Chloe Decker was paralyzed. Paralyzed with what was a good question, but whatever the root cause, she was paralyzed.

Her brain stem, the part of her body and mind that remembered what it was to be a beast of prey, was flooding her bloodstream with adrenalin as it tried frantically decided whether to fight, flee, or freeze. Freeze was winning by default. Her legs were trembling underneath her, unable to hold still but equally unable to decide how to move.

Lucifer, her brain whispered soothingly. It's Lucifer. It's just Lucifer.

IT'S LUCIFER! her body screamed. IT'S SATAN HIMSELF!

It was. It was all of those things. It was a demon, an inhuman monster, skin red and furrowed with darkness, eyes glowing. And it was her friend, still in his perfectly tailored sport coat with the scarlet pocket square, his hand extended towards her with the palm out in the everybody just stay calm gesture he'd seen her use so many times with so many freaked-out, gun-wielding suspects. Lucifer. Falling from heaven. Playing Monopoly on her coffee table. Rebelling against God. Coaxing sweet music from his piano. Ruling Hell. Ruling Lux.

He never lied to me.

The thought hit her like a ton of bricks. He was a demon from hell and that meant that he was neither crazy nor a liar. He'd always, for three years, been consistently and doggedly honest with her.

She moved. Or tried to. What happened was that her left leg tried to rush toward Lucifer, either to embrace or to throttle him, and her right leg tried to flee in panic, and she fell in an ungainly heap on the floor. Lucifer lunged forward by reflex . . . to catch her? To kill her? . . . but froze in his tracks when she choked, "Don't!"

Now her hand was up in the stay-calm signal, keeping him away from her. She needed to think. There was too much happening inside her head. She felt like she was drowning in revelation. Wait, that was because she wasn't breathing. She breathed.

His brow was furrowed, worry and confusion written all over his leathery red face. If you saw all of me, he'd said, you'd run.

How I feel about you, he'd said.

Wasn't he . . . the father of lies? Or something . . . she'd been to church maybe a dozen times in her whole life and her biblical literacy was sparse to non-existent. Or was she thinking of Dante? Was Dante speaking from experience? Did Lucifer know Dante? He always seemed to know everyone . . .

"Detective?" The question was hesitant and full of trepidation. She'd been sitting here on this floor, one leg folded awkwardly underneath her, staring at him for what had to be at least a few minutes now.

She had to say something, or he'd think she was catatonic and take her to a hospital. Was she catatonic? Was this what that felt like?

She couldn't be catatonic. Trixie. Trixie needed her to function. And Dan. And Ella. She had to say something, because they needed her.

"Horns," she said.

Lucifer frowned, blinking in bewilderment. "What?"

"I thought . . ." She reached up to gesture some curves extending from her forehead. "I thought you'd have horns."

For a moment, he stared at her, as blankly as she was staring at him. "And a tail as well, I assume? Cloven hooves?"

"You don't get to make jokes right now," she snapped, and he seemed to hear the edge of panic in her voice because the nascent smile on his face vanished.

"That was uncalled for," he admitted. "I apologize."

An inhuman demonic monster was apologizing to her. He sounded almost prim. The voice was so familiar, trusted, and normal that she was tempted to crane sideways to see if Lucifer was standing right behind that devil creature. She took two more breaths, keeping oxygen flowing to her overworked brain.

"Okay," she said, carefully and with artificial steadiness. "Sit down."

"What, on the floor?"

"My whole body is freaking out while you're looming over me like that, and I can't think, so I need you to sit the hell down."

Lucifer eased himself onto the marble floor.

Was that better? A little. At least now she'd have a little bit of warning if he tried to lunge at her, as her every nerve insisted he was going to do any second.

"What next?" he asked, his voice careful and full of forced calm.

What next? He'd just switched his familiar, handsome, insufferable face for the visage of Satan himself and now he expected her to take the lead in this conversation?

She scrubbed one hand across her mouth and cheek, trying to focus. "Your face," she choked. "Can you . . . change it back?"

The hurt in his eyes was immediate and heartbreaking.

"Just for a minute," she clarified hastily. "Just so I can think. For a minute. I need to see my partner."

This seemed to mollify him. He took one deep, steadying breath . . . and then there he was. Lucifer. Her Lucifer. The dark brown eyes, the perfect hair, the dimple in his chin.

She was filled with a sudden, irrational, close to overwhelming desire to throw herself into his arms and sob about the nightmare she'd had where he'd turned into a demon.

Okay. Think. From the beginning. Her world had reshaped itself around her and she needed to establish its new dimensions.

"So," she began. "You are the devil. The actual devil. Not just a horrible person that does too many drugs at work."

"I am . . . both of those things," he admitted cautiously.

"Your dad . . . the one you're constantly complaining about . . . is God."

"Yes."

None of this was strictly new information, but there was a difference between listening to your harmlessly crazy colleague jabber about his extended metaphor for his own life and conversing with the incarnation of evil. "Amenadiel?" she inquired next.

"Is my older brother," he finished for her, "and the greatest among the angels."

"And Maze?"

"The chief torturer of the infernal realms."

"And Charlotte?"

"Charlotte is . . . complicated."

"Don't give me that. Explain."

"Charlotte . . . the Charlotte that we lost . . . was an ordinary, mortal human woman. She was made a pawn of forces far beyond her ken, but she was trying to become a better person, and I think that in the end, she succeeded."

Chloe nodded, accepting this as enough of an answer for now. "And Linda?"

"Linda, oddly enough, is just my therapist."

Her relief at this was so intense that she almost started laughing.

"And . . ." She gestured past Lucifer, where her boss and ex-fiance lay motionless on the floor with a curved metal object protruding from his chest.

Lucifer swallowed nervously. "That would be Cain. The first murderer of mankind. Cursed with immortality for his sin, until . . ." He paused briefly to wet his lips and choose his words. "Until he learned to love someone else more than he loved himself."

Oh.

Chloe felt momentarily nauseous. Cain, the first murderer, had fallen in love . . . with her. As had Lucifer. Or had he? How I feel about you, he'd said. But had he just been screwing with her? But he had never lied to her . . . though that didn't actually rule out screwing with her; he did that all the time.

"And . . ." She swallowed, steeling herself to ask, bracing against what the answer might be. "And what about me?"

Lucifer looked at her for a long moment. It was the look he'd given her two nights ago on his balcony . . . the one that made heat press through the skin of her face and chest and shoulders, that made her heart speed up and her head spin.

"You," he said at last, "are a miracle from God."

He was being metaphorical again. Except wait . . . he wasn't ever metaphorical. He never had been.

"Amenadiel was sent from heaven to grant your mother the child she wanted," Lucifer explained, carefully watching for her reaction. "You are the product of divine intervention. Your being alive, born to your parents at that exact time, was so crucially important that God himself decreed that you would be. And you were. And you are."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I'm done trying to second-guess my father. I'm just . . . grateful." His ironic smile twitched across his face. "Yes, I, the actual devil, am grateful to Almighty God for one thing, and that one thing is you."

Chloe's memory flicked back to two nights ago, where the most overwhelming, terrifying, complex aspect of her life was how she felt about her partner and how he felt about her. Then her boss had murdered her friend and she'd thrown herself in front of a bullet and the actual devil was explaining the nature of the universe to her. All while Question A remained unresolved.

One more question. "How did I get up on the roof?"

"Oh. That. Yes. Um . . ."

Dear God, he was actually nervous. Nervous and embarrassed, like a seventh grader who hadn't done his homework. He scrubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact.

"Lucifer," she insisted gently, ducking her head a little to catch his eye. "I saw you. And I'm still here. I'm not running."

He sighed. "No, you're not."

"How did I get on the roof?"

He closed his eyes tight and pressed his lips together, bracing for something. Then something moved behind his head. For a split second, she thought it was Pierce, not dead after all, climbing to his feet . . . but then it unfolded, with a whumph of displaced air and the familiar reek of blood.

One wing. Other wing. Like kindergarten-aged Trixie struggling to get her arms through the straps of her backpack. The span of them had to be at least twelve feet. They were snowy white where they weren't stained with blood or gunpowder residue. And now that she knew what to look for . . . now that she knew what she was looking at . . . she could see the shredded remains of white feathers scattered all across the room.

"Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Detective," he protested feebly, dwarfed by his own wings. "This isn't what it looks like. I am no angel."

"I've worked with you for three years, Lucifer. I know you're no angel."

This had clearly never occurred to him. He opened his mouth, thought for a minute, and closed it again without saying anything.

Gingerly, shakily, Chloe climbed to her feet. Her right shoulder ached like murder where the bullet had hit her. "Can I . . . may I . . . touch them?"

He acquiesced with a nod. Not even one innuendo joke, and she knew perfectly well she'd set herself up for one.

He obligingly folded one wing as she walked around him, getting it out of her way, then stretched it out again for her inspection.

His primary feathers had to be eighteen inches long . . . longer than an eagle feather or a turkey feather or any other feather she'd ever seen. She reached out a tentative hand and brushed their surface, careful to avoid the stains and to not disarrange the individual fibers. Lucifer hissed.

She yanked her hand back. "I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"No," he assured her. "It just, um, tickles."

Suddenly, both wings shuddered and flicked, like the skin of a horse bothered by flies. Chloe jumped, but only a little. When both the wings and her heart rate had calmed down, she extended her hand again. Firmer this time. Not tickling.

The wings joined to his back exactly along the long, brutal arcs of the scars she'd seen long ago. Of course, he was still in his shirt and jacket. Neither was damaged. The wings just . . . came through. As if the fabric at that particular point had become imaginary.

She touched the fabric of his jacket, then the base of his wing. There was no join, no hole, no transition. It was just one thing, then quite suddenly was the other thing.

Oh, well. It wasn't even in the top ten odd things that she'd encountered today. And really, the more immediate problem was the bright red mottling across his feathers.

"How freaked out should I be," she asked carefully, "about all this blood?"

"Not a bit. Rinses right off."

"Okay." If he was deliberately misunderstanding her, he was fine.

The wings were slowly normalizing in her head an under her hand. Chloe was a detective to her bones; the evidence was everything. What she saw, she believed. Lucifer had wings. She could see them, feel them. She could handle them. She could handle all of this. She would.

She made her way around him again; he politely tucked his other wing against his back and out of her path. She went down on one knee before him, coming eye to eye with her partner. He was still looking deflated and uncertain, which was not at all usual, but there was a restrained glimmer of hope in his face.

"Okay," she said, with a steadying breath. "Show me again."

"Are you sure?"

"No, but do it anyway."

He did so.

It was still a shock, but at least this time it was not a surprise. Here was Satan himself, eyes glowing like embers, looking what could only be described as sheepish.

She reached out one cautious hand to touch his cheek. She half expected it to be scorching hot, but the temperature was only a few degrees above what she'd expect from a human. Where his jaw was usually rough with roguish stubble, his skin was hairless and firm, rather like leather.

Lucifer sucked in his breath at her touch, and some part of her body that wasn't panicking was remembering how he'd panted when their heartbreakingly brief kiss had been interrupted by her ringing phone. A split second of blissful simplicity. She missed it.

Cautiously, she went over every inch of his face and his head—the ridges that drew back along his skull, the exaggerated cleft in his pointed chin, the prominent sockets around his glowing eyes. They were actually glowing; she could see them reflecting off the palm of her hand. He suffered this examination in uncharacteristic stillness and silence, letting her get her bearings.

Finally, she sat back on her heels. "Okay. Is there anything else?"

He glanced up toward the ceiling while he considered the question. "Wings, face, actually am the devil, Cain, angels, me not being one. I think that's the worst of it."

"Which face is easier?"

"Um . . . the human one, these days. I've got used to it, you see. In point of fact, this one has been AWOL for some time now."

"Then how about you switch back, and we can figure out what we're going to do about all this." She gestured to the collection of dead bodies sharing the room with them.

"Right." He hesitated for a minute, then asked, "That's really it? No screaming?"

"Haven't ruled it out for later, but for right now I just want to sleep for a year, and I can't do that until we figure out what we're going to tell the precinct."

Slowly, a delighted smile spread across his face . . . and halfway through, his face transformed again and her charming, infuriating partner was back. "Well then, Detective, let's get to work."

They worked it out while he gingerly eased his injured wings back into concealment. They'd stick to the truth, as much as possible; the hit man, the mythical sister, the trap. A quick change of wardrobe, moving the bulletproof vest from Chloe to Lucifer, helped to explain the decimated state of the front of his shirt. The goons had opened fire; Chloe had returned it; a few had been caught in their own crossfire, then Marcus had come at Lucifer with a knife and he'd been killed in the ensuing struggle. The whole story made Chloe look like something of an idiot, a passive observer to Lucifer's heroics, but that was a small price to pay. At least it gave them the advantage of both being "eyewitnesses," each vouching for the other's innocence.

When they had it straight, they called Dan. And in far less time than Chloe needed to get her head round everything, the room was crawling with LAPD.

Ella seemed to be everywhere at once: hugging Chloe, collecting bullet casings, hugging Lucifer, tagging blood spatter, hugging Dan, poking purple-gloved fingers into dead bodies. Dan stood in the middle of the chaos, staring abstractedly at Marcus's cooling body. Chloe heard herself talking, though it didn't feel like she was actually in charge of her mouth; she just recited what she and Lucifer had laid out, pausing every few seconds as Lucifer interjected unwelcome but blessedly normal commentary, emphasizing what was true and discreetly ignoring what wasn't. He was, in turn, interrupted every few comments by Ella, offering helpful insights as to how the evidence bore out their story.

"There's just one thing I can't figure out," Ella observed as she lowered her camera. "Where did all the feathers come from?"

"Feathers?" asked Lucifer blankly, as though he hadn't noticed them.

"Yeah. It looks like somebody shot a pillow, or a duvet, but I can't actually find a pillow or a duvet. Or a swan, or, like, a half dozen chickens." She spat a bit of inhaled feather out of her mouth. "Weird."

"Very," Chloe agreed.

Ella leaned in and examined Chloe's face. "You should go home," she pronounced. "You're completely out of it."

Chloe shook her head. "No, I can't leave Dan alone . . ."

"I've got Dan. I won't leave him alone. I promise. You really need to sleep. And to see your kid."

Trixie. She did need to see Trixie.

"I've got her," Lucifer promised, taking Chloe by the shoulders and steering her toward the exit. "Come along, Detective."

Chloe followed his direction with what might have been a suspicious degree of meekness if anyone had been paying attention. Lucifer bundled her peremptorily into the car, extracted it from the melee of police vehicles by means of driving the wrong way up a mercifully deserted one-way street, showed complete contempt for speed limits, and pulled into her driveway in considerably less than twenty minutes just as the bright orange sunset light was hitting the front windows.

The babysitter . . . what was her name? Laurie? No, Louisa . . . had been there since school had ended. Chloe was apologizing almost before she walked in the door. "Louisa, I'm so sorry—"

"Oh, no worries, Ms. Decker," Louisa protested cheerfully as she stood up from the kitchen table. "I don't have any class first period tomorrow anyway." Her textbooks and notebooks were spread in a penumbra around her seat. Behind her, in the living room, Trixie barely glanced up from her episode of Carmen Sandiego.

"Well, let me—"

"No, let me." Lucifer nudged her skillfully to the side as he reached into his pocket for his wallet. "I'll settle this, Detective. Why don't you go say hello to your offspring?"

His voice got Trixie's attention. "Hi, Lucifer!"

"Greetings," he returned offhandedly, already sorting through a wad of large-denomination bills.

Chloe dropped onto the couch next to her daughter and pulled her into a tight embrace. "Hey, Monkey," she murmured into her hair. "I'm so glad to see you; I missed you so much . . ."

"Mom, are you okay?" Trixie wriggled out of her grip to get a look at her face.

"Yes, baby, I'm fine. It's just . . ." She took a breath to brace herself. "You know Daddy's friend Charlotte?"

"Yeah."

"She . . . was killed. And we've got the guy who did it, but . . . it's been a really hard day for everybody."

Trixie obligingly snuggled into her mom's arms and hugged her hard. "I'm so sorry, Mom."

"It's okay. Our family's going to be okay."

Behind her, Chloe heard the door open as Lucifer let Louisa out with more profusions of gratitude. Without letting go of Trixie, she twisted around to see him. He was hesitating in the doorway, watching her, uncertain whether to stay or make a discreet exit.

Stay, she mouthed to him. He nodded and closed the door.

While she went through the comforting ritual of herding Trixie into bed, Lucifer sat at the kitchen counter and made phone calls. Their import became clear when she emerged from Trixie's room and found him digging through her freezer with a dish towel in hand.

"Ice," he announced, emerging with a long-forgotten cold pack. "Dr. Linda's orders. That shoulder is going to lead to awkward questions, seeing as how you aren't supposed to have been hit with any bullets and are reported to have not been wearing body armor."

This was undeniable. "Let me just brush my teeth first . . ."

He did not let her do anything of the kind. Instead, he stood with her in the bathroom and held the ice pack to her shoulder while she brushed her teeth and washed her face one-handed. It was ridiculous, but probably no more ridiculous than Satan being in her bathroom to begin with.

"All those games of Bloody Mary," she observed wryly, after spitting the last of the toothpaste foam into the sink.

"Beg your pardon?"

"When I was a kid, we girls would dare each other to turn off the lights in the bathroom, splash water on the mirror, and turn around three times chanting 'Bloody Mary.' It was supposed to summon a demon or something."

"Oh, it did. Sometimes. When Maze was bored."

"Well, never worked for me. And all of a sudden, here's the devil in my bathroom, and I didn't even have to draw a pentagram."

"You're really taking all of this remarkably . . . flippantly."

"That's rich, coming from you." She reached up, meaning to take the ice pack from him, but instead found her hand resting on his while she met his eyes in the mirror. "Can you stay?"

The question was yet another perfect setup for a sexual innuendo, but Lucifer spurned the bait like a gentleman. "Do you want me to?"

She nodded. "I just . . . don't want to be alone tonight."

He tipped his head until his cheek . . . stubbly and familiar . . . rested against her hair. "Your every desire, Detective, whatever it may be, is my command."

His politeness was almost starting to freak her out. She let go of his hand and took the ice pack. "There's a spare toothbrush in this drawer," she indicated. "I'll find you something to sleep in."

"Remember you're supposed to keep the ice pack on for another six minutes!" he called after her.

She was back in a minute, holding a pair of baggy gray NYPD sweatpants and an t-shirt that read "Fallen Officers Memorial 5K 2015." "There isn't any shaving stuff," she apologized. "Well, not for men, anyway. Not since Dan moved out."

"I'm sure I'll manage." He shook out the t-shirt and examined it. "You do have rather niche tastes in your bedfellows' sleepwear, don't you?"

"Now you're sounding more like yourself." She closed the door on him and went to change into her own pajamas.

Her bed. It had been hers exclusively since well before her divorce. She and Marcus . . . well, she'd been cautious about letting her dating and her parenting overlap. At least she'd exercised caution in one aspect of that relationship. She turned on the mismatched nightstand lamps, then crawled into bed and lay on her back . . . not her usual position, but the easiest way to keep the ice pack on her sore shoulder.

Lucifer joined her just in time to whisk the cold pack away and back into the freezer. Then he joined her under her blankets, moving cautiously, as though unsure of his welcome or where the limits of their drastically redefined relationship now lay.

Before she could launch into that conversation, for which she absolutely did not have the emotional energy, a welcome distraction appeared in the doorway. "Mom?"

And this was exactly why she didn't let men stay over at her place.

Her face flushed scarlet, but Trixie appeared totally unphased by the sight of Lucifer in her mother's bed. "Oh, hey, Lucifer. Are you sleeping over?"

"That is the general idea," Lucifer retorted, with the trace of impatience he always used with Trixie and that Trixie freely ignored.

"I just needed to not be alone tonight," Chloe hastened to explain.

Trixie nodded. "I kinda . . . don't want to be alone either."

Poor kid. Of course she didn't, after hearing about what had happened . . . even just a fraction of what had happened. Chloe patted the coverlet. "Come on in, Kiddo."

She glanced at Lucifer, more to gauge his reaction than because he had a say in the matter. He rolled his eyes and sighed. "Fine, human larvae. In you get."

Trixie scrambled under the covers, settling in on her mother's other side. Chloe reached out with her good arm to pet her daughter's hair, trying to remember the last time that Chloe had retreated to this bed for comfort. It had been a long time, but brought back so many memories . . . infant Trixie fussing to be fed, toddler Trixie afraid of ghosts, first grade Trixie brokenhearted because Ashleigh-with-a-GH had said she didn't get to be in their friend group anymore.

"Dad really liked Charlotte, huh?" Trixie asked carefully.

"Yeah, Monkey. I think he really did."

"I'm sorry she died."

"I am too, sweetheart."

She felt Lucifer's arm come around her shoulders, and caught a hint of the expensive cologne his abbreviated ablutions hadn't quite erased. "I don't know if it helps," he offered carefully, "But she is, in fact, in a better place. She had a personal escort to the Silver City of God."

Trixie raised her head a little to look at Lucifer over Chloe. "Is that what you believe?"

"That," said Lucifer, sounding affronted, "Is what I know."

"What's it like?"

He shrugged. "Well, if you've seen one celestial city you've seen them all, really. There's a river that runs through it, and the water smells like the flowers you sometimes encounter in really, really good dreams but can't remember afterward. There are gardens and fountains, and wide green lawns for all the dogs to play on . . ."

"There are dogs?"

"Well, of course there are dogs; where else would dogs go? And the sun is always shining . . . so it's a bit like Los Angeles that way. Only there's less traffic. And someone is always playing music, wherever you go. Boring stuff, most of it, but at least well-executed. Choral singing is quite popular. And . . . I'm not sure if it's the air or what exactly . . . but it's very easy to forget all the reasons one had to be sad, or lonely, or afraid. You can take a breath and just be really, truly calm. At peace."

Chloe turned her head on her pillow to watch him as he spoke. His gaze was unfocused . . . not imagining. Remembering.

He trailed off in mid-sentence and looked over at Trixie. "And she's out."

And so she was. Chloe extracted her hand from her daughter's hair and reached across her (wincing a little) to switch off the lamp on that side of the bed. Then she snuggled under the blankets and rested her head against Lucifer's shoulder. He obligingly pulled her close, settling his chin on her head.

"Sounds like a nice place," she murmured into his shirt.

"It does get boring after a while. But I have complete faith in our Charlotte's ability to keep the hosts of heaven on their toes."

He smelled so good. And his body was so warm. Not diabolically warm . . . just steady, radiant, human warm. Sandwiched between her daughter and her partner, Chloe could imagine what it was like to take a deep breath in heaven and feel totally, utterly safe.

A touch on her head . . . He was petting her hair as she'd done to Trixie's, letting the gold stands slide through his fingers. "I have to admit, Detective . . . this is not at ALL the threesome I had in mind."

There he was . . . the partner she loved to hate. She snorted. "If you're disappointed, you know where the door is."

"On the contrary. It's almost unsettling, considering everything that's happened today, and the absurd amount of cotton knit fabric you choose to sleep in, and the presence of your spawn . . . but I find myself inexplicably, deliriously happy. I don't think I've ever been quite so happy in my entire existence. Is it the bed? Do you always feel spectacularly happy when sleeping on a cheap innerspring mattress?"

That actually elicited a chuckle, though it felt like a lot of work . . . the warmth and the safety were rapidly shutting down her brain. "We might have to do some testing. Try other mattresses."

"Spectacular idea. Your bed, my bed . . . a charming little villa I know on the Sicilian coast . . . a representative sampling of the hotels in Las Vegas . . ."

She could only manage a "Hmph" this time.

"Detective? Chloe?" He leaned close and whispered in her ear. "Darling?"

"Mmmmm?"

"I can't reach the light if you fall asleep on me like this. I'm trapped."

"Nnngh." She sighed, gathering the presence of mind for one more sentence. "You're the Prince of Darkness. You figure it out."

And then she was gone.