in the land of gods and monsters

by qqueenofhades

Stardust AU. When Chloe Decker, a LAPD homicide detective, visits her friend Linda Martin in the strange little town of Wall, England, she is about to stumble on a world much weirder than she imagined, and a man she never saw coming. If she can survive the adventure and Lucifer Morningstar alike - not to mention what she might just learn about her own past - it'll be a miracle.

1. The World Beyond The Wall

::: in the land of gods and monsters:::

in the land of gods and monsters, i was an angel
living in the garden of evil,
screwed up, scared, doing anything that i needed,
shining like a fiery beacon,
you got that medicine i need
fame, liquor, love, give it to me slowly.
put your hands on my waist, do it softly.
me and god we don't get along, so now i sing.

---

PART ONE: THE WORLD BEYOND THE WALL

---

I.

Wall, England, is not the easiest place in the world to get to.

Especially, that is, from the West Coast of America. First it's a ten-hour-plus flight from LAX to London, then an hour-long flight to Manchester, then a two-hour train trip further north to Carlisle, and then finding a train service that runs only twice a day with approximately six passengers but which byzantine English railroad regulations won't allow to actually be axed without endless fuss and bother and popped monocles, and climbing aboard for another forty-odd minutes (assuming there aren't sheep on the tracks or something) to get to the nearest station, which in fact is still thirty minutes away from Wall. The last stop past nowhere is a pretty good way to describe it. And when you're standing on the empty platform, shivering until your teeth rattle after a day and night of traveling, freezing because you're from California and the wind cuts right through your light jacket, and your phone doesn't work because there's no godforsaken wifi signal for you to so much as use WhatsApp, and you're exhausted and your knees are buckling, you begin to wonder if this was entirely worth it.

What were you even thinking, anyway?

Such is the predicament that Chloe Decker is, in fact, presently in. Linda said she was going to be here when the train arrived, but it is a solid twenty minutes past said arrival, it's dark as the inside of Donald Trump's soul, there is nobody else here (even the tiny ticket window has had the shutters put up for the night) and she's reduced to hopping from foot to foot to not freeze to death. At least her bags made the endless journey with her, so it could be worse, and at least she's here. She can't deny she has been looking forward to this, if nothing else because she desperately needs to get away. She's been a police detective in Los Angeles for almost the last decade, has just finalized her divorce, and is now facing the prospect of being a mid-thirties single mom with few friends, a dead father, a wacky mother, and no siblings or other family to speak of, a stressful and isolating career where she still has to see her ex every day at the office, and the haunting specter of many, many cats in her future. Linda Martin used to be a high-powered shrink in L.A., but she left the rat race, and the country, about five years ago and moved here, to the back of beyond. Now she grows vegetables and goes hill-walking and, presumably, relaxes. Chloe wonders what that's like. She has a vague academic idea, but no more.

At last, just when she's wondering if it would be safe to hitchhike, headlights appear around the corner, gravel crunches, and Linda finally pulls up in her little silver hatchback. She gets out, apologizes profusely for her lateness, hugs Chloe tightly and tells her that she's glad she's here, and hauls her bags into the trunk (or, Chloe supposes, boot). She starts to get into the passenger side before remembering that that is of course the driver's side here, switches around, and buckles up. The heat is on high, Linda is playing some CD of Celtic harp music, and Chloe starts to doze as they bump along narrow single-track roads with wild thorny hedgerows to every side, ancient yews and hawthorns craning overhead. Linda makes light conversation, nothing too stressful, knowing she's exhausted and jet-lagged, until they turn down a dark lane that seems to last forever and finally come to a halt at the end. Linda's house is a small cottage of grey stone, covered with vines and moss, from the 1700s or something. She got it at a good price since it needed so much work, and she's looking forward to showing off the results.

Chloe stumbles out of the car, sleepy and yawning, as her boots squelch in the mud (she has been warned to be prepared for plenty of this, especially in northern England in March) and she follows Linda up to the green-painted door and ducks inside. The ceilings are low, the beams crooked, the floors wooden, and there's a warm fire in the living room. There are shelves of books, quilts draped over the back of the couch, diamond-glass windows, and the stairs groan like an old man with arthritis when Chloe heads up them to the second floor. The guest room is tucked under a gable, and she shuts the doors, gets undressed, and proceeds to plow into bed like a crashing Star Destroyer. She's so wiped that she should just drop off like someone shot her in the head, and she nearly does, but this place keeps thumping and whispering, and even for someone as completely skeptical and agnostic as she is, it half makes her wonder if some ghost in a fancy coat and a wig is going to drift through that door and give her a terrible turn. This place is probably haunted. Would Linda have told her if it was haunted? She would have, right?

Boogeymen or no boogeymen, however, exhaustion finally wins out. And when it does, Chloe's sleep is completely and utterly dreamless.

"So," she says the next morning, when she's showered, fought with the sink taps (there are two, one dispenses very hot water and the other very cold water, so it's either scorching or freezing when you're trying to wash your face) and, feeling somewhat more human, has bumbled downstairs to the kitchen, where Linda has made a delicious traditional English breakfast (well, delicious if you like things fried, and also fried, and beans, but there you go). "You going to, I don't know, take me out and see the sights? Whatever passes for them in Wall, that is?"

"If you want to." Linda forks more sausages onto her plate. "But remember, Chloe, I asked you if you wanted to come and stay so you could have time for you. It's about what you want to do. There's a bike in the garden shed, it's only a ten-minute ride into town, you're welcome to look around. Go wherever you want, but. . ." She pauses, then says lightly, "Don't cross the wall."

"What? Oh right, the one this town is named for?" Chloe taps her phone, which still isn't working. Linda has internet, of course, but she's said that electronics just sometimes fritz out here for no apparent reason, so unless that cooperates, cozy evening Netflix binges might be out. "Why, I might end up in Scotland? Or is it some kind of cultural thing?"

"I suppose both, really." Linda sits down with her coffee, which she still drinks as an expat, though she's made Chloe some proper tea. "You just. . . well, it's better not to."

"Oh?" Chloe raises an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. "Why, what's it supposed to do?"

"It leads into another world." Linda takes a sip of her coffee. "Things are. . . thin up here."

"Right, okay. Local folklore, like you don't step into a stone circle or whatever because it might be a faerie circle, and you don't get yelled at in a very thick brogue when you go back to town the next time." Chloe puts the last of her egg onto her toast and gulps it down, then wipes her fingers and gets up. "Don't worry, the wall is safe from me. Have a good day, Linda."

Linda graciously wishes her the same, and Chloe gets her bag, heads out to the shed, and spends the next twenty minutes engaged in a battle of wills with the bicycle, which does not have gears, appears to be older than her, and was almost certainly ridden by someone wearing tweed between air-raid observation stations during World War II. She finally swings astride, and kicks off. It's a clear, breezy morning, the endless pale sky striated with wisps of white cloud, and as she pedals up the lane and onto the main road ("main road" being something of a misnomer for the single track) her first and overwhelming impression is of space. She didn't see it last night, because it was dark, but the countryside just goes on forever, unbroken by any human intervention or clutter. She passes a tiny, ancient Norman church tucked in a grove, and when she gets to higher ground, can see the horizon rising and opening up into the distant blue fells of Scotland (they are close enough to the border here that it would be possible to end up in the wrong country if you were teetering home from a boozy night out) and can taste the cleanliness and the silence in the air, the windswept, rolling ground. A place more different from loud, noisy, crowded, traffic-choked, hot, busy, endless-city Los Angeles is difficult to imagine.

She arrives in "downtown" in another few minutes, parks the bike and locks it just in case (you can take the girl out of the big city, etc etc) and has a wander among the narrow, winding streets. Everything looks straight out of Harry Potter, with red phonebooths, secondhand bookshops, candy stores, cafes, tearooms, pubs, antique bazaars, the tourist bureau ("Welcome to Magical Wall, England") and only here and there a vestige of modern civilization: the Co-operative, the Boots, the Caffé Nero, the bank and post office. It takes Chloe a while to find an ATM, though she's sure she's getting scalped on the exchange rate and international withdrawal fees, and she browses in search of a fun gift for Trixie. She's staying with her grandmother for the three weeks Chloe is planning to be here, so heaven knows if she'll come home and find her seven-year-old daughter dolled up to accompany Penelope to an audition for another schlocky vampire romance or cut-rate sci-fi movie. That's what she gets for having no friends and no options. Well, Linda was her friend, but now that she's moved here, it doesn't really count.

Once she's picked up something suitably Potterish for her kid, and since the day is still nice, Chloe decides on a whim to go out and have a look at this famous wall. It's close enough that she leaves the bike where it is, following the trail out toward the meadow where it stretches. It's apparently not part of Hadrian's Wall, which was her first guess, but something entirely its own, no different from any of the countless old stone walls that crisscross this part of the country. There's a break in it, a gap, where theoretically some enterprising sort could have a wander on through (you know, or just step over it, since it's like three feet tall – hardly going to stop the White Walkers when they invade). She walks up to it, a few yards away, and considers. It's definitely just Scotland on the other side (which, to be fair and if you've ever been to Glasgow, may certainly qualify as another world). It's not like Linda to credulously buy fairy tales; she's a trained scientist, a psychiatrist, a professional skeptic. But then again, there's something to be said for not pissing off your new neighbors as the boorish American who can't be bothered to respect your culture and your local traditions. So, since Chloe is not about to start any international incidents, she duly takes a few pictures on her phone, turns around, and heads back.

She picks up a plug adapter, since it was the one important thing she managed to forget in her packing, then bikes back to Linda's in the lengthening, golden-green spring afternoon (she's lucky it's not winter, or it would definitely be dark by now). Linda is out, presumably puttering around, and Chloe changes clothes, sends a chatty email to Trixie, and is going to attach a picture of the wall since Trixie will love that whole story, when she opens it on her phone and finds that they're gone. Not all the pictures she took, just the ones of the wall. Technology fritz and all, okay, but it's still annoying. This place is stuck in the 19-frigging-40s.

Chloe bums about on the internet, which at least appears to be working, until she hears Linda come home, and heads downstairs to be sociable. They make dinner together and chat, Linda wants to know how she's doing after Dan, and Chloe stoutly insists that she's fine. Perfectly fine. It was a mutual and adult decision, there are no hard feelings, they just knew it wasn't working out, that they couldn't go on with their marriage after Palmetto and everything that happened there. They're committed to being great parents to Trixie, and will figure out how to still be coworkers at the precinct. It's fine. Did she mention it's fine?

Linda gives her a look. That is the downside of being friends with a shrink. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Chloe stabs the potato with the peeler. "I'm not really enthused about having to get back into the dating pool, but honestly, I doubt I'm going to meet anyone, and that's fine. I have my job anyway. It's better to take time, to move on properly, to give Trixie time to adjust. You know me. I'm not a jump-into-the-rebound type of girl, and anyway, what about you? Isn't there some handsome British gent somewhere who might sweep you off your feet?"

Linda coughs, cheeks going pink. "No, no. Well, there was – never mind. That was a one-time thing. All right, a several-times thing, but. . . anyway, as I said, never mind. Really. It was. . . complicated."

"Oh?" Chloe teases. "What, you met Hugh Grant or something? Come on, share."

"It was not one of my more intelligent decisions, I promise." Linda looks wry. "Not long after I moved here. He was very, very handsome, but, well, a total hell-raiser. I slept with him a few – well, more than a few – times, but believe me, it would never have worked, for any number of reasons. I ended it and I haven't seen him since. Or anyone. So yes, I'd say my love life is going about as well as yours, but that's all right. Things work out when they work out."

"Just promise you'll let me move in with you or something, if I'm ever in danger of adopting several cats and subscribing to knitting magazines." Chloe reaches for the masher. "I'm sure Trixie would love to visit here, but I don't know how she'd feel about leaving all her friends and her whole life behind, so. . . I suppose I'd end up staying in Los Angeles. But hey." She pauses, then shrugs. "After all, I need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, right?"

Linda laughs, assures her that it is so (though with one final look at her) and they set the table and eat. Once they've washed up and Linda's gone into the study, Chloe goes upstairs and runs a hot bath, tests it cautiously to make sure she won't broil like a chicken, then strips and climbs in with a deep sigh. She closes her eyes and luxuriates for a while, wet hair straggling down her shoulders, then opens them to find the room rather. . . brighter than it was before. People have told her she has a habit of glowing when she's happy, which Chloe takes as a figure of speech: everyone glows when they're happy. But Dan claimed it was something different, like an actual white shine, something you can see and sense, that makes you feel changed. Which was a romantic thing to say at the time, sure, but which still doesn't make, you know, any sense.

Chloe stands up with a splash, gets out, and dries herself off. The wind is whistling forlornly past the eaves of the cottage, and she firmly resolves not to think about ghosts tonight. She has a fat paperback novel that she's been meaning to start, and she tucks up under the covers (there is a draft coming from somewhere that she can't evade no matter how hard she tries) and cracks it open, leaning against the pillows. See. Look at her. Relaxing.

At last, when her eyes are starting to droop, she puts the book on her bedside table, gets a glass of water, and is preparing to go to sleep, when it strikes her that she can hear something that sounds like distant music. It doesn't seem to be coming from downstairs, and Linda doesn't exactly have any nearby neighbors, unless somebody is having a really loud party (this doesn't seem like the kind of place, since the pub is the only establishment that doesn't close at six PM). Chloe is curious enough to open her window and stick her head out, but since this is a dark night in the middle of nowhere, it doesn't exactly solve the mystery. She can definitely hear it, though. Sounds kind of gypsy, almost. Baroque, older. The wind is blowing in her face, and when it shifts, the music just as abruptly stops. As if you can only hear it with the right breeze.

Okay, well. This place has its quirks, for sure. This is not doing much to make her not think about ghosts, but this is definitely the kind of thing that gives a place character. Chloe pulls her head in, shuts the window, and gets into bed, absently fiddling with her necklace. It's a slender silver chain with the tiniest of diamonds, and for as long as she can possibly remember, she has never taken it off. Not to sleep or shower or exercise or anything, ever. She doesn't even know why. Just that the thought of doing so gives her the kind of clammy hands and pounding heart normally reserved for the possibility of being in a bad car crash, as if it's completely and vitally important that she doesn't, that she doesn't even think of it. It's just a weird phobia, and one of the reasons she befriended Linda in the first place, seeking someone, anyone to talk to that wasn't her mother. But while Linda may have sorted out some of her other shit, she didn't make any headway on the necklace. It stays. Coping talisman or whatever words Linda used, Chloe doesn't remember. It's better than drink or drugs or cigarettes or anything else unhealthy, so hey.

Tonight, she dreams of dancing with someone. A man. All night, endlessly, to that same strange music, the way the faeries are supposed to dance you to dawn, or two hundred years from now, in their barrows under the hills. But no matter how hard she looks, she can never see his face.

---

II.

It is a week into her stay in Wall, and Chloe is just getting to the place where she might, somewhat, possibly feel anything less than wound to total explosion, which leads her to wonder if she will finally become actually relaxed and then have to embark on the whole long odyssey home the very next day. That's a depressing thought, and she tries to push it out of her head. Linda has taken her out for day trips, they've gone to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and Bamburgh Castle and Alnwick and other scenic bits of Northumbria, and Chloe has plenty of gorgeous pictures on her camera (she keeps checking to see if they've vanished, but nope, still only the wall – the technology-eating gremlins must take the legend seriously). She is also vaguely surprised to realize she doesn't miss Los Angeles at all. Well, she misses Trixie, and her familiar routines, and sunlight (there's not exactly an overflowing supply of it here) but beyond that, nada. She's lived in L.A. her entire life, her dad was on the force before her, and it feels like she should be missing it more – it's her home. But she just. . . isn't.

She also has to admit that it's deeply nice not to roll out of bed, go to work, and find out who has been brutally murdered today, and she struggles with the guilt of feeling that way. She started this job because she wanted to help people, she wanted to catch killers and see that they were punished, she wanted to continue her dad's work, after he was gunned down when she was nineteen in a routine convenience-store stickup gone wrong. It's not like all the criminals of Los Angeles will suddenly go un-caught while she's on vacation; she has an entire department to cover her butt, after all. It's not like she was doing it alone. But Chloe isn't good when she's not working, just because it's the way she successfully avoids thinking about anything else. Now, with all this time off, she's just starting to realize that she may be way more fucked up than she is remotely comfortable admitting, like years and years of this shit have stacked up without ever getting purged, and while it might be convenient that she is staying with a shrink, she's not going to burden Linda with an exhaustive recitation of her problems. They're not bad problems. Not ridiculous problems, not life-or-death problems. Just the problems everyone has in their lives. She just has to put on her big-girl panties, as the saying goes, and deal with it.

In any event, Linda seems to sense at least some of this, because she suggests that they go to the pub for trivia night that Saturday. Chloe is known to let her hair down a bit, rather literally, when she's had a couple drinks, and she can kick ass at Trivial Pursuit, so off they go. The pub is some charming three-hundred-year-old establishment with ceilings low enough to nearly concuss any tallish fellow wandering unwarily through, and once Chloe and Linda have staked out their table and grabbed their trivia paddles, they certainly attract a local lad or two interested in joining them. Chloe gives them a demure not-interested smile and has them step along.

The evening goes almost well, improving when she's put down a few draft ales, and by the time they hit the final question – "What cult 2000 American teen film is known for setting a dubious record by making only $1,863 in box-office release, but becoming the most-streamed title on PirateBay in the first year of that site's existence?" – Chloe is all ready to rock and roll with the answer. She shoots to her feet. "Oh yeah! Hot Tub High School!"

The buzzer goes off, she and Linda win the pot (which is about £50 and gift vouchers to local businesses – this is Wall, not the final round of Jeopardy) and everyone is slightly incredulous, especially the five-person team of fuckboys that they edged out for the prize and who probably should have known this their-damn-selves, sucks to be them. When Linda has gone out to get the car, one of said fuckboys ventures an approach. Evidently it's dawned on him. "Wait. Hot Tub High School. Weren't you the bird who – "

"Nope. No clue what you're talking about." Chloe flips her hair over her shoulder, pulls on her coat, and marches out, into the cool, starry night. She's feeling pretty good, all things considered. Might as well use that albatross around her neck to get something out of it, right? Her first and only starring role. Her dad never even got to see it. Got killed right as it was coming out.

Chloe has walked for several minutes before it occurs to her that it seems to be taking longer to get to the car than it did to get to the pub when they arrived. Damn, all these narrow little lanes look the same. But she's pretty sure it was this one, she wasn't going to wait around and let any more of Wall's local fauna figure out anything about her IMDB page, and Linda will probably catch her halfway. She loves nights like these, anyway. You so rarely get them in Los Angeles, with all the light pollution, and it's been. . . shit, she can't even remember how long it's been. They make her feel cleaner, lighter, like she can take a running start and leap into the soft velvet darkness and it will catch her, wrap its arms around her, lift her feet off the ground until she can fly. It's a ridiculous little-girl thing, but still.

She's walked for several more minutes after the first several when it occurs to her that she can hear music ahead – the same kind she heard the other night. Loud and lively and upbeat and swingy, the kind that makes you want to pull the elastic out of your hair (well, she's already done that) and get down on the dance floor, not that she dances. There's that strange hurdy-gurdy quality to it, like some Victorian music-hall, until she finds herself picking up the pace, her detective's instincts piqued to solve the mystery. She was pretty buzzed when she set out, but she feels, if not entirely sober, less tipsy now. Focused. Heart pitter-pattering. Excited.

The ground slopes up under her feet, wild and broken, and she breathes hard as she climbs, until she can definitely see light ahead, some kind of warm yellow glow – not electrical light, and not firelight either, something else. Stranger. That seems to be the buzzword of the evening (or at least this part of it). Then her foot skids, she gasps and clutches at a gnarled root to keep her balance, and there are earthen steps beneath her, leading down into a. . .

Chloe has no idea what it is. Village? Market? Traveling fair? Must be another Wall thing, some midnight Saturday hootenanny where local merchants turn up in cosplay or whatever. She doesn't have any other notion how to describe it, just that the night is suddenly filled with music and magic and wonder, light and color and sound. Brightly painted wooden wagons are parked to every side, and people in dresses and waistcoats and hats and cravats are selling things out of the back. Little glass flowers and silver-and-gold charms, ancient-looking swords, battered amulets, cages of rats and ravens, leather-bound books that crackle, things that sing, things that chirp, things that change shape (she'd swear) if you're looking at them out of the corner of your eye. More vendors wander with trays of roasted chestnuts or loaves of steaming bread or bowls of soup, vats of wine or something that smells dark and spicy, until Chloe can't catch her breath and can't look in every direction fast enough, entranced and delighted. Damn, why didn't Linda tell her about this? They could have planned to hit this place up with their bounteous trivia-night fortune. She's got to pick up something for Trixie from here.

Chloe veers in the direction of the nearest wagon, which is operated by a rather slovenly-looking woman in a dirty yellow apron. But she sells beautiful jewelry, even though it's probably going to be out of her price range, as well as a bit much for a seven-year-old. Chloe fingers a necklace, something she likes for herself, though it isn't as if she's really an accessories girl – her own necklace and her earring studs are as far as she ever goes. "How much for this?"

The woman eyes her. "Might be the color of your hair," she says, "though yours ain't much. Or all your memories before you were three. If they're good ones, that is."

"What?" Chloe is rather miffed at the slight on her hair. "I meant, how much in you know, pounds?"

The woman picks her teeth and stares at Chloe as if she's grown an extra head.

"Cash?" Chloe tries. "I'm sorry, I'm from America, but – "

"That necklace of yours there." The woman leans forward, poking at it. "What's it?"

"Hey!" Chloe swats at her; she doesn't appreciate the personal space invasion. "That's mine. I was just looking at your stuff, but. . . okay, have a nice night. I'll be on my way."

Joy slightly dimmed by that unproductive encounter (so, that is, much the same as calling to try to cancel your cable TV) Chloe backs away from Scary Zero-Customer-Service Lady and wonders if she dares to do business with anyone else, or it's a sign that she should probably bag it for the night. If she can find her way out of here, that is, as this place is a rabbit warren and she can't remember which side she came in. She can still hear the music, closer now, and it sounds like a piano – a really good piano, or at least really good piano player. She'll go look, drop a couple quid in his hat, and then head back before Linda starts to worry.

Chloe negotiates through the crowds, wondering if the police are going to turn up to issue a noise citation if this goes on much longer or if it's an established thing, until she reaches the source of the music. It's indeed a piano, set on an open-air dais, and the guy playing it is. . . well, honestly, the only word that comes to mind is wow. Having seen a sufficient sample of English men by now to know that they are not inherently hot (indeed, often rather the opposite) she's almost tempted to change her conclusions, just on account of him. It's kind of annoying how perfectly he fits the tall-dark-and-holy-hell-handsome trope. Just the right crisp curl on his hair and level of fashionable stubble, Victorian-style jacket and waistcoat and pleated trousers that could kill a man, and he sings. She doesn't recognize the song, something jazzy, though she probably should. He has a glass of something perched atop the piano, and when he finishes, to a ripple of applause, he picks it up and tosses it down. Just. Damn.

Chloe fishes in her pocket for the tip, even as she notices that other people (not surprisingly) seem to be coming forward to talk to him. Looks like a Mafia loan shark cutting deals, the vibe she gets from those transactions. The people definitely have something they want, and he flashes that possibly literal lady-killer smile and says something in return, clandestine items occasionally change hands (she watches closely, a cop's nature to sniff out shady dealings) and she's about to step forward and ask him what exactly he's up to, before remembering that this of course is England and she has no jurisdiction. Still, it can't hurt to put a little fear of God into him, just in case. Once his last customer has drifted off, she strides forward. "So, playing piano isn't all you do here, is it?"

He swivels around to stare at her, looks her up and down with no pretense of doing anything besides checking her out without a scrap of shame, and grins lasciviously. "Well. Good evening to you too, my dear. And what is it you want?"

Of course his accent is utterly delicious. Not that that is pertinent to anything, but still. She crosses her arms and gives him a tight little smile. "Actually, I was just wondering if the laws on drug-dealing or whatever you've got going on were that different between England and the U.S., but I'm sure it's all on the up and up?"

He looks at her completely blankly, takes out a bottle, and pours another dram. "Come again?"

Chloe belatedly realizes that these are fighting words, especially to a complete stranger in some weird traveling circus at midnight, but with the opening gambit struck, she refuses to look like a coward by withdrawing. "You. Here. Your little sing-a-song-and-make-a-deal thing?"

"Ah. Yes, yes, that's exactly what I do." He takes a sip, with an obnoxiously charming little grin. "And how can I help you this evening, darling? If you find you can't possibly resist me, I do take payment in trade."

"I beg your pardon?" Chloe sputters, not least because she's pretty sure he just bald-facedly asked if she'd like to jump his bones for whatever weird favor he thinks she wants, thirty seconds after meeting her. "Are the laws on public solicitation also that different over here?"

"You're a tedious one, aren't you?" He finishes off the drink – either that's not as strong as it looks, or it is, and he intends to be even more sloshed than she was by the end of the night, because he's putting it down like water. "Are you sure I can't help you? Because, darling, it is apparent that you need a great deal of help."

"I don't need help." No matter what she was thinking this morning. God, between Scary Lady and now Casanova, she's pretty sure this fair is where all the weirdoes get to hang out and have their own party, which. . . nice of Wall to let them have it, but still. "Especially not from you."

"Where are you from?" He cocks his head like a hound on point, studying her intently. "I've never seen you before, and I would remember. Besides, you stick out like a bloody sore thumb."

"I stick out?" That is plenty rich coming from him. "I'm from America."

He stares at her uncomprehendingly. "America?"

What the hell? Sure, they live up the ass-crack of nowhere, but it is 2016. Even if it fritzes, the internet is a thing – and seriously, how can you not know what America is? Chloe isn't one of those obnoxious tourists who expects everywhere in the world to speak English and cater to her every whim, but she'd think it would be a pretty basic tenet of knowledge for, you know, anyone conscious in the modern world. "California? Los Angeles?"

"Ah! Los Angeles!" He brightens. "That explains it. Knew someone else from there. All the beautiful women come from there, eh?"

This is transparently another bad chat-up line, but it's still almost effective, damn it. "And what planet are you from? London?"

"Oh, I would very much like to go there, frankly." He shuts the piano lid and turns to face her, legs jauntily crossed. "Do you think you could get me there?"

"And you couldn't. . . why?"

"Well, I'm sure plenty of people would tell me that it doesn't really exist, does it?" Tall-Dark-and-Dumb gives her that winning grin. It is very winning, fuck it. "But me, for once, I'll go ahead and have faith that it does. Not usually my thing, faith, but you, you've been there, haven't you? So I was right."

This night is getting weirder by the instant. "I'm. . . I'm sorry, who are you?"

"Name's Lucifer." He pulls a chased-silver case out of his jacket pocket, removes a cigarette that looks distinctly hand-rolled, and an antique lighter that takes a few clicks to produce a spark. He touches it to the end and takes a luxuriant drag. "Lucifer Morningstar."

"Lucifer Morningstar?" She laughs incredulously. "Wow, you must have had a great time at school. So were your parents cultists, or really into Wicca, or. . .?"

"My parents were the king and queen of Stormhold." He regards her coolly through the haze of smoke. "My father was a distant and unloving berk, Mum was. . . well, Mum, and my brothers are a lot of squabbling, power-hungry imbeciles, who all want the throne for themselves. I wasn't interested in participating in the perennial pastime of fratricide, so I left them bloody to it. Not much choice, really, after I got chucked out. You can blame Dad for that. I can assure you, I do."

"Stormhold? What's that, in Scotland?"

"Are you sure you're all right, darling? You're not making a lick of sense."

"I'm the one not making sense?"

"Yes, indeed." He takes another drag on the cigarette, then offers it to her, as if it will help to take a hit off his doobie. "Need to relax badly, don't you?"

"I'm totally relaxed."

"Yes, I can see that, unless you meant you're not. Sure you don't want to come home with me? You'll be extremely relaxed once I'm done."

For a moment, despite how utterly, resoundingly, unapologetically, impossibly inappropriate this guy (Lucifer, seriously?) is, a part of Chloe can't help but be slightly flattered at his obvious interest, before she catches herself. She is not still nineteen years old, thank God, and certainly not some doe-eyed ingénue to get all weak in the knees because an attractive guy made a pass at her. "Does that line ever actually work?"

"Yes, in fact. You're being quite unusually stubborn." His dark brows crease in befuddlement. "You are a human female, aren't you? They usually find me irresistible."

"What are you, a. . . Stormholder? Martian?"

"Well, Mum was a Lilim, which Dad found out rather too late. That accounted for the wings, and other bits. And of course there's plenty of fae and star and whatever-else blood mixed up in the family tree, so I'm not sure what you'd call me, exactly." He sounds surprised, as if it's the first time it has ever occurred to him. "But a black sheep by any other name, eh?"

"How can you not know what London is, but be familiar with Shakespeare?

"Shakespeare?" He blinks. "As in Captain Shakespeare, the fearsome airship pilot? Well, I say fearsome, though the stories I could tell you about that one – "

"No! William Shakespeare! Famous English playwright?"

"Never heard of him. Probably ripped off the name." Lucifer Morningstar takes a few more drags on his cigarette, then stubs it out. "Well, I personally don't think you should be wandering alone at night in your clearly befuddled state – I don't believe you've given me the delight of an introduction to such a charming but addled young lady, have you?"

"Chloe." She hesitates. "Decker. I'm a – a detective." Which is a stupid thing to say, but he seems to be finding her funny, and it just slipped out. At least it's a glancing explanation as to why she's been so anal with him. She doesn't even know why.

"De-tect-ive?" He sounds it out with intent attention, like a foreign word he wants to memorise. "And what do you do? Skulk about in pursuit of anyone who might be engaged in a potential act of vice, and rush in to put a stop to it in a blaze of righteous glory?"

"I – well, if you count being a cop a blaze of glory, that's. . . not too far off, I suppose. I investigate murders, though. So the vice is usually well over by the time I get there."

"Investigate murders?" He looks up at her with the expression of a puppy that has just heard its owner get the leash to take it out for a walk. "Now that sounds absolutely thrilling. You really must let me come along."

"No way in hell, buddy." Chloe, despite herself, is almost enjoying this ludicrous conversation with this insanely handsome piano-playing crazy man named Lucifer. "Solving homicides is not a spectator sport."

"Spectator sport?" He sounds wounded. "I assure you, I wouldn't be dead weight. I'm very useful. And talented. Particularly with my tongue, but there are other arenas."

"You don't get out much, do you? Aside from Storm. . . hold."

"Oh, I left there eons ago." He attempts a shrug. "Over it, really. Entirely overrated. Now, if you're going to persist in breaking my. . . heart, can I at least walk you home?"

Chloe is about to turn him down, but it is dark, and she did get lost coming out of the pub, and he doesn't give off an axe-murderer vibe, at least, unless her female intuition about guys is way off. Eccentric and blithely oblivious and babbling nonsense, sure, but not dangerous. Maybe she should be scared of him, but she isn't. Might as well make sure he leaves the premises tidily. How long has she been here, anyway? She can't really remember.

"Fine," she says. "Just back to town, though."

He springs up with much élan, and grabs his jacket from the bench. He's practically a foot taller than her, long and lean, and the unwelcome thought occurs from nowhere that she could tuck her head directly under his chin. Not that she'd ever want to do that, of course. He's never been rejected by a woman in his life, as far as she can tell – and to be honest, that face and smolder and puppy-dog eyes and oddly adorable ignorance of basically anything apparently works really well for him, though she's not sure why nobody has turned down a total idiot himbo who doesn't even know what America is or if London is real. Maybe they feel sorry for him and decide to give him private lessons. Yeah. That's probably it.

Lucifer trots at her side as they leave the market, closer than you'd normally walk next to someone you met five (or however many) minutes ago, even if you openly fessed up that you were trying to score for the night. She'd think he was trying to creep on her, if not for the fact that he doesn't seem to realize he's doing it, and that she. . . kind of likes having him there. For no earthly reason she could possibly explain. They climb up the muddy steps, he gives her a gentlemanly hand which she instinctively takes, and skid down the wet ground on the far side. Once they recover their balance, she quickly pulls away. "I've got it, thanks."

He gives her that amused look of his, as they walk for another few minutes, the path tilts down again, and to her considerable surprise, Chloe sees the wall in front of her. That one, obviously, since there's only one around here. She didn't even realize she was anywhere near it, and it occurs to her suddenly that it looks different. That she is. . . on the other side.

Oh shit. The Wallians or Walloons or whatever they're called are going to be very disappointed in her, even if she was tipsy and crossed by accident. Probably make her return that whopping £50 trivia night jackpot and those precious Poundworld coupons (but really, if everything already costs £1, how can you even have Poundworld coupons?) But hey, maybe this explains the funny farm, if it's just a matter of being too embarrassed to have the lunatics out in public, and she turns around. "Hey, don't tell anyone about this, all right? I don't want to cause an – "

He's not there. The wind is scraping across the empty moorland. It's utterly dark and silent. There's no sign that anything, much less that entire expansive fair, was ever anywhere.

What the hell.

Chloe stands there staring for a moment longer, rubs a hand over her eyes, shakes her head, pulls her jacket tighter, decides to get moving before Linda calls in the helicopters, and runs.

---

III.

Chloe wakes up the next morning, slightly dirty and grimy and grass-stained with a faint headache, but otherwise entirely normal, completely convinced (quite naturally and understandably) that holy shit, last night was a strange and highly colored dream. What do they put in the beer around here, anyway? At least Linda hadn't called in the RAF – in fact, she doesn't seem to have noticed that Chloe was missing at all. When Chloe let herself into the cottage at stupid o'clock in the morning, everything looked normal, Linda's car was parked in the driveway, and when Chloe opened her door to check, she was fast asleep. No wonder by the time Chloe wakes up herself, she has safely relegated it to the realm of drinking stories that will be hard to top. You know, if she did drinking stories, or went out with the guys to the Paddock bar. That wasn't her thing before, and it's become even more a no-go after Malcolm.

She gets up, showers for twenty minutes to get the residue of her midnight fever dream off, and heads downstairs for breakfast. "Hey, Linda. So, by any chance, did you, um, did you not hear me come in last night?"

Linda gives her a strange look. "Why? Were you out?"

"I just meant, after you left the pub to get the car, I left and went out as well and looked for you, but I must have gotten a little turned around, and it took me a while to find my way back, and I thought you might be worried." Chloe tries to keep her tone casual. "That's all."

Linda gives her an even stranger look. "I got in the car and waited for you, then I saw you walking down the road back to the house, so I pulled up and asked if you wanted a ride. But you didn't answer, and since it was a nice night and it's very safe to walk around here, I thought you just wanted to enjoy it. I drove home and saw a light on in your window, so I thought nothing else of it and went to bed. Are you saying. . .?"

"I. . . well, that's weird, but then again, last night was. . . last night was very weird. I had the hell of a dream, or hangover, or whatever. You're gonna laugh at me, but. . ." With that, Chloe spills the whole sordid saga of her midnight venture to Crazy Town, expecting Linda to chuckle and let her know that she now has a Wall tall tale of her very own. But instead, her friend is looking back at her with a slightly furrowed brow, quite serious and not at all laughing it up, until Chloe trails off. "Wait. What the hell. Are you – come on, Linda, the whole thing, and in what realm would I actually meet a guy named Lucifer Morningstar who – "

"Lucifer?" Linda's look breaks records for weirdness. "You met Lucifer?"

"Wha – ?" Chloe opens and shuts her mouth like a goldfish, completely confounded. "You – you know that guy? How? Lucifer, as in figment of my imagination Lucifer? You – how do you – "

As she stares at Linda's face, she suddenly puts it together. "Oh my God. That story you were telling me the other day, about the handsome guy you slept with but it would never work – what. No. Him? That idiot? Linda, there's no way you fell for his 'I don't know what America is!' adorable-dumb-beefcake shtick! You're too smart for that!"

"I. . ." Linda's cheeks are going a rather fetching shade of pink. "I don't recall that he ever asked me about America, actually."

"Oh my God." Chloe can't be hearing this. "So what, where do they keep him during the day, Mr. Rochester's attic? Just let him out to wander around at night? He's – he's actually a real person? Is this like the neighborhood eccentric that you all politely agree not to mention, because English manners or something? I don't – "

"Chloe." Linda takes pity on her and hands her a cup of tea. "Do you remember what I said about the wall and. . . where it goes?"

"What, that it. . ." Chloe takes a sip. "Seriously, you're sticking with that story? That I, in a drunken haze which, I swear, was not that drunken, accidentally wandered out of England and into the parallel world that just happens to exist on the other side of this random rinkidink wall, which is why I met a guy whose parents named him Lucifer with a straight face, doesn't know what America is, claims to be from a place called the kingdom of Stormhold, and I can't even remember all the other crazy shit he spouted off? No, sorry. I'll accept the guy might be real, or at least we shared some sort of highly detailed hallucination or metaphor, but, yeah. No."

Linda blows on her own tea with a wry smile. "Exactly everything I said."

"Come on, Linda." Chloe doesn't know why she's putting so much effort into arguing that whatever happened last night did not in fact happen, except that the alternative is that she is in fact crazy, and needs to book a session ASAP with someone when she gets back to L.A., if she doesn't want to ask Linda to do some pro bono emergency intervention right here. "You don't believe him."

"I didn't for a long time, no. And I broke off our. . . arrangement before I found out the truth." Linda reaches for the marmalade. "It rattled me, you can believe that. But he. . . Lucifer, he's. . . well. He has issues, but – "

"Yeah, I gathered that. More like subscriptions."

Linda gives her another look. "He wanted someone to talk to, and I. . .well, I was lonely, and we both had things to offer each other. As I said, it's not one of the better – or more ethical – decisions I ever made, but he just. . . he did something to me, and. . ." She considers. "Anyway, I shouldn't be telling you too much, but yes, he's real, and for what it's worth, I believe that the place, the realm that he comes from – and what goes on there – is real too. Do some research into the history of Wall. There's a book about Dunstan and Tristan Thorn, a father and son who lived here in the 1850s – I have it, actually. It's a lot larger than just you and I, and what we think."

"Linda, are you okay?" Chloe is genuinely concerned about her, as if Linda has cracked up and gone native after five years exposed to whatever they put in the water around here – aren't there case studies about this, entire towns going crazy and seeing things and then it turns out to be explained by some corporation polluting the groundswell with their chemicals? If that has been going on here this long, you'd think someone would have looked into it by now. "If for argument's sake, you could actually get into another world from here, wouldn't there be, I don't know, guards? Barbed wire, keep-out signs? They haven't brought British Mulder and Scully in here to investigate? Someone should have Area 51'd the crap out of the place."

"Wall is a. . . hidden jewel, and the people here like to keep it that way. Nobody's going to talk to the government about it, and like you, half of them don't even believe in it but won't disturb the wall just in case. I think the most sophisticated security system they ever put up was an old man with a stick. We leave them alone, they leave us alone. And when you're talking about a place like that, it's for the best."

"A place like that. What. . . magical?"

"As I said, I believe that it's real, and that there are powers and forces there that we aren't prepared to deal with, and that we don't need to create any extra trouble for ourselves." Linda cuts her toast. "I didn't move to Wall looking to get mixed up in it. I honestly thought, like you, that it was just a fun story to add some local color. But, well. Here I am."

"Yeah, here you are," Chloe says slowly. She doesn't know whether to be almost embarrassed on Linda's behalf, like you discovered someone you respect and admire being suckered into fake fad diet pills, or reading The Secret, or putting actual, serious stock in the horoscope in the back of the newspaper. "Linda, I mean. . . obviously you met a real guy, and it even seems to be the one I met, and believe me, I get why it wouldn't have worked, but you. . . are you okay?"

"What? Do you think I cracked up and invented this story after things went bad between us, and I needed to rationalize it to myself?" Linda gives her a probing look. "As I said, it wasn't easy for me to accept either. But if you want to know more – "

"The truth is out there?" Chloe puts on her best YouTube-vlogger Secrets of the UFOs voice, finishes her tea, and pushes her chair back. "I think I am going to go for a walk, actually. Maybe go into town and pick up one of those pay-as-you-go phones, so I can call if this happens again. I'll see you later, Linda."

"See you." Linda nods at her. "Take care, all right?"

Chloe isn't sure why she's the one that needs saying this to, when she's obviously the only non-crazy one in this whole mess, but she nods, pulls on her jacket and boots, grabs her bag and umbrella (key rule of living in England: always bring the umbrella) and leaves the house. It's a misty, moisty morning, windy is the weather, and her hair whips in her face as she makes her way into town. Once she has popped by Carphone Warehouse to pick up a cheap little flip phone that would have been very chic in 2005, she tests that it works, reminds herself that this is a very bad idea, and heads out. You know exactly where.

She surveys the wall up and down, removes the phone, and snaps several more pictures, daring the gremlins to delete them again. She is a detective, after all. Mysteries get her attention, captivate her imagination, and it's certainly not like she hasn't had people claim supernatural interference before, in an effort to dodge blame for whatever they themselves actually did. Yeah, sure, the evil voices made you do it. That's schizophrenia, not a demon. It's chemical. Treatable with medication, controllable. To say nothing of all the other crazy shit they try to pull.

Chloe takes a few more pictures, paces up and down the wall, reaches out to gingerly put her hand on the stone (is she going to get sucked back into the past and meet a red-haired kilt-wearing Scot – or rather, black-haired piano-playing nutcase – now?) She's not sucked anywhere. The hill beyond is empty. She looks in every direction once more, satisfies herself that nobody saw her come out here, turns around, and –

She almost crashes into him. He's standing close behind her, dressed in another old-fashioned black suit, waistcoat, cravat, boots, and silk shirt, apparently impervious to the continuing the mist, and he's grinning like a demented jack-o-lantern. "Detective! Good morning to you too!"

"What did – where did – " Chloe presses a hand to her chest, because it feels like her heart is about to leap out of it, as she stumbles backwards, nerves still jangling like a broken harp. "What the hell! Why are you – why are you even here?"

"Came looking for you, of course." Lucifer Morningstar beams at her, adjusting his cufflinks. He wears a ring on the middle finger of his right hand, set with a strange dark stone that seems to take in light. "Remember what I said, how I wanted to sod off and go investigate crimes or whatever you do in your fascinating life? Well, here I am!"

"Are you – what. No, no, you are not coming back to Los Angeles with me! I'm pretty sure there are rules against felons leaving the country on the sly!" Chloe grabs him by the arm, spins him around (which he appears to enjoy inordinately) and marches him up to the wall. "There's the door. Time to go back to. . . wherever you're from, buddy. Before you get me into any more trouble."

"I've gotten you into trouble?" He sounds thrilled. "Do tell."

"No," Chloe grunts, pushing him up toward the break in the wall – where he promptly digs in his expensively leather-clad heels. For a crazy man, he clearly is not short on cash. "Time to go."

"Goodness gracious, you are a stubborn one, aren't you?" He twists his head around to look at her with a fascinated grin. "But no, you're absolutely right. Can't go without Maze."

"Maze? You're bringing your – what, garden topiary too?"

"No, Maze, as in my demon. Left with me from Stormhold, bad form to bugger off and leave her behind here. So come on, Detective, we'll go fetch her and then we can trot along." Lucifer steps over the break in the wall, turns, and holds out his hand to her. "Coming?"

"I – no." Chloe shoves her own hands in her pockets, to avoid her absurd momentary urge to take it. "I'm good. You can go."

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you're not the least bit curious about all this. The possibility. The danger. I found my way into England, I'm sure you can find your way into Faerie." His eyes are dark and teasing, but there's an intensity in them that takes her aback. "What's to lose?"

"I have read books," Chloe says. "And seen movies. I know that's a terrible idea."

"Well, I'm not about to crack you over the head and drag you off, but I do think you're curious." He continues to regard her. "Really, you're out here by yourself because you don't have the slightest interest on what might be on the other side? Make you a deal then, eh? You come with me, you don't see anything that intrigues you, and you go. But if you do, well. . . I get something out of it then, don't I?"

"What? And don't think you count as the intriguing thing I'm supposed to see, because you don't. And I'm not sleeping with you, by the way. Ever."

"Touchy, touchy." He doesn't seem put out by this, or so wounded in his masculinity that he's about to crumble like a house of cards. In fact, the more she seems totally immune to what must be his usual bag of tricks for pulling women, the more interested he seems to get – which, considering she's trying to get rid of him, is aggravating. Still, though. Skeptic while she might be and very much is, she knows she'll kick herself forever if she doesn't look at least once. She doesn't want to be the crusty old PI, or whatever becomes of detectives once they're farmed out to pasture, forever reminiscing about The Case That Got Away. And she, obviously, is going to keep her mouth shut about it, as she is no more keen to have the government (or even less savory types) up her ass than anyone else. Besides, if he is just a harmless crazy man, she's doing a public service in guiding him gently back to his nice padded cell. And if not. . .

Chloe pushes that thought aside. Gives Lucifer a coy, slightly malicious little smile, ignores his still-offered hand, and steps over onto his side of the wall.

If she was expecting a bang or a flash of light (she wasn't, really) she's disappointed. Nothing tangibly or visibly changes. She doesn't turn to dust or anything. Kind of anticlimactic.

"Right," she says. "I'll walk you home, just since you did it for me last night. Then maybe you can find some nice books about London and study up. Let's go."

Lucifer gambols after her like an overeager sheepdog as they start to walk. And walk, and walk. Chloe knows it wasn't far from here to the market, but after they've hiked for a while with no sign of it, she says, "I thought you lived nearby. Are we getting to about where the whole shebang was last night, or what?"

"Oh, not even close, really." Lucifer shrugs. "When the Faerie Market is open, you can stumble into it easily from wherever you are, and then popped back out when you leave. I always do rip-roaring business there, but it's certainly not where I live, no."

"Right. Forgot who I was talking to."

"You're in my world now, Detective. You have to play by my rules."

"We'll see about that." Chloe can feel a stitch coming on. God, it has been a long time since she worked out on a regular basis, when she has enough to handle with, you know, regular work. "Is it much further?"

"Well, I do have a Babylon candle, we could use that. Quite rare, those things, but the Lightbringer always knows where to get his hands on one."

"I'm sorry, what? How does a candle help us?"

"You've never traveled by candlelight before?"

"Do I look like someone who's traveled by candlelight before?"

"No." Lucifer surveys her up and down and licks his lips. "Quite a number of other appealing things, yes, but not that. Very well. Come over here, grab onto me, and – this is very important – don't think of anything or anywhere at all. Got it?"

"Why shouldn't I – "

"Stop asking all your bloody questions for two seconds, and maybe you'll find out, eh?"

Chloe wants to inform him that it's her job to ask questions, thank you very much, and if he uses this as an opportunity to feel her up on the sly, she's going to slap him right in the smug scruffy face. Still, she goes over and waits as Lucifer fishes something out of his jacket pocket: a stubby black candle engraved with the requisite spooky and esoteric symbols, half-burned. At his nod, she dubiously puts her arms around his waist, as he removes his antique cigarette lighter, strikes a spark, says, "Right then, Detective, no thinking at all, unless it's about how utterly irresistible I am – " and touches it to the end of the candle.

The next instant – Chloe doesn't even know how to describe what happens. Just that it's like she was standing in the pages of a book, and then someone violently slammed it shut and opened it up again to deposit her, rather flattened and dizzy and dazed, in an entirely new part of the story. The rugged English moorland they were traipsing over has completely vanished, and as the world folds back into place around her, she sees a sprawling, thick, twisted black forest lying in one direction, huge, sharp, Himalaya-sized mountains rising into a wall of cloud in the other, and their immediate surroundings looking like Ye Olde Medieval Village – in fact, a bit like Wall itself, but to the nth degree. As she is still staring with jaw sagging, Lucifer looks down at her with a sly grin, tucks the candle (now barely more than a stump) back into his jacket, and says with considerable satisfaction, "Candlelight."

"Any chance I can borrow one of those to get back to L.A.?" Chloe says weakly. "That's a hell of a lot easier than what I had to go through to get here. I mean, there."

"Wouldn't work on your side, unfortunately." Lucifer's grin turns into a smirk. "And you can let go of me now, Detective. Unless of course you've realized that – "

"Oh, shut up." Cheeks heating, Chloe pries her arms off his waist and steps away. She follows him down the narrow, muddy lane to a particularly large and impressive-looking building at the end, very gabled and half-timbered and sharp-roofed, which has a wooden sign swinging out front, done in elaborate gothic lettering. LUX.

Lucifer opens the door for her, Chloe ducks in, and then stops short, feeling distinctly like Luke Skywalker walking into the cantina in Mos Eisley. The place is full of what looks like an entire convention of Dungeons and Dragons players in full costume, only half of them appear to be human, and they're drinking things in colors and combinations she's never seen. The light from the antlered chandeliers is low and witchy, the organ at the back has great pipes made out of what looks like whale ivory, and the bar seems to be hewn from the roots of a giant, twisting tree. The woman pouring drinks behind it looks like an Amazon, sleek and dark and beautiful and dangerous, dressed head to toe in some kind of risqué leather catsuit. At Lucifer's entrance, she glances up, gives him a sour look – and then catches sight of his visitor. The expression on her face, if Chloe saw it from anyone she was interrogating at the station or even just informally questioning at the scene, would make her calculate exactly how long it would take to draw her service weapon, and whether she might have to use it.

"Carry on, everyone," Lucifer announces, strolling without a care in the world right into the middle of all this. "Nothing to see here."

Slowly, the World of Warcraft mega-fans turn back to their drinks, not without lingering looks at Chloe. She's the one out of place here in her Earth clothes, though she is not slapping on a corset and hoopskirt, or whatever else, in the name of fitting in. They make their way to the bar, where Lucifer orders, "Pour my new friend a drink, Maze. On the house."

"Your friend?" This must be the aforementioned "demon," then. She is very unimpressed. "What, you've slept with all the women on this side of the wall, so you had to go into their world to find one you hadn't?"

"Excuse me," Chloe says. "I'm not sleeping with him, trust me. Ever."

"Yes, she's quite adamant about that, alas. Still. Drink."

Maze eyes them. Chloe isn't sure she would trust her not to spit in it, or worse. "Lucifer, I've told you what I think about your ridiculous fascination with trying to sneak into the human world. And now you're bringing one of them here? Take her back."

"Oh, I mean to. But you and I are going with her, to a wonderful place called Los Angeles." Lucifer is as excited as a kid on Halloween, waiting for treats. "To solve crimes."

Maze looks at him as if she cannot believe that he can be this stupid and still talking. Chloe feels herself warming up to her. "No."

"Come on, Mazikeen. You know you'd never let me go alone."

"No."

"Remember, you left Stormhold with me to – "

"I'm well aware of what I did, Lucifer." Maze turns away, swiping a cloth viciously down the already immaculately clean bar. "But while you were out having your little human joyride this morning, someone came by looking for you. Someone's been killed. They thought you might know something about it."

Lucifer's giddy expression slips a notch, even as Chloe feels her ears automatically prick up. He frowns. "What? Killed? Who?"

Maze looks back at him unreadably. "Delilah."

This name, obviously, means nothing to Chloe, but it does to Lucifer. His face crumbles, he loses the irritatingly-smug-and-charming lothario act for the first time in their brief and regrettable acquaintance, and he looks genuinely stunned. "What? Delilah? Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Maze pauses. "Sorry."

Lucifer says nothing, turning away, as Maze seemingly takes pity on him, pours him something, and he grabs the glass and knocks it back without looking. Chloe edges up next to him; this is sadly familiar territory for her, after all. "Hey," she says awkwardly. "I'm sorry about your. . . friend?" Knowing him, probably something quite a bit earthier than that, but a woman has been killed. She can be respectful.

"Yes, actually. My friend. I started her off with a few singing ventures here." Lucifer waves a hand at this place – Lux, apparently. "She was quite in demand for important people and their parties, for a while. But it never lasts, does it?"

"So she was. . . a singer?" Chloe can feel investigative gears starting to click in her brain, despite herself. "Is there any reason you can think of why someone might want to kill her?"

Overhearing this, Maze gives her a scathing look. "You ask a lot of nosy questions, earthling. How do we know you didn't do it?"

"It's my job." Chloe looks back at her coolly. "I'm a homicide detective. I literally figure out who killed people and why."

Maze snorts. "Your kind must need that a lot."

"As compared to whatever you two think you are? If you want me to sort out who might have killed this Delilah and why, I can certainly lend a hand. But if you don't need my human help – "

"I want to know," Lucifer says abruptly, wheeling around. "I want to know why. If the detective is willing to offer her professional services, then you, Maze, don't get to scare her off, or for that matter, anything else. Do I make myself clear?"

Maze eyes him balefully. "Sure," she says, but her gaze flickers sidelong to Chloe, with an unmistakable promise that she'd better watch her back. "Got it."

That is how, not long later, Chloe finds herself in the familiar but completely bizarre situation of arriving at the sleazy boarding house where Delilah was staying, heading up the dark and creaky stairs to the shabby room at the top, and launching into the normal steps of an investigation – clearing the scene, looking for evidence, assessing potential witnesses. All of which is quite hard to do without modern scientific equipment, as you can't dust for prints or try to collect DNA, and which seems either baffling or amusing to everyone around her. Delilah's body itself is set on a chaise, covered with a bloody sheet, and after getting a funny look when she asks if anyone has any gloves, Chloe approaches, picks it up gingerly, and folds it back.

At that, she grimaces. She's seen some pretty gnarly things, but it's still a bit of a kick in the pants now and then, and it looks as if either the monster from Alien burst out of Delilah's chest, or someone literally, physically tried to rip her heart out. Her ribcage is practically turned inside out, and Chloe drops the sheet hurriedly, thinking that Lucifer probably doesn't need to see his friend like this. But when she turns around, she sees by the expression on his face that it's too late. He saw.

"I, ah." She can guess at motives and methods and everything else back in her world, but here, it's throwing darts in the dark, blindfolded. "Did Delilah, I don't know, have someone she owed money to? Someone stiff her after a performance? Is there a cult around here that's big into human sacrifice and heart-tearing?"

"Not that I am aware of, no," Lucifer says slowly. But it's clear that he might have thought of something, just for a second, before he shakes it away. "Well? Do you know who did it?"

"It doesn't work that way. I can't just look at someone and get a reading on their murderer. Trust me, my job would be a lot easier if I could." Chloe supposes it's useless asking if they have any hand sanitizer. If this is the state of things in Faerie, she almost can't blame Lucifer for wanting to escape to the modern world, magic or not. (And there's probably a scientific explanation for that, anyway.) "And if I do find who did it, do you guys have anything like a court system, or is this still a lop-the-head-off-with-Ned-Stark's-sword kind of place? Do I just – "

"You find who did it so I can punish them!" Lucifer's face is downright terrifying, his eyes burning, in the low light, almost red. "That's what's going to happen!"

"No. No, that is not what is going to happen." Chloe stands her ground, chin tilted back to stare unflinchingly at him. "I know what you said about your world, your rules, but if you want my help on this, you play by my rules. I'm willing to track down Delilah's killer, but I'm not then handing them over for you to go all vigilante-justice on them. I'm sure there's a sheriff or something around here. We'll let them do whatever they do. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

After a long, tenuous moment, Lucifer nods stiffly. Some of the hellacious glow recedes from his eyes. "Fine. As you wish."

"Good." Chloe rubs her hands on her jeans. "I'll need to question whoever else is staying here, the owner of the place, everyone like that. If you really want to solve crimes, well, here's your chance. Help me find them."

It takes a while, but they manage to collar a preliminary lineup, and Chloe is starting her usual procedure when Lucifer leans over, does something else weird with his eyes, asks what they really want, and gets them to fess up exactly that, like pushing a button that says Information Please. Chloe doesn't know if it's hypnosis or psychological suggestion or what, but it does seem to work, and she catches herself thinking that it would be useful to have him doing that for her on the LAPD. Unfortunately, however, it doesn't lead them anywhere constructive. Nobody seems to have any reason to viciously kill and dismember this world's version of a has-been club singer, and they finally return to Lux late that evening without any break in the case. It's only then when Chloe remembers that she has spent an entire day in – she's not calling it Faerie, but whatever this is – and that after promising Linda she wasn't going anywhere near any of this, now look where she is, literally. "Oh God. Is it like, two hundred years in the future back on my side? Have I been missing for the entire lifetime and then some of anyone who ever – "

"Calm down, Detective. Yes, Faerie time used to run much slower than Earth time, but now, what with all your machinery and technology and stupid bloody wars and politics almost stomping us out, they're just about equalized. It hasn't been any longer there than it has here."

Chloe breathes out, slightly. "Yes, but Linda – "

"Linda? As in Doctor Linda? Martin?"

"Yes. I know about you two."

"Ah, well, that explains a great deal. But if that's the case, I can send a message to her about where you are, and that I will be borrowing you for a few days until we crack this Delilah business. My word is my bond, Detective, and I am no liar. I promised to take you home when this is done, and I will."

Chloe searches his face for a long moment. She vaguely remembers some legend about how the Fair Folk can't lie, although she doesn't know if it's applicable in this case, and they're certainly capable of twisting and shadowing the truth – but once again, she doesn't get that sense from him. As if he could lie to her, the same as anyone, but is consciously choosing and committing not to. At last, she nods. "Okay," she says quietly. "I'll hold you to that. Send the message."

While he's doing that, she takes a seat at the tree-bar, despite the copious cold side-eye from Maze, and waits until he returns. At a pointed glance from him, Maze looks further exasperated, but pours them a drink apiece, sliding them over the counter. "You two have a special day out on your little – whatever you think you're doing?"

"Bloody frustrating, more like." Lucifer reaches for the bottle, as he's clearly planning on needing refills. "Now toddle off and bother someone else, Mazikeen."

With one more unfriendly stare, Maze does so, as Chloe wonders if she's up to trying whatever exactly is in this glass. "She's what. . . your personal concierge?"

Lucifer gives her a puzzled look, unfamiliar with the word. "She works for me, yes. Used to have another, but I lost contact with Crowley a while ago. Think he may have farted off to your England, actually. Had a boring do-gooder friend, terrible influence on him, and he was prone to cocking things up miserably, especially very important ones. I'm well shut of him, honestly."

"Great, so there's another one of you running around in my world?" Refusing to back down from the challenge, Chloe raises the glass to her lips, takes a sip, and feels for ten seconds as if she's been hit by lightning, frying up and down her body, until it resolves into a deep burning ball in the pit of her stomach, she's breathing as if she's been chased by a train, and Lucifer is looking at her with indescribable smugness, the ass. When she is once more able to form coherent sentences, she wheezes, "Jesus, what is that stuff? Jet fuel? No wait, you don't have jets."

"Oh, just our local," Lucifer says airily. "Can't handle it, can you?"

"You bet your life I can." Chloe wipes her forehead clandestinely. "So what – the people of Wall have fairytales about this world, and you have fairytales about England? Is that how it works? Some people on my side believe in this place and some don't, and some people on your side believe in Earth and some don't?"

"I suppose." Lucifer shrugs. "I don't spend a great deal of time thinking about other people."

"Yeah, I kind of get that impression." Chloe chances a second sip. This one is mellower and sweeter, like fire and honey, and she feels it all the way down to her cold, cold toes. Déclassé as it might be to go prying into his life story when they've only met forty-eight hours ago and most of that has her been trying to get him out of her hair as fast as possible, she's still curious. "So. . . I'm sorry, this is probably none of my business, why would your parents name you Lucifer? Does it mean something different here than it does for us?"

"Oh?" He turns his glass, considering her. "What does it mean for you?"

"It just. . . has a certain connotation." Chloe chooses her words carefully. From what she's seen, in fact, it's entirely fitting. "Of, let's say, a rebel, a loner, a disaffected son. Someone who left their home a long time ago, on very bad terms, and has been fighting it, and everything it stands for, ever since."

"Well then. No quarrels with that." His eyes are distant. "Used to be an old and honorable Stormholder name, actually, but I've done with it what I do with everything else. Not that that's bloody surprising."

"You said something about brothers." Chloe glances at him. "A lot of them?"

"Far too many. As I said, imbeciles. Amenadiel, Michael, Uriel, Sariel, Raphael, and Barachiel – oh, and two sisters. Gabriel and Azrael. Got out long ago, wisely."

Chloe starts slightly, even as this seems to confirm her hypothesis. "Those names," she says. "It's. . . well, they would be familiar in my world. If we're going with the theory that we're just stories to each other, you and your siblings might have influenced some pretty famous ones that I know of." She wants to remark that Lucifer doesn't seem to go with those names, but she can tell when there's something she shouldn't dig at. He's powerful and strange enough, if someone met him or one of the others a long time ago. . . and he said something about wings. That might make anyone come back with a garbled tale of angels. "Do beings from here – let's say for the sake of argument, gods – ever just decide to, I don't know, go wandering on my side?"

"What, have you met Mr. Wednesday? Creepy bloke with a raven on his shoulder? Stay well away from him, that's my advice."

"Who?"

"Never mind." Lucifer throws back his own drink and tops up. "But all this talk of my family, Detective, don't I then get to ask about yours? Just as much a disappointment, I take it?"

"It's. . . complicated." Chloe wants to tell him it's none of his business, but then again, so was what she was just asking him. "My dad was a cop before me, he was killed, my mom's an actress. I do what I do because of him, and with her, I. . . I don't know how to explain it."

"And are you always this disinterested in hopeful gentlemen, or just me?"

"First, you're not nearly as charming as you think you are. Second, I literally finalized my divorce two days before I got on the plane to England. Forgive me if I'm not falling all over myself to swoon into your waiting arms, or anything like that."

"No, I'm exactly as charming as I think I am, but never mind that." Lucifer cocks his head, regarding her. "Divorce? Does that mean what I guess it does?"

"Probably." Chloe takes another few sips, for moral support. She's almost started to enjoy the burn. With that, not meaning to, she finds herself telling him about Dan and Palmetto Street and Malcolm, the way it transpired that she was right all along, that Dan strung her out and gaslit her and let her think she was crazy, and that while he finally came clean, it was too late to save their already rocky marriage. That they made an adult decision to always be there for Trixie, but that it was best to cut the cord. She realizes at the end that this is probably far, far more than Lucifer ever wanted to know about anyone, and stops. "I'm sorry," she mutters. "I just. . . I haven't. . . not even with Linda, I just. . . I haven't talked about it."

"I see." Lucifer considers her. "You have a child?"

"Yeah, as I said, a daughter. She's seven. Why, do you?"

"No, thankfully." Lucifer shudders. "Children are nasty, horrible, needy little beasts. Can't imagine what anyone gets out of them. Yours, though," he recovers belatedly, seeing her eyeing him coldly. "I'm sure yours isn't too bad. Nothing to show off, perhaps, but nothing to be too embarrassed about either."

"Do you have any idea how dickish you sound?" Chloe is almost truly curious. "Do people just – do what you want, or you zap them with your tell-me-what-you-desire superpower, or do you really not care what anyone thinks of you? Are the basic rules of polite society really so different in this place that you can be such a jerk with no repercussions?"

Lucifer looks surprised. "Am I supposed to? Care, that is?"

"Most normal people do." Chloe considers. "Not that you qualify in any sense of the word."

He mulls this over. He doesn't seem offended, or defensive, or anything like that, just as if he's never actually thought about it before. Then he seems to decide it's too much work, far too close to real emotional introspection, and in a flash, the devil-may-care smile is back. "Well, I can assure you, darling, it's much more fun to do things my way. Speaking of which, with the whole matter of Delilah's killer, when we do catch up to them – "

"Nope. Haven't changed my mind. I help you, you do as I say. It'll be good for you."

"I don't do things that are good for me. Gives me terrible indigestion."

"Your loss. I might have been almost starting to like you." Chloe raises her glass, and finishes off the rest at a pull. "Good night."

---

IV.

She sleeps in one of the attic bedrooms in Lux, hopefully not one in which a local lady of the evening has been brutally murdered by the Middle-earth version of Jack the Ripper, and her dreams are strange and savage. She's looking for her parents, but she can't find them. She's lost, and she's cold, and she's small, and she's scared. She has to get away, she has to get away now, but she doesn't want to go, and yet she'll die if she stays. It almost seems better than whatever can possibly await her out there, and she's fighting, and she's crying, and she's been cut out of her entire existence and she can't get back, she can't ever get back. Lost. Lost. Lost.

Chloe falls for what feels like forever, hits the bottom, and wakes up with a jerk, in a cold sweat, the quilts tangled around her legs. She lies still, trying to regulate her breathing, and realizes she's clutching onto her necklace, for no apparent reason. She loosens her stiff fingers, puts her arm back down in the bed, and blows out a shaky breath. Right, whatever this place is doing to her, she doesn't want any more of it. Fulfill her promise to Lucifer, find whoever killed his friend, and then she's out of here. Honestly, she would be gone already, if not for the fact that it goes against her fundamental nature to let people, and especially murderers, get away with things they shouldn't. If there's no justice, there's no peace. And while Lucifer Morningstar himself is possibly the most dysfunctional person she has ever met, a slight part of her, to her great disgust, is still intrigued by him. Not necessarily in a sexual way, although she is a woman with eyes and a pulse, she can see that he's very attractive and by no means opposed to her doing whatever she wants with him. It's not pity, and it's not lust, and she still doesn't know why she dumped the whole Palmetto-and-Dan garbage truck on him. Maybe just because he was there and willing to listen, even if probably still thinking it was a stepping stone to getting laid later, but still.

Chloe dozes uneasily on and off until morning, where she gets up and then finds to her horror that someone has taken away her jeans and jacket and the rest of her Earth clothes in the night. They've left something that looks fiendishly impractical for trying to solve a homicide in, as well as very skirty, but as Chloe regards it grimly, she supposes that there is something to be said for blending in, for not making people stare at her everywhere she goes, and whatever other unwelcome attention she might attract by being a stranger in this very, very strange place. She swallows her pride and struggles into everything. Yes, even the corset.

She's still trying to adjust it (she didn't do it too tightly, it laces up the front, she's not interested in being an hourglass pinup) and not trip on the dress as she heads downstairs. Lucifer is in another of his usual all-black Mr. Darcy getups, which looks especially good on him because of course it does, but at the sight of her, he stops in his tracks, has a nice long gander, and then grins broadly. "So glad you're embracing the spirit of things, Detective."

"Yeah, I bet you are." She has a chemise on underneath, of course, but the corset still does things to her chest that her usual grey jersey T-shirt decidedly does not, and if she catches him staring at her cleavage even once, she's going to invest in a really large fan, explicitly for the purposes of smacking him with it. "This is temporary and only for the purposes of the investigation, by the way. When we're done, I want my usual clothes back."

"Well, Maze may have already burned them, but I'll see what I can do." Lucifer turns away to call for breakfast, as Chloe is still sputtering. "Eat up, Detective. We've got quite a day ahead."

Once they've finished, Lucifer puts on his hat and overcoat, Chloe also gets a long coat, the kind of hat that she's only seen women wearing at the Kentucky Derby, a parasol (which she decides will be excellent for prodding and/or poking and/or perforating Lucifer with, even in the event of no fan) and buttoned boots. She can't help but slightly enjoy this whole steampunk lady-detective getup, while simultaneously feeling ridiculous – she thought, and very much intended, her acting career to be over with Hot Tub High School, after all. But, you know, needs must.

Out they head, chase down the most promising of their slender leads from yesterday, and finally deduce that there might have been an unfamiliar woman lurking around Delilah's room, shortly before the last time anyone saw her alive. Nobody can describe this woman, or even be entirely sure that they even did see her, but at least they seem to be agreed that there was one, and Chloe and Lucifer decide that this is worth chasing up. They have barely started, however, when the local surgeon who examined Delilah's body on Chloe's request sends a messenger to let them know that he found bits of something in her fatal wound, which seem to have been left there by the weapon. They drop by his laboratory, which looks very baroque mad-scientist, as he lays out the nasty-looking slivers of black glass in a dish beneath a magnifying lens. "Does this help?"

Chloe frowns. "Who could actually kill someone with a knife made out of glass?"

"Let me see that." Lucifer cranes over her shoulder, examining the shards, until she's quite conscious of how close he is behind her, and wonders if she should get him to move. While she's still debating, his face goes even darker. "Bloody hell, no. No, it can't be."

"What? Do you recognize that stuff?"

"There's not enough of it to be entirely sure, but. . . I do recognize it, yes. If I'm not wrong, this is glass from a weapon used by the Lilim. One of their special ones, in fact."

That word rings a vague bell in Chloe's mind. "Wait. Lilim. You mentioned something about that, didn't you? At the market?"

Lucifer shoots a significant glance at the surgeon, who takes the hint and excuses himself. Once they're alone in the lab, he says, "Yes, I did. As in, my mother was one."

"Excuse my outlander ignorance here, but what's a Lilim?"

"A. . . witch-queen, I suppose you could say. A powerful female demon and sorceress. There were three of them, sisters. My mother, Lilith, was the oldest. She married my father – as noted, the king of Stormhold – and produced myself and the rest of our miserable lot. They were happy, for a while. We were happy. But, well." His face makes it clear that this is not remotely a pleasant memory. "Things went wrong."

"I'm sorry, I really don't want to pry. But this might be relevant to the investigation."

"Yes, well." Lucifer attempts a nonchalant shrug. "Dad had other interests. Forgot about her. Never was good at caring for his own family, that one. She grew bitter, resentful, distant. Decided to stir up a rebellion against him, in repayment, and with a Lilim set against you, you can imagine how that goes. He defeated her and her sisters, eventually, but it broke our family apart, and I. . . I'd chosen my side against him as well, against the others. That was why I was thrown out. He imprisoned the three of them forever in a terrible cage, and that was the end." He glances again at the slivers of glass in the dish. "So we thought, at least."

"So. . . what?" Chloe has already bought this much, what the hell, so what's a bit more? "You think your demonic mother and aunts might have somehow escaped their magical evil prison, where your dad shut them up for all eternity? Damn, and I thought my family had problems."

Lucifer snorts a humorless laugh. "Glad to help you feel better, then."

"Look, if my ex-husband threw me in jail like that, I'd hold a grudge too." Chloe considers that this nearly happened, in some ways, and that she still is, if not to the point of getting revenge on Dan by randomly whacking Trixie's friends – even if this is Lucifer's mother, and she's out, and the rest of that whole weird story, what does she get from going after Delilah? Just needed to celebrate being out of jail by killing someone? That's the kind of thinking that turns you into a recidivism statistic, and a life sentence, right after you finished serving your ten to fifteen with possibility of parole. "No offense, but your mother sounds like a total piece of work."

"Oh, she is." Lucifer's face remains dark and drawn. He's clearly also struggling with the question of motive, as if his mother, possibly sprung from the dread abyss after God knows how long, just wanted to pop back into his life and terrorize him, or if there's something more. Then something occurs to him, and he turns to her. "Yesterday, when you looked at Delilah. If you had to venture a guess, how would you say she died?"

"I don't know." Chloe is taken aback. "I'm not really into the forensics end of things – never mind. But it looked as if. . . well, like I said, like someone tried to rip out her heart."

This appears to be exactly the answer that Lucifer was hoping it not to be. He clenches a fist, stares at the door as if expecting the surgeon to be avidly eavesdropping on the other side, and gives her a look that says they need to continue this conversation elsewhere. Once they have made their excuses and let themselves out, a heavy coach thunders by in the road, he grabs her elbow to yanks her back from being run over, and Chloe tries to restore her heartbeat to normal. It reminds her of this morning, and those unpleasant dreams, which is definitely not a topic she plans on bringing up. "So," she says, now that the threat of death by trampling has passed. "Do you want to tell me if your mother, if this is actually your mother and not just some psycho with a glass knife, might want to rip out Delilah's heart?"

Lucifer shoots a shifty look around, for which Chloe can't blame him, really. He also still has hold of her elbow. There's probably some thing around here about ladies needing to be escorted in public, or whatever other pseudo-patriarchal "it was how things were done in Olde Times!" bullshit seems to crop up in fantasy novels written by straight white men. Either way, they have bigger fish to fry, so for the time being, Chloe lets it slide. "Well," he says. "The thing about the Lilim is that they are quite powerful and long-lived, but not indefinitely. Every so often, they need to refresh their strength and beauty and youth by eating a heart. To be specific, the heart of a fallen star."

"Okay, that's just sick." Chloe navigates around a mud puddle, which is not the easiest thing to do in long skirts and fancy boots. It'll certainly make a woman appreciate what her foremothers had to put up with, that's for sure. "Not to mention, I still don't see what that has to do with Delilah. Eating the heart of a fallen star – wouldn't that just be like a chunk of iron from a meteorite? I get that your mother is supposed to be a demon and all, but – "

Lucifer gives her the slightly pitying look she must have been giving him, when he didn't know what America was or if London was real; the ignoramus shoe is definitely on the other foot. There is probably a message about karma here, which both of them are certain to ignore. "A fallen star isn't a rock, Detective. It's a woman. When they take a little tumble out of their celestial realm and into this world, that's what they are. I've always felt rather a kinship with them; I took a bit of a tumble out of the sky myself. But in order to prevent the Lilim from gaining any more strength in their rebellion against Dad, the last star that fell – just a child, a tiny girl – was given a powerful protection charm and sent away to the human realm. That way they couldn't capture her and – "

"Eat her heart? Yeah, bloody child sacrifice is definitely not the way to win friends and influence people." Chloe wrinkles her nose. "Let me see if I'm following you. Once more not getting into the logistics of the whole 'stars are people too' business, if your mom is out and is the killer and went after Delilah, she thought she was – she thought she was a star, and if she ate her heart, she'd be poofed young and powerful again?"

"Yes. In essence, that's it." Lucifer's lips are tight. "But what I still don't understand is why she'd even think there was a chance. A star hasn't fallen in ages, we'd know. So unless Mum was really so desperate as to hide in the bushes with her cleaver and jump out at every passing woman hoping she was secretly a star and her innards could be devoured for instant pep-up, which honestly doesn't sound like her, why go after Delilah at all?"

"Do you think she might try again, with someone else?" Chloe feels cold at the idea of what she thought was a fairly standard (well, considering the circumstances) murder case, turning into trying to take down a supernatural cannibal serial killer, who is also, supposedly at least, a demoness and a dangerous witch. Not exactly your average Tuesday at the precinct. This is out of her league. Can she just bail on Lucifer and ask for her candlelight ticket back to Wall, which is starting to sound like a pretty good idea? And yet. The idea of quitting, no matter how stacked the odds, still sticks in her craw. Chloe Decker is many things, but not a quitter.

"She might." Lucifer's expression remains troubled. "But bloody hell, it's going to eat me until I work it out. Unless someone actually saw a star and told Mum, it's still just a guess, and – "

"Maybe she came back," Chloe suggests. "You said one fell around the time of the rebellion, but had to be sent away. What if she decided to return?"

"She wouldn't. They magically erased her memories."

"They did that to a kid? Really?"

"Would it be better if she remembered? Why make her grow up with that?"

"I suppose." Chloe is sobered by it, and rattled, and almost afraid. "So what, the star is out there somewhere? Could your mom cross the wall and get loose in the human world, if she decided to go after her?"

"She wouldn't have any magic if she did, and she couldn't cross as she doubtless is now, some decrepit old hag. It wouldn't do her any good. But. . ."

And at that, Lucifer stops. Lets go of her arm, turns around to face her, and looks her up and down. Not as he has before, with the hey-baby-wanna-bang shtick that she finds so eye-rolling, but with something else. A worried frown, something deadly serious. "Detective," he says slowly. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you just accidentally stumble into this world?"

"What?" Something very cold slithers down Chloe's back. "What the – Lucifer, are you suggesting – please tell me you're not suggesting that I'm the star. I'm a person. A human. I have a human life, I grew up in Los Angeles with my human parents. I married a human, I have a human daughter. You are way barking up the wrong tree here."

His foreboding expression doesn't alter. "Let's get back to Lux."

They walk the rest of the way to his tavern at a pace brisk enough for Lucifer to be almost dragging her in his wake like a caboose. The daytime crowd is pretty light, and Maze gives them a curious look, but Lucifer hustles Chloe the rest of the way up the stairs and into her room. Once there, with no preliminary, he says, "Do you have any scars, perhaps? Any funny markings? Any – say, bit of jewelry you've always had, and never known why?"

Chloe's hand rises inadvertently, traitorously, toward her necklace. "Lucifer, stop."

"Detective, I swear, I'm not trying to frighten you, but you need to tell me. Do you?"

"I. . ." This no longer seems like such a fun lark of an adventure. "All right, I do, but it's just this, okay?" She pulls the necklace out of her bodice. "It's not a sign that I'm an anthropomorphic heavenly body that somehow – "

He crosses the floor to her in a stride and cups it in his hand, dark head bent toward hers as he examines it. Then he says, "Anything else?"

"On my right shoulder. It's – look, it's stupid, it's just a birthmark, people have them, it's not – "

With a look at her, he asks permission, and she hesitates a long moment, then nods tersely. He pushes aside her dress and chemise, looking at the back of her shoulder, until she knows what he's seeing. The small birthmark that just happens to be in the perfect shape of a star.

"Bloody hell," Lucifer says at last, succinctly. He sounds even more stunned than when he found out about Delilah's murder. "It is you."

"No." Chloe pulls her dress back up, feeling ill. "No, it's not."

"Did you show the necklace to anyone when you were here?"

"No, why would I do that? I didn't – "

And with that, with a jerk, she stops. Oh God. The scary lady with the jewelry, at the market, right before she met Lucifer. She definitely got a good look at it, and even tried to grab it, that was why Chloe decided to skip shopping at her wagon in the first place. If she was a witting or unwitting informer for a recently escaped and very pissed witch-queen who would be on five-alarm lookout for anything remotely resembling a star, whether or not it was one –

Chloe's knees feel rather weak. She sits abruptly on the bed, with Lucifer still staring at her from across the room. "This – " she says. "This – no. You people are all cracked, this is just some dream I'm having, I fell and I don't know, hit my head on the stone. Take me back to Wall. Wake me up. Something. I don't want to do this anymore."

"Detective – "

"Take me back!" She lurches to her feet, grabs the lapels of his jacket, and almost shakes him. "This isn't my home, this isn't my place! I want to go back to the human world, where I belong, where shit like this doesn't suddenly happen and pull the rug out from under you! It's not possible, I'm not a fallen star, but if your crazy mother thinks I am – "

"Detective. Chloe." Lucifer takes hold of her by the upper arms, grasping firmly and making her look at him. "As I said, I'll take you home, but if this is who you really are – "

"No. You're the one with the crazy invented fantasy background, not me. Don't ask me to buy into your little psycho mind trip. Take me home right now."

He continues to look at her as if, for once, even he doesn't know what to say. The silence stretches on, threatening to become all-consuming – until it is interrupted by a crash from downstairs.

Lucifer snaps into motion almost too fast to see. He whirls around and jerks the door open, Chloe lunges after him onto the landing, they look down into Lux's common room below, and both of them get an eyeful of the black-clad soldiers pouring in. At the same time, one of the Ren Faire stormtroopers looks up, sees them, and points straight at Chloe. "There she is! Hand over the star, and nobody else needs to be hurt. Queen Lilith's orders."

At the sound of this, Lucifer goes utterly and completely still. The world seems to freeze along with him, almost to a crawl. Nobody seems to breathe. Then he locks eyes with Maze, an unspoken and deliberate agreement passes between them, and as one, they act.

Maze explodes at the soldiers in a lethal dark blur, as Lucifer grabs Chloe, lowers his shoulder like a tank, takes a running start, and jumps two stories straight down, into the back corner of the bar. The black knights are swarming on Maze, she's kicking some very, very serious ass – apparently Lucifer's bartender is also a ninja, because of course she is – and Lucifer rockets madly through the back hall, meets more soldiers coming the other way, swings his arm back, and blasts them out of the way hard enough to drive them bodily through the wall. Chloe can do nothing but hurtle along behind him, arms over her head, chaos on every side, as another of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail extras reaches for her, she punches him in the face hard enough to hear his nose crack, and judo-throws the other one who tries to finish what his buddy started. Even in cumbersome skirts, she is not some frail, fainting flower.

Lucifer is going through the rest of them like a bull in a china shop, which is both a gruesome and riveting spectacle. They finally reach the back door, he breaks it open and drags Chloe out after him, and looks madly in every direction. There is no way out; they're boxed in by the walls of the back courtyard, and by the sounds of the shouts and running footsteps, yet more of those assholes are on the way. Chloe can smell smoke, and looks up just in time to see flames crackling along the eaves. What the hell. They're setting the place on fire.

Lucifer stares at his burning tavern with a wild, desperate look on his face. Maze is still inside, and he of course has no way of knowing if even she might have met her match from sheer force of numbers. Then he looks back at Chloe, and she can tell that he has a split-second decision to make. Stay, try to defend Lux, and get captured by his mother's minions, or –

Maze's voice echoes faintly from inside, a strangled shout. "Lucifer! Run!"

For half a moment more, he remains paralyzed. Then he wheels around, grabs hold of Chloe, and fumbles madly in his jacket pocket. The candle, the Babylon candle. They are getting out of here, he's going to do what he said, take her back to Wall, back to Linda's, she'll wake up in bed and this will all just be a strange nightmare – she's not a star, she didn't fall out of the sky, she doesn't care what he did, she's not like him – the sky, come on, what the hell, what the hell –

Lucifer lights the candle, and then, in the next instant, the world is gone.