accepting the information at face value (for the moment). "Earlier, you said they were former employees," she said after some thought. "I get that you don't want to tell me, especially if you were into some sort of criminal enterprises in the past. I do. But this is getting ridiculous, Lucifer. Attacks on your workplace, on your friends and staff, and on you personally. Threats on both sides. I know you're not squeaky clean. You don't Even try to hide some things, like the drugs, the favors you do for seedy people—"

"Not all of them are seedy. They're just favors, Detective. I don't control who decides to ask."

"They're 'deals with the devil,' Lucifer, even when you describe them. And you call these dangerous people 'Grigori,' which is either dark Judaic mythology or a masquerade for something else. The Cosa Nostra hasn't been especially active in LA for decades, but as far as we can tell, some of the old Italian crime family still exists and might return in force if they had someone to pick up the reins of the various businesses. The LAPD isn't paying a lot of attention these days, what with gang violence and the Russians and Triads funneling funds into narcotics and other illegal industries. The timing might be right for a move to consolidate."

"Someone's been doing quite a lot of research," Lucifer said, looking only vaguely offended. Better than she had hoped. "So, just what are you asking, exactly, Detective?"

She steeled herself. "Are you some sort of retired mafia boss? Son of a British crime family? Connected with the Italian-American mob or something similar?"

"Is that what you imagine?" He plucked at the comforter idly. His silver ring caught an edge of grey morning light, and for a second, Chloe could envision suited, thuggish men kneeling to kiss it. "I suppose it makes sense in a warped, human kind of way. But I thought you didn't actually want to know if I was a criminal? That you hated the thought of me being locked up and off of our cases together?"

"No, I don't want you to actually be a criminal. There's a big difference, Lucifer. But I also would prefer that you not be dead. And if these people, these Grigori, can do all this—" She flicked the tablet screen to media coverage of the freak earthquake, "—they're not to be trifled with. We can protect you if we need to."

He stared at the video footage of smoke curling up from the art deco tower, of burst water mains flooding the nearby street. "I don't even know what it is they want!" His voice turned strident, almost anxious. "Detective, I can't tell you about them when none of it makes any sense to me, either."

She closed the Surface and set it aside so that he looked up at her again. For all his earlier bravado, she could see the lines of unease around his eyes. This attack was, perhaps, just a little too close to home, wearing on him in ways she hadn't yet seen. "So, let's talk it out," she offered, matter-of-factly. "Just like we do on my cases. Let me help."

"It's hard to talk out something when one of us simply refuses to believe, Detective," he responded testily. "We've had this argument before, and I never make any headway. As clever as you are, you can't seem to see the truth in front of you. And I don't dare—." He cut himself off, lips thinning into a tense line. He raked his fingers through his hair, perhaps the first time she'd seen such a gesture from him. The dark locks bristled, standing at odd angles for a moment, before falling back over his forehead in even greater disarray.

Chloe threw her hands upward in mildly exasperated surrender. "Okay. Look, if it'll help, let's just assume for now that I believe it all. You're the actual Devil, the one and only Ruler of Hellfire and Damnation. Right? Got it. Can we work from that?"

Head tilted, he regarded her with suspicion and just a hint of something she might have called longing in anyone else. "Are you sure you want to do that, Detective?"

"Definitely. Consider me a temporary believer." She pushed ahead before either of them could overthink this. "So, if you're the Devil, the actual fire and brimstone Devil, then they're … what? Demons in your former army?"

Lucifer nodded slowly. "All right, Detective. I'll play. They're not demons. They're much, much worse."

"What's worse than demons?" she prodded.

He picked up the tablet and balanced it in one hand pointedly. "If you read this, you know what they are."

"Wikipedia is a handy tool, but it doesn't guarantee accuracy. I'd rather hear it from the source. You know how this works, Lucifer. We've done it before."

"Very well, then." He met her eyes. "They're angels."

Angels. Angels, demons, and the Devil. Of course. She made sure her expression didn't alter, tried to put herself in the headspace of someone who didn't find that demented. "Bad angels, I take it? You said that angels weren't always what they appeared to be." She remembered him pointing that out several days ago outside of Beelzebean.

"Rather. Angel is simply a species, Detective. A very early creation, well before humanity. But being one isn't a promissory note for good behavior or interests that coincide with polite society. Or even with what Father intended."

"So, these angels are like you?"

He bridled at that, pulling himself stiffly upright on the bed. "Not remotely."

"But you're the Devil. The Fallen One. Even your license plate on that little car out front proclaims it."

"Yes, Detective. I am The Devil. The original Fallen. But being Fallen doesn't have to equate to being evil; it's just an indicator that you've disagreed with Father's interpretation of things. We might debate the justice of that in some cases, including mine." His voice lost some of its stridency, turning bleak and quiet. "And I haven't always been Fallen. I didn't start my existence as the Devil, you know. I didn't ask for this." He rubbed his bare arms, again as if feeling chilled in the early morning air.

Chloe tugged at the comforter until he moved off of it, then tossed most of it into this lap for warmth, keeping one corner for herself. The room didn't seem unusually cool to her, but perhaps she was more acclimated to mornings in the beach house. (Or perhaps it was just that she was wearing more clothes. And not, you know, Satan.) When he didn't continue, she asked, "How are you different than them, then?"

Drawing the blanket around his shoulders and huddling into it, Lucifer looked very human, at odds with his words when he answered. "I was—still am, I suppose—not an angel. Angels were created as soldiers and servants, physically and mentally tailored for their tasks. I am so much older than the rank and file, one of my Father's original children, created before the combustion of the universes." He sighed, suddenly weary. "Before the need to serve."

"So, what does that make you, if not an angel?" In spite of herself, Chloe was intrigued. His whole devilish persona hinged on this definition of self, one that separated him from everybody else, from the normal human world. (What must his therapist make of that?)

Lucifer hesitated before answering."I am—I'm an archangel, if you must know."

"I'm listening," she assured him when he stopped. "Tell me about archangels?"

He huffed quietly. "We were the first extensions of His hand, the first trial of sentience and life. There are only a few of us, each one housing divinity on a scale never replicated." He paused, looking at her worriedly, seeing how she was taking his words. "We are Father's children in truth, unlike anything else in creation. For whatever that is worth. In my case, apparently not much."

"That sounds…" She thought about it for a moment. "Lonely, actually. It sounds lonely. Were you the first?"

He shook his head. "Second, after my elder brother Michael, the Demiurge. Unlike Michael, I came into this existence untasked. Lacking his ability to create being from nothingness, I was called to life out of the instinct to shape and craft and criticize. I was—" He licked his lips, swallowed. "I am Will incarnate, Detective. The Lightbringer. The Shaper of Worlds. I am Desire and Destruction, and so much that is beautiful and terrible in this cosmos is so because of me." Staring down into the folds of the comforter, he almost whispered, "And still, I was—am—will ever be—the first to Fall."

Fascinated, barely breathing, Chloe listened in silence, watching the struggle in the tension of his body, the rigid planes of his face. No bespoke suit to hide behind. No glass of whiskey to give him room to think. No glib, quick, snarky innuendo to distract her. Even as he spoke of being one of the most powerful beings in creation, he had never seemed more genuinely frail, fallible, vulnerable. Her heart lurched in sympathy.

And how intricate this story, this created delusion! What childhood trauma, what layers of PTSD or psychosis underwrote such self-definition? How much did he actually believe? How much was so deeply ingrained from his past that—

Chloe blinked and shut down that train of thought. Just for now, she'd promised to try to believe. She owed it to him to try, even if only for a moment.

He cleared his throat after a pause, heaving a deeper breath. "But you asked about the Grigori, yes, Detective?"

Chloe nodded reluctantly and felt an opportunity slip quietly away. She knew no way to keep him talking about himself, even metaphorically. What questions could she ask to evoke what she felt lingering in the air between them but had no words to describe?

"Do you know, the Grigori are actually the cause of rather a lot of the Devil's bad rap." He brightened a bit, some of the edge of indignation returning. "You know what I mean. That little pitchfork-wielding beastie sitting on people's shoulders and inciting them to commit heinous acts, espousing rape and murder and incest, provoking pointless hatreds, even unscrewing salt shaker lids in restaurants patronized by the elderly. These evils weren't my doing, Detective, although your entire species believes otherwise. Frankly, I couldn't care less about what humanity gets up to, and I've always found you don't need celestial creativity in order to imagine and enact things worthy of punishment! You're a cop; surely you'd agree?"

He didn't wait for a response, speaking more easily now. "Some of the angelic host found it a bit amusing to get involved, to shake humanity and see what fell out, if you will. They tinkered with Dad's favorite project, just to see what happened." He stopped again, thinking. "I mean, the Silver City is shockingly dull, so I get the impetus, but their machinations eventually had to turn even Dad's rather ironclad stomach."

"And so your father, what? Kicked them out of the house?"

"Not at first. Dad wasn't the most hands-on, even then. And firstborn Michael was already asleep in his eternal chambers, the lazy bastard. As for me, I was—" Lucifer twitched, turning over his long, elegant fingers in the comforter. He flexed them, rhythmically bending each finger as if playing his beloved piano or rolling a coin over their backs. He face was taut with memories she couldn't fathom.

"You were . . .?" Chloe prompted.

His gaze flickered up to hers, then away again. The fingers rolled their invisible coin twice more before clenching. "Well, if you must know, I was still writhing and near insensible in the pit."

She shivered at the bleakness in his voice, suddenly cold herself.

"Whatever my faults, the Grigori aren't one of them. I wasn't even capable of questioning the sudden flood of corrupted human souls at the gates. Hell and demonkind merely shaped themselves around me, absorbing them like mother's milk. Remarkable how creative guilty human souls can be. They hardly need a Devil." Looking bitter, he trailed off again.

"But the Grigori ended up in Hell with you, eventually?"

Lucifer gave a caustic laugh. "Eventually, yes. After plagues and wars and centuries of degradations, it must have been their experiments with sireing hybrid offspring that finally got Dad's attention. You see, divinity isn't to be shared, and apparently for good reason. The spawn of these largely forced unions weren't quite viable—in a world-destroying kind of way, as it turns out. So, your planet got an epic flood. And I got a flood of Fallen angels on my doorstep, too, all chained and furious and bloody-minded and still horny. Because Dad is ever the fairest of them all."

"What should your father have done, if not thrown them into Hell?" she couldn't help but ask.

"Unmade us all," came the too quick, too certain reply. Lucifer lifted his gaze to the slanted wood ceiling, as if glaring through it to some invisible other plane. "It would have been a mercy. But He has never been merciful to His own."

She felt a little nauseous at the dark pain in his voice, at the the wide, dark-lined eyes that were no longer teasing her or inspecting the room or concerned with anything in this world. For all his disclaimers of difference from the 'rank and file' of the monsters, he seemed more than ready to share their dissolution. She wondered why and knew she couldn't ask. "So," Chloe grasped for their original conversation a little desperately. "Why haven't I heard of them? The Grigori, I mean. I've definitely heard of God and the Devil, even Michael the Archangel. Why not these fallen angels who preyed on humanity?"

"Partly because your scriptures are an abandoned work in progress." Lucifer let the comforter around his shoulders slide back to the bed and swung himself to his feet, seemingly needing to move. He stepped over to the window, raising the blinds to peer out at the hazy ocean beyond. His back to her, he explained. "There are whole chapters and books removed and replaced and pottered around with. Inevitably, even the original human writers only had part of the picture, and they also often had other agendas." He turned after a moment, leaning against the window frame. "But mostly because humanity really doesn't want to remember the Watchers."

"Watchers?"

"Just another name for them. That was their original charge, you know. To Watch. To learn how humanity grew into itself, to chronicle and occasionally, when asked nicely, to provide small aid or succor. Instead, they became the predatory eyes in the darkness, seekers of all imagined depravities, and they instructed those humans who were monstrously inclined so that humanity's natural penchant for sin grew and stretched itself in ever more inventive ways. There's no need to remember them, Detective. After all, you have their leavings to contend with still among your own kind." He nodded at her gun and badge on the nightstand. "You know that better than most, I'd think."

"Maybe." She rubbed her face tiredly. "I don't really blame human evil on supernatural forces, you know."

"I have noticed. But surely you can feel it when in their presence?"

Chloe remembered her reaction to Samyaza in the garage, her sense that each of the three men she'd seen with Lucifer were somehow dangerous, somehow wrong. Was it coincidence, that creeping horror? Could it have been some latent, even primordial, instinct roused by—

She shook herself. This was Lucifer's story, the means by which he justified whatever criminal enterprises he'd once been a part of (or was still a part of). It was a skillful literary framework for what might be generations of illegal activity. None of it was actually real, although all of it intimated some kind of distorted truth, no doubt. Time to get back to reality, Decker, she told herself sharply. Don't get too caught up in whatever this is. It's a game, a tool. But it's so very consistent, and he seems so genuine. "What happened to the Grigori, Lucifer?"

"After they Fell, you mean?" He waved one hand almost dismissively, propping himself on the wide window sill. "They carved out spaces for themselves in the landscape of Hell, mostly in Tartarus although some of them prefer the particular torments of other locales. It's not a luxury villa, you know. It's pretty much Hell for all involved, whatever their status—human soul, Fallen angel, even the Devil Himself. Except for demonkind, of course; for them, it's just home. But for the Fallen, it's as much a punishment for our failings as place to rule, although the Grigori have certainly tried to make it more the latter." He grimaced. "The gentrification of Hell. Can you even imagine?"

"Can't they just leave? You did." Even temporarily trying to work within this tangled fantasy universe was giving Chloe a headache. How did Lucifer maintain it so coherently? Practice, she supposed. How many years—a lifetime, maybe—of practice? She wondered if anyone in Gangs (or maybe someone across the pond in Scotland Yard's division on syndicate crime) had ever heard of a Grigori gang or cartel. She had searched the criminal databases for "Lucifer Morningstar" many months ago and turned up zilch. Maybe these new names?

"I would have said their chains prevented it, but it seems they've figured out a way," he said sourly. "Hardly fair. When I Fell, I burned. My impact created the bloody pit, which continues to rage with the corrupted fires of creation even now, millennia later. Had I not been immortal, I think I would have been utterly consumed in those first centuries. I'm not sure that wasn't Father's plan from the start."

"That's horrible." Had Lucifer broken away from his father's criminal enterprises, then? Had he endured attempts on his life? Is that why he was scarred so badly—and why these men were tracking him now?

Still leaning in the window, Lucifer stared at his hands again in the grey light, as if seeing something she could not. "But the result is that I'm not bound to Hell except by my duty—which II've decided is over. But when the Watchers Fell, they were bound by my Father's Word; their very chains are made of His grace. Those chains protect them from the atmosphere of the underworld, but they also limit their ability to be anywhere else. So, no, they aren't supposed to be able to leave."

"But they clearly have. Sam and the little ferrety one and the homeless guy. What was his name? Bat?"

"Yes." He heaved a breath, pushing away from the window to pace restlessly beside the bed. Her eyes followed his movements, drawn to the mangled skin on his back, the unusual hunch of his shoulders. "And here my understanding ends, Detective. I don't know how they're here. Or even if they're still here. I would be surprised if they didn't have to go back after expending the energies they did on Lux yesterday. But, as you say, it's all conjecture at this point."

Chloe rushed to ask one question that had been bothering her since they visited Peter Gross's skate park friends. "How have they been able to find you—at Venice Beach, on the Long Beach strip, in the alley last night? I'm almost sure I saw Bat at your car when we were in Beelzebean days ago, now that I think about it."

"By reputation?" He paused mid-stride to offer her a half-hearted quirk of a grin. "The Devil isn't ever hard to find. That's rather the point, isn't it?"

"Lucifer—"

"I don't know, Detective. Really," he said, more serious.

Chloe chewed the edge of a nail, thinking hard. If this were a case, what would she be asking? "So, you told me earlier they wanted favors that you wouldn't grant. What favors?"

"Just one," he said. "They want me to come home."

"Back to Hell?"

"The very same."

"And you refused, so—what? They attack your home and your livelihood, take away your means of survival here on planet earth, just so you have no choice but to go back?" Is that what Mazikeen had been saying tonight? Chloe wasn't entirely sure.

"Perhaps." Lucifer sounded unconvinced. "I'm beginning to think Samyaza deliberately stalled me on the fire escape so his bros could go after Maze. It's as if they're trying to piss me off, trying to get me to come for them. It's bloody suicidal!"

An idea pushed its way into her tired brain. "If they can't convince you to go home, what if they're setting you up? Making it so you'll pursue them there in anger? Same end result."

He hummed, rubbing at his stubble thoughtfully. "That's very insightful, Detective. I wonder. But it would all depend on them actually wanting me back in the kingdom—which I can't believe. Without me there, they can do as they please. There's a power vacuum, if you will. The Fallen might go to war with each other, but that's their typical mode of existence, constant squabbling over territory and allegiances from the hellspawn. With me gone, they can actually win and rule."

Chloe yawned suddenly, startling herself. What time was it now? Did she even want to know? "Well, we need more data, then. What about other possible motives?"

"Nothing motivates them except narcissism."

A second yawn quickly followed the first. "Vanity? Selfishness? Greed? All good human motives, too." At the third yawn, she dropped her head forward into her hands. "But that's all I've got tonight, I think. Although it does beg the question, if they want you home, and they're willing to incite you enough to pursue them—are you pursuing them?"

He stopped roaming around the foot of the bed. "I'm right here, Detective."

"Mazikeen isn't."

Lucifer cut his eyes over at her. "More insights? Maybe I've told you a bit too much tonight, after all." When she kept looking up at him, he added, "She has orders not to engage them."

"Well, that's something, I guess." Sleepily, Chloe reached for her scattered work materials, finding them in the rumpled comforter or scooping them off the floor. She prised the sticky protein bar out of the sheets and flipped it into the waste basket under her bedside table. "It's all a very complex and well-polished story, Lucifer. I'm still not sure how the metaphor works, but it's impressive."

"I told you. It's not a metaphor. It's not a game." He regarded her coolly. "Are you afraid of the truth, Detective?"

"You don't scare me, Lucifer." She dropped everything on the floor beside the bed and dragged the comforter back from where he'd left it.

"No, I know I don't." Was it her imagination, or did he look more exhausted, too? "I'm rather glad I don't. But you also still don't believe. Play along another minute, Detective. If you did believe, if it were all true for you, would you be scared of me, then?"

"No," she said. "If anything, I think I might be scared for you." When he looked puzzled, she explained. "If the supernatural were real, what could I—an ordinary human cop—do to protect you from that?"

His face softened in the morning light. "You are anything but ordinary, Detective."

She ignored that, wondering instead about truth of another kind. If she discovered that he was the head of some near-silent Cosa Nostra invasion of L.A., what would she do? Or if his favors all linked back to a gathering of illegal businesses, driving hooks into not only the drug trade but more quasi legal adventures within industries like fashion, bookmaking, banking, music? Would finding out that he was the Devil, capital "D," of legend and lore be so much worse? She fluffed the comforter over her legs and slid down a bit among the pillows, watching him. "It's probably good that I don't believe. I like my own agency. Free will, remember?"

He hummed. "I do. All the time."

It has been one hell of a night, she thought. "Do you know, I think I could get a little sleep now. You should, too. We only have an hour before we need to get back to work."

He nodded, expression immediately transforming, sharpening with mischief. "Kicking me out of the bedroom, Detective?"

"You'd better believe it."

"You threw me out of the house once before, I recall. And now, you practically expel me from your very bed." Pretending to be put out and indignant, he ambled toward the hallway, grousing, 'Whatever happened to 'Get thee behind me, Satan?'" He threw her a glance back over his shoulder. "Because I'm quite capable from all sorts of pleasurable angles, you know. Although it would deprive you of the view. Perhaps your mother wouldn't mind the addition of some mirrors—"

She chucked a pillow at his retreating form, only to have him snatch it out of the air and pitch it back to her with perfect ease. Almost supernatural ease.

"Oh, yes," he said, as if remembering something, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "I do have something that might help you sleep. Meant to bring it with me when I came in before, as promised."

She frowned at him, suspicious. "Promised when?"

Without answering, he vanished down the hall for a moment, and came back with a small leather-bound book, dark and discrete, and laid it on the nightstand beside her gun and badge. He gestured for her to pick it up and stood waiting, expectant and over-bright, especially for that hour of the morning after a sleepless night.

She looked at him, sighed, and reached for the book. It had pictures this time, of course—artful and highly detailed drawings of naked men and women engaged in myriad copulatory acts. "Lucifer—," she began, closing the book.

"Sex is naturally soporific, Detective. Try chapter 4 on for size," he said, talking fast. "Women get a bit of short shrift in the original Sanskrit, but some of these later versions make up for that. In spades, I might add."

Wordlessly, she extended a finger toward the door.

Lifting his hands, he stepped backward, but the defensive effect was undercut by the wicked gleam in his eyes. "Solo play is important in maintaining a healthy libido. Don't bother sparing me the noises as your housemate. I really don't mind."

"Lucifer," Chloe said evenly, smothering a good-humored snort behind a mask of irritation. "Get out of my room."

"Leave you to it, you mean, Detective? I'll close this, shall I?" He lingered dramatically, hand on door knob as if she might call him back.

"Out, Lucifer." She tossed the book back on the nightstand. (If there hadn't been a chance it was quite valuable, she'd have thrown it at him.) When he still waited, grinning down at her, she reached toward something else on the stand. "We appear to be having an issue with communication. Perhaps if I explain it to you in handgun,'out' will be a little more clear."

From behind the closing door, she heard him chuckle again. "Speaking of hands, do let me know if you want hands-on tutelage at any point. I have it on good authority that I—."

"Out! Out! Out!"

The door clicked shut.

Chloe flung herself back on her bed, shaking her head but smiling. If he wasn't the devil incarnate, he deserved to be. She glanced once at the neat little volume now balanced on the edge of the nightstand, then rolled over in her comforter and closed her eyes. Sleep came surprisingly easily.

Author's Note: I keep wanting Chloe to just sit down with Lucifer in the show and say, "Okay. Pretend I believe you. Tell me all about this Devil stuff." Because I'd have to do that just out of curiosity, myself. Hope this very long, long conversation kept your attention. Lots of exposition happening despite Chloe's stubborn realism. As always, reviews are love. They help keep me motivated through these rather long chapters. :)