A/N Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who read, reviewed, bookmarked, favorited, followed, or gave kudos to this story. I loved reading all of your comments, questions, and suggestions. (Some of you came up with ideas that were way better than what was actually in the story!). A special thank you to Fordandra, who took the time to make a GORGEOUS fanart for this fic on tumblr (please go check it out - you'll love it!). In short, you guys made posting this story an absolute joy. I hope you like the final chapter, and I will be thinking of you all as I watch Season Four tomorrow! :)

Epilogue

The faint sound of the piano woke her, so soft he must be barely touching the keys. Chloe smiled and stayed in her warm cocoon of silk, too cozy to move. The music was sweet and sad and in her half-awake state she could imagine the notes floating all around her in the dark room, like cottonwood seeds caught on a summer breeze. She could pluck them from the air, follow their white fluffy trail back to her dreams, like a little kid enchanted by the Pied Piper.

Chloe was right on the verge of drifting off again when her phone buzzed on the bedside table. She longed to ignore it, but Trixie was at a sleepover tonight, and even though she was nearly a teenager now, she still sometimes got homesick or scared and wanted to come home.

With a soft groan, Chloe reached for the phone, then frowned at the unfamiliar number on the screen.

"Hello?" she said sleepily.

"Hello, Detective Decker," an all-too-familiar female voice replied.

Chloe instantly sat up, all traces of drowsiness gone. "Bethany."

"You don't have to be afraid, Chloe. I don't mean you any harm."

Chloe realized she was breathing fast and made herself slow down. "Why are you calling me?"

"I just wanted to thank you one last time. And to check on Lucifer. How's he doing?"

Chloe's eyes narrowed. "Fine," she bit out. "No thanks to you."

"I did call that ambulance for him, you know."

Chloe shoved the covers aside and slid off the bed, keeping her voice a sarcastic whisper. "Yeah, after you nearly drowned him in his own blood and put us both through twenty-four hours of pure hell. I wouldn't be waiting around for a Nobel Peace Prize, if I were you."

Bethany laughed, but it was tinged with sadness. "Oh, don't worry. I know exactly what's coming to me. I did what I had to do. I'm willing to pay the price."

"Does that mean you're turning yourself in?"

Bethany laughed again.

"I'll take that as a 'no.'"

"I've got eternal damnation to look forward to, Chloe. Surely that's punishment enough?"

"Maybe," Chloe conceded. "But I made a deal with Lucifer. A deal to find you and punish you in this life. And I intend to hold up my end of the bargain."

Bethany sighed. "Well, I can't say that's unexpected. I would wish you good luck, but…"

Chloe smiled. "Oh, we don't need luck. We have the best bounty hunter on earth. Like, literally."

"Oh right. The demon. Mazikeen. I learned a lot about her from Mr. Getty's books."

From the tone of Bethany's voice, she seemed to think she was dangling a juicy detail.

"Yeah, I'm sure that storage unit was filled with all kinds of goodies," Chloe said, still smiling. They'd already figured this part out, and she wanted Bethany to know it.

Linda's ex-husband, Reese, had learned of Lucifer's true identity several years ago and become obsessed with finding a way to bring down the Devil. Apparently, he'd amassed an entire storage unit full of old religious artifacts and ancient texts that he never managed to translate. After he died, the unit went up for sale, Storage Wars-style. And Bethany placed the winning bid.

"Was it an accident, you bidding on Reese's unit?" Chloe asked. "Or did you already know what was inside?"

Bethany laughed. "I had no idea! It was complete luck."

Bad luck, in Chloe's opinion, but that was neither here nor there.

"I don't suppose you made any headway on the virus angle," Bethany went on.

"No," Chloe admitted, artfully letting a note of disappointment creep into her voice. "We combed through your entire life, Bethany, from preschool on up, and we couldn't find any connection, personal or financial, to any individual or company capable of engineering something like that."

A relieved sigh came over the phone.

"What we did find was one Miles Kettering, your college roommate's younger brother, who apparently always had a major crush on you. Interestingly enough, Miles once worked as a lowly lab tech at a pharma company that went bankrupt from lawsuits after five people died from a contaminated pneumonia vaccine. Their symptoms were remarkably similar to Lucifer's."

Bethany swallowed loudly. "Is Miles…?"

"Already in custody. Maze tracked his ass down two days ago." Chloe couldn't help the smug smile. She wanted Bethany to know that the net was closing. That there was no escape. Like being locked inside a warehouse with a clock steadily ticking down.

"Poor Miles."

"At least he won't get the death penalty," Chloe said sweetly.

Bethany took a deep breath. "And neither will Martin, thanks to you and your partner."

That was one of the few things to come out of this mess that Chloe could actually feel good about. "Have you spoken to him since he got out?" she asked.

"Just once. He sounded so different. So free. Like he'd been walking around with rocks tied to his soul, and someone finally cut them off."

"Yeah," Chloe said softly.

Six hours of interrogation, plus one very incriminating video, had finally convinced Rose's lover, Keith, to reveal the truth about the night she died. He'd snuck out of work to go see her and found her in the midst of writing him a break-up note. She'd just taken a home pregnancy test, and the positive result had made her re-evaluate her life. She didn't want to cheat on Martin anymore. It was a mistake, always had been. She loved him and wanted to raise her baby with him, whether he was the biological father or not.

Keith became enraged, not only that she was leaving him, but that she was potentially taking his baby away too. They fought and he killed her with a beer stein. Then, in a panic, he got rid of the murder weapon and rushed back to work, hoping no one had missed him. While sneaking back into the bar, he discovered Martin passed out and had an evil "Aha" moment. Keith realized he had the perfect person to pin the murder on.

He snagged Martin's keys, grabbed a spare beer stein from the back room to replace the one he'd ditched, and drove to Rose's apartment to get her body. He didn't realize until he got there that the replacement beer stein didn't quite match the others. There wasn't time to go get another one, so he just shoved the black one on her shelf to complete the set and hit her a few times with one of the blue ones to make it look like the murder weapon.

Keith then raced back to the bar to enlist Chet's help loading Martin into the car. One of Chet's hairs got pulled out during the effort, but neither man noticed. They drove to Martin and Rose's place. While Chet waited out front in his truck, Keith was busy in the parking garage, wiping his and Chet's prints off Martin's car, shoving Martin over into the driver's seat, and planting copious amounts of evidence linking Martin to the murder. All the while, Keith kept the heat blasting, making sure Rose's poor body stayed as warm as possible to throw off the time of death.

"He hates what I did," Bethany said softly, pulling Chloe's thoughts from the gruesome images.

"Who?"

"Martin. He doesn't know all the details, but he knows I kidnapped you and forced you to work on his case. If we're ever on the same continent again, I don't think I'll be able to look him in the eye."

Chloe bit her tongue to keep from saying, Good. Instead she said, "I don't know if you've heard yet, but…Chet wasn't a suicide. He didn't lose his nerve. Keith found out Chet was planning to go to the police and killed him. Made it look self-inflicted."

The now-retired detective who'd investigated Chet's death, a man named Garrison, had sounded sick with himself when Chloe told him of Keith's confession to killing Chet. Chet's family had confirmed his depressed state, and Chet's financial and social activity indicated that he was trying to get his affairs in order. When the medical examiner's report came in, also pointing to suicide, Garrison had seen no reason to dig any deeper—certainly not any reason to scour through every single video on Chet's phone.

Chloe had told Garrison not to be too hard on himself—she'd seen detectives too lazy to spot a homicide-staged-as-a-suicide when the evidence was screaming at them from across the room. Footprints at the scene that didn't match the victim's. Obvious post-mortem injuries. Signs of the body being dragged from another location.

There had been none of that here. Keith had staged the scene very well. He was, after all, an expert. Chet had been getting things in his life squared away because he was anticipating jail time—not because he was planning his own death.

There was no clear reason why he'd hidden the message to his mother by tacking it onto an old audition vid. The best they could figure was that he'd been worried about Keith finding the video somehow. Chet had mentioned catching Keith snooping on his phone one time. It was just a guess, though. They'd never know for sure.

Chet's sister, Chrissy, had come into possession of his phone and computer and all the files therein after his death, but she'd been too heartbroken to watch any of her brother's old audition videos. "I thought seeing them would've just reminded me of all the beautiful talent he threw away," she'd said. Now, she was sick with guilt, just like Garrison.

"Was it any comfort to Chet's family?" Bethany asked. "Finding out the truth?"

"That their son got murdered instead of killing himself? Maybe a little," Chloe said. "He's still gone, just like Rose. Not a whole lot of comfort in that."

"No, there isn't. Still, their families must sleep just a little better, having that closure. Knowing that justice will be done…speaking of which, congratulations on cracking the Ruiz case. His personal assistant, was it?"

Chloe smiled. "Yeah. Turns out, her ironclad alibi? Not so ironclad."

Bethany gave a soft chuckle, followed by a tired sigh. "Well, I'll let you go. I know it's late, at least where you are. Goodnight, Chloe. Thank you for everything. Thank Lucifer, too."

"Goodnight, Bethany. Or good morning. Whichever it is for you. Enjoy your freedom…while it lasts."

"Oh, I will. Believe me."

The call disconnected and Chloe sighed, knowing Bethany was, at this moment, disposing of a burner phone in some far-off, non-extradition country. Maze had her work cut out for her. Tonight, though, Chloe wasn't going to worry about that. Tonight, she had silk sheets waiting for her, and she didn't want to go back to them alone.

Piano music still emanated from the next room, the notes winding their way around her soul, tugging her toward their source. As she got closer, she could hear snatches of the lyrics he was singing:

Devil's eyes

Don't look so evil

Demon's teeth

Don't look so sharp

Ghosts in the cemeteries

Don't scare me

We're all the same

Sad, broken hearts

A floorboard creaked under Chloe's bare foot and Lucifer glanced up. "I'm sorry, Detective—I was trying not to wake you." He lifted his long fingers from the keys and reached out to take a sip of liquid from the glass on the piano.

"You didn't—not really. I got a phone call."

Lucifer frowned. "At three am? From whom?"

"No one important." Chloe wandered over to stand beside him. "That song you were playing…was it one of Chet's?"

Lucifer nodded. She gave his shoulder a squeeze, then slid onto the bench beside him. A faint bruise was still visible on his forehead from where he'd hit the floor during his seizure. It was the only remaining external trace of what had happened. The internal scars would take much longer to heal. For both of them.

"It was beautiful," she said softly. "Haunting. He had a lot of talent."

"Yes." Lucifer took another sip of his drink, then stared down at the piano's well-loved keys. He took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. "I wish Chet had come to me with this whole blackmail business…I would've helped him."

Chloe touched his arm gently. "I know you would have. At least Chet was going to do the right thing, in the end. He had no reason to feel guilty anymore. No reason to go to Hell. His decision might've gotten him killed, but at the same time it probably saved his soul."

Lucifer sighed again. "Well, that's something, I suppose."

"Actually, I think that's kinda everything."

He met her eyes, nodded just a little, then turned back to his drink.

Since they were digging into some heavy topics, Chloe decided to bite the bullet and go for the big one.

"When we were in the warehouse, I…reached out to your Father."

Lucifer stiffened. "Oh?"

Chloe rushed onward before she lost her nerve. "Yeah, I mean, you were getting really sick and we weren't anywhere near solving the case, so I figured it couldn't hurt to try."

"And let me guess how that went. You asked Father for help, and He responded by doing the same bloody thing He does for every poor, deluded sap who prays to Him: absolutely nothing." Lucifer drained his glass and set it back on the piano harder than necessary.

Chloe bit her lip, afraid to say what she was thinking, but she didn't want there to be secrets between them. Not ever again.

"Actually…I think He might've helped us."

Lucifer raised his eyebrows in his patented skeptical look. "Oh? And how do you figure He did that? Because I certainly don't remember the warehouse walls miraculously crumbling to dust, do you?"

"Well, no, but not long after I prayed, you saw that picture of Chet and recognized him."

"So?"

Chloe dipped her head, trying to lead him there as painlessly as possible. "So, doesn't that kind of seem just a little bit like divine intervention? I mean, what are the odds that the one person in those pictures you slept with happened to be the key to unlocking the whole case?"

Lucifer made a noise that was half-scoff, half-guffaw. "'The one person in the photographs I'd slept with?' Honestly, Detective, do you even know me? There were at least five others in those surveillance pictures I'd had the pleasure of pleasuring."

Chloe stared at him. "Seriously? Five?"

Lucifer began to count them off on his fingers. "Well, there was that chap with the bowler hat on—he was quite fun. Then there was that woman with the large spider tattoo—she was wild, even by my standards. Did things with a feather you would not believe. And then of course there was that tall Black bloke with the glasses—Rod, his name was, but I took to calling him Lightning Rod because of his enormous—"

"Okay, okay!" Chloe laughed, shoving Lucifer's hands down. "Thank you. Got the picture. Got so many pictures."

Lucifer just looked at her innocently. "Well, you did ask."

Chloe gave an exaggerated nod. "Yep, yep, I did. And I now regret that." She could probably pick any random name out of the Yellow Pages and have Lucifer tell her that person's deepest, darkest sexual fantasies. And how he'd satisfied every one of them.

Another icky thought occurred to her. "Oh, and if Rose and Chet's killer happened to be one of your many 'conquests,' I so, so don't ever want to know." She shuddered to even think what that cold-blooded bastard would be like in bed.

Lucifer, however, looked affronted at the suggestion. "Detective, I assure you I would never, under any circumstances, have slept with him." He said the word "him" like it was a stinky sock held out at arm's length.

"Why not?" Chloe asked. "Not pretty enough for you?" She gave him a playful nudge with her elbow.

"Oh, he's good-looking, even by LA standards. But I warned you about this ages ago, Detective: beware anyone with an ordinary, boring name: especially Keith. Freaks, the whole lot of them."

Chloe shook her head, giggling. Lucifer was so weird sometimes. So adorably, lovably weird. He had told her that ages ago. Another lifetime, it seemed.

Lucifer chuckled a little, enjoying her laughter, then looked back at the piano, the light mood draining out of him as darker things crept back in. But they'd had enough darkness—at least for tonight. Probably for a few millennia.

"Come on," Chloe said, taking his hand and standing up. "Let's go back to bed."

She tugged him toward the bedroom and he followed willingly, his warm breath tickling her ear with naughty words. Chloe laughed as she shoved him onto the bed.

"Tomorrow, Lucifer. Tonight, I just want to sleep, okay?"

Lucifer sighed mournfully. "Oh, very well. Spoilsport."

Despite his played-up disappointment, she could see a measure of relief in his eyes, too. In truth, they were both still exhausted. It had only been five days since the warehouse, and they'd spent the first three of those apart at Chloe's insistence. She'd refused to come within ten miles of him until she was convinced that he was well and truly healed.

Now, Chloe sighed happily as she slid under the sheets beside him, grateful for his warmth and closeness. She nuzzled closer, breathing him in, getting high on the scents of top-shelf bourbon and piano strings and fancy-ass French soap.

Those three days apart had been hell. The nights had been even worse. No casework to distract her, no Lucifer teasing her over the phone, just the screaming silence of her apartment. And then, when sleep finally came, so did the nightmares—twisting their way around her like snakes, squeezing tighter and tighter.

Because every night when Chloe closed her eyes, she dreamt about the same thing: Being trapped in a dimly-lit room. A room with moving shadows on the walls. A room that was slowly but surely running out of air. Trixie, Dan, Lucifer and her mother were all trapped in there with her, their faces turning blue as they suffocated. Chloe would run around, screaming for help, frantically trying to find a way out, but her screams just echoed back at her. Helpless cries of a powerless woman losing everyone she loved, as the shadow angel on the wall flapped closer, closer, closer.

She'd wake up gasping in terror, sweat-soaked sheets tangled around her. And then she'd just lie there in the dark, panting and alone, as the nightmare gradually receded back into the depths.

The dreams weren't as frequent since she was back with Lucifer, but they still came. And they were just as awful. The only difference was that now when she woke up it was to a long-fingered hand gently stroking her face, a British voice reassuring her in soft, melodic tones:

"It's all right, Detective. I'm here. It's only a bad dream—nothing more."

And soon, the nightmares were just faded memories.