The detective's home is quiet when Lucifer enters.

It'd been almost a week since they'd solved their last case together, cutting Joe Hanson's victory lap short. In the interim, Lucifer had grown bored of waiting for the detective to reach out with another case so here he was, making a house call. Early devil catches a murder and so forth.

He listens for the shower, expecting her to be awake but as he strains his senses, something peculiar catches his attention. It's a faint presence but distinctive enough in its wrongness that it compels Lucifer to make his way up the stairs, tracking it to its source.

With a furrowed brow, he opens the door to the Detective's bedroom, feeling only slightly apprehensive at the invasion of privacy. His gaze lingers briefly on the detective, sleeping fitfully amidst a sea of pillows, before it falls to the foot of her bed.

There, a dark shadow stands, a creature made of smoke and ash that whirls towards him with a silent whoosh of air. Its form flickers, the tenuous connection it has to the physical realm weak and negligible.

"Detective," Lucifer calls, one hand reaching out slowly towards the bed. The shadow seems to move towards him then, the edges of its form taking on an angry discordant fringe. He calls to her again, his voice louder, more urgent. "Detective! Wake up."

Chloe jerks awake, hands thrown out before her defensively. "Vitis laquem."

The shadow dissipates almost instantly, leaving no trace as if it'd never been there. Lucifer barely notices its disappearance, finding himself bound against the wall outside the detective's room by vines that constrict the more he struggles.

Chloe doesn't seem to notice the shadow vanishing either, her eyes wide as her gaze falls on Lucifer outside in the hallway.

"Lucifer! What are you doing here?"

"Get these blasted vines off me!"

Shoving the covers off her, the detective stood, eyes blazing. "Not until you answer my question. What are you doing in my home, standing outside my bedroom?"

"I came to ask about our next case," he wheezed, the vines pressing down against his chest. "Felt something amiss."

The detective narrows her eyes in suspicion but with a sigh, she relents. "Vitis solvo."

The vines release him with a slithering hiss and Lucifer steps further into the room, trying to find any lingering trace of the shadow's presence. Something about its presence struck him familiar, a wrongness he recognized as not of this world but even then, there was something off about it. The way it had flickered as though something physical were pulling it away, pulling it back elsewhere. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it reminded him of.

Finding nothing in the room, he turns to Chloe, noting the dark circles under her eyes. "Detective. Have you noticed anything strange recently? Sensed a presence perhaps?"

Chloe's face pales. Lucifer watches as she scans the room, eyes wary and alert. Nodding, she meets his gaze again. "I've been having trouble sleeping for months now. Keep waking up to the feeling of someone watching me."

"Well, I don't mean to alarm you but something has. I sensed it from the moment I stepped in your home and I saw it just now standing at the foot of your bed. A shadow." He pauses, letting her absorb that piece of info before he continues. "You might want to consider cleansing the space or perhaps putting up some warding."

Chloe stares wide-eyed for a moment. In a burst of activity, she's lunging across the room to her closet. From a chest hidden at the very back, she pulls a large leather-bound tome. Her spellbook, he surmises.

"What are you doing?" he asks, looking over her shoulder.

"Research," she mutters under her breath. "Describe to me what you saw."

As he describes the shadow to her, its translucent appearance and the way it seemed aware of Lucifer's attempts to wake her, he watches as she flips through the pages. Macabre images fly out at him alongside words and phrases like 'astral projection', 'hauntings', 'demons', 'poltergeists'. When he finishes his account of the events, the detective doesn't respond, a certain frenzy to her movements as she keeps searching the book.

Lucifer lowers himself beside her. Slowly, he reaches out to still her trembling hands on the pages of the book. Chloe's eyes are wide with fear when she looks up.

"Detective. I assure you no harm will come to you or your spawn." He pauses, hesitant on whether to continue. "I may not be an expert on these matters but I have dealt with them before. Tell me, when did you first sense this presence?"

The detective shakes her head, stumbling over her words. "I don't - I don't know. I can't remember-"

"I need you to think, darling. Think very carefully. How long have you been having trouble sleeping? I'm assuming that has something to do with this thing."

Chloe's face scrunches up in concentration, a familiar sight by now. It's a long time before she speaks but when she does, her voice is small with dawning horror.

"I remember now. The first time I sensed it. It was after Palmetto."

They spend the rest of the morning looking through Chloe's spellbook, bouncing off theories and ideas of what the shadow could be and what it could want, drifting down into the kitchen when Chloe's stomach grumbles.

Lucifer makes them breakfast, omelettes filled with tomato, onion, peppers and cheese. He can barely contain his smirk when Chloe takes her first bite and moans in delight.

"Whatever crude joke you're about to make, save it. If you ruin this omelette for me, I will hex you," Chloe remarks when she catches sight of his expression, fork pointed at him threateningly. He goes to respond when Daniel and the urchin stumble in through the back door.

"Lucifer!"

Lucifer recoils as the detective's tiny menace attaches herself to his side, grinning up at him, gap-toothed and messy-haired. If he were actually inclined to care, he might have acted on the impulse to grab a brush and tidy her hair into a neat ponytail. He's certain he could do better than Daniel.

"What in God's name are you doing here?" Detective Douche asks, disdain dripping from his voice.

"Nothing in his name. Here on my own actually."

"Did you and mommy have a sleepover?" the spawn asks, looking between Lucifer and the detective. Lucifer grins at the question, giving the detective an inquiring look that's as suggestive as it is teasing.

Seeming to sense the inappropriate comment he intends to make ('well, I did have her moaning in delight'), the detective quickly interjects. "No. No. Absolutely not, no. What are you guys doing here anyway?"

"I left my bird report! Do you want to see it, Lucifer?"

She's tugging him out of his seat even as he asserts that no, he's not actually interested in seeing her bird report. Still, he lets her steer him in the direction of the living room.

Behind him, he can hear Detective Douche hiss quietly, "Are you sleeping with this idiot?"

"Not that it's any of your business anymore but no." After a brief pause, the detective speaks again, her voice lower. "Now tell me about this case you said came up."

"I have to take Trixie to school but I'll send you the details. You're going to need to go undercover though and as much as I hate to have you spend more time with him, you'll need Lucifer to get you into the event."

"Excellent!" Lucifer exclaims, not even pretending he hadn't been eavesdropping. "Where do we begin?"

It doesn't occur to Chloe until she sees Dan walk in during breakfast but once it does, she can't unsee the connection. Palmetto, Dan, the deathwatch beetle, the presence she'd felt since then during the nights. They were all connected.

Somehow, that presence had to do with Dan's impending death. She was sure of it.

The thought lingers in her head all day, a dark cloud looming over her even as they head out to the Players' Club to case the joint.

As a child, the curse had been nothing more than a family myth, something Penelope had waved away and laughed about. But that changed after her husband's death. Penelope swore up and down that she'd heard the deathwatch beetle the very same day Chloe's father died in a robbery gone wrong.

Chloe didn't want to believe it. She refused to believe it. To think she was always meant to lose her father to a curse, one that originated long before either of them had ever been born, was worse than his death being a random coincidence. It was almost insidious.

Even worse was the fear she'd felt when she'd held Trixie in her arms for the very first time and realized with sickening dread that if the curse was real, her daughter would be subjected to it too. But years had passed since then and Chloe had never heard the beetle. Until now.

"Detective, are you quite alright?"

Lucifer's voice jarrs her back to the present, concern lingering in his dark eyes. She doesn't feel the pull of his power, compelling her to spill her secrets but she finds she wants to share her thoughts nonetheless. In many ways, Lucifer was quickly becoming a confidante, someone she could speak to without fear of being judged.

"What if this shadow has to do with the curse? Whatever troubles Dan and I may have, I don't want Trixie to lose her father like I did mine."

At Lucifer's confusion, Chloe realizes he doesn't know about the curse. Shaking her head, she tries to end the conversation, insisting they should focus on the case instead. But Lucifer is nothing if not persistent.

She pulls him aside to a quiet corner.

"There's said to be a curse on the women in my family so that anyone who falls in love with one of us, dies after we hear the deathwatch beetle. I heard it at Palmetto and I started feeling that presence shortly after," she explains tensely, unable to meet his eyes.

She isn't sure what response to expect from him but she's surprised when he asks, "Well, why don't you simply break it?"

Chloe glares. "I don't even know the exact curse that was cast! How am I supposed to break it?"

Across the room, a commotion stirs as someone yells for Carver. Chloe spies the victim's brother, Kevin, standing in front of security.

"Back to work," she mutters underneath her breath, heading in their direction, Lucifer trailing behind. They diffuse the situation quickly, Lucifer working his mojo on the security guy. Chloe shudders surreptitiously as she watches, remembering the pull of his power.

She turns her attention to Kevin and promises to do everything in her power to save his sister.

Predictably, that means all hell breaks loose in the panel.

Chloe feels anxious heading into Lux.

She'd smoothed things over with the Lieutenant, promising she'd get things back on track but it was Lucifer who needed to make the offer to Carver. Lucifer, who was responsible for her cover being blown in the first place.

She rides the elevator up to the penthouse, fidgeting with the sleeves of her blouse. The penthouse is dark when she arrives, Lucifer's bar the only source of light in the open space.

"Uh hello? Lucifer?" she calls, stepping timidly into the darkened room.

"Be out in a moment. Just getting ready."

She'd only been here once before, when they'd set up the sting for Ronnie Hillman but she hadn't had much of an opportunity to explore the room then, examine Lucifer's belongings. Stepping up to the piano at the center of the room, she brushes her fingers gently over the piano keys. She'd taken lessons long ago and forgotten almost everything she'd been taught.

"Did you do what I told you to do and call Carver about the Players' club?"

Leaving the piano behind, Chloe crosses the room to the bookcase that runs the length of the wall. In the dim lighting, she couldn't make out many of the titles but she could tell many of the books were old, ancient even. Clearly well-loved. A smile tugged at her lips.

Behind her, a throat clears. She turns and blinks. Lucifer's half-dressed, wearing only fitted trousers, lean chest on display. She watches, feeling herself go pink at the sight, as he takes a sip of his whiskey, dark eyes watching her over the rim.

"I did. The party's at Lux. Turns out the words 'open bar' are indeed effective," he replies. Then, with an arched brow and a leering grin, "Like what you say, detective? You can touch if you'd like. Promise I won't bite. Well, unless you're into that sort of thing."

Chloe scoffs, rolling her eyes. At this rate, her eyes were going to get stuck mid-roll.

"It's all right, darling. No need to pretend," he continues. "Not every day you see such fine specimen."

Under her gaze, Lucifer turns slowly, presenting himself to her as a bird would a potential mate.

The scars on his back catch her attention, two massive lesions nestled between his shoulder blades. Chloe finds herself moving towards him almost unconsciously.

"What happened to…" she trails off, gesturing to her own back. Lucifer's brow crinkles in confusion. "My God."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose it is his fault."

"Whose fault?"

"My father," he replies. There's a growing pit in Chloe's chest, horror spreading its icy fingers throughout her body until she's cold with dread.

"Your father did this to you?" she asks, mind racing as she tries to remember everything Lucifer's ever said about his father. She's never met the man but if he'd hurt Lucifer, she would hunt him down.

"No, no, no. That's where I cut my wings off," he says. At her disbelieving question, he adds, "Well, I didn't. Maze did. I told her to."

Chloe shakes her head, trying to shake the white noise in her head. With gentle hands, she turns Lucifer, seeking access to his back. "No, seriously. What is that?"

Her fingers barely brush the edges of his scar when the vision assaults her abruptly.

A dark beach. White sand stained with blood. Lucifer's wings, a beautiful pearlescent white that seem to glow with light, cast aside, the flesh they'd been cut from still grisly and prominent.

Mazikeen's face twisted with apprehension at such an ungodly act.

The pain sears into her so acutely, it has Chloe crying out. But even more unbearable than the pain is the fury, the self-loathing, the triumphant defiance that rushes through her simultaneously, eons in the making.

The memories continue, film on a reel inside her head. She hears Lucifer's voice above the din.

"I've realized something here in this City of Angels, that I really am no longer one anymore… And if that's true, why am I still trying to please father?"

A throne overlooking a realm of brimstone and ash, the darkness spreading as far as the eye could see.

"Eons, eons spent condemned to my fate in hell and yet I'm still trying to seek his approval. Still playing a part in his bloody play."

Lucifer kneels but it isn't in reverence for the divine. Instead, contempt festered deep within as he gazed towards the heavens. He would have his freedom at last.

"It's time I fully accept how everyone else sees me. The rebel."

It's too much for any mere mortal to bear and she experiences it all in the snap second before Lucifer wrenches her hand away, gripping her wrist in his hand.

Glass shatters at their feet.

"It's all true," she whispers, blinking tears from her lashes. Lucifer's face is inscrutable.

"What did you do?" he hisses, voice low and hard.

Jerking her wrist from his grip, Chloe sobs, shaking like a leaf. She feels like a livewire cut loose, her magic sparking and spitting as she bleeds raw emotion. Along the bar, bottles shake in their place and lights flicker overhead.

He'd been telling the truth all along. He was an angel. He was the Devil.

"Your wings. I saw the moment you cut off your wings," she cried. "Why would you do that?"

Lucifer stares. "How?"

When she doesn't answer, he steps forward, stopping only when she flinches back. His eyes soften briefly, the shadow of sorrow settling in their depths but a moment later, she sees his walls go up, eyes and heart hardening against her.

"How?" he demands, louder this time.

Chloe flees and the Devil lets her go.

Stumbling into the women's bathroom at Lux, Chloe catches herself against the edge of the sink, startling the girl at the other end touching up her makeup. Catching sight of Chloe's appearance in the mirror, the girl's eyes widen.

"Oh my god. Are you okay?" she asks.

"Get out," Chloe grits out. Hastily, she adds, "Please."

Giving her a wide berth, the other girl acquiesces and slips out the door, the loud thumping of the club's music filtering in before the door closes once again, muffling it. Throwing out her hand, Chloe mutters a spell under her breath, magically barring the door shut.

When she glances at her own face in the mirror, she reels back at the sight. Her skin has a sickly pallor to it and there's a sheen of sweat sticking to her but it's her eyes, bloodshot and puffy, that grab her attention. She's never seen them look so haunted.

Lucifer, the man who'd been in her home just this morning making her breakfast, was the Devil.

Thoughts racing, Chloe leans forward to splash water on her face and cries out when the motion has pain flaring down her back. When she turns, lifting her shift gingerly and glancing at her back's reflection in the mirror, she's horrified to see two long scars marring the skin between her shoulder blades.

It'd been a long time since Chloe had received a vision. Clairvoyance didn't come naturally to many witches, even less by means of psychometry but she came from a particularly powerful family line. The most powerful witches were often the most sensitive to strong psychic energy and contrary to popular belief, psychometry wasn't limited to objects alone. Any person with a notable psychic imprint could trigger a vision.

She'd heard of rare cases with witches left physically or mentally scarred after a particularly powerful or traumatic vision but in the moment, she hadn't even felt her own back being branded.

Lucifer had done this. Mutilated himself. Cut off his own wings.

She remembers the perverse thrill that'd flooded through her - through him - at the sight of his wings lying abandoned on the beach. An act of open defiance against his father - against God, she realizes.

The magnitude of it leaves her shaken. It unsettles her, the knowledge prickling up against her skin, settling like a ball of lead in the pit of her stomach. This morning, she hadn't believed in heaven or hell, demons and angels, the Devil.

Now, she had absolute proof of divinity, of realms beyond her reach.

Why her?, she wondered. Who was she to have such knowledge?

Letting her shirt fall back in place, Chloe startles as a fist bangs on the door. She takes her time in pulling herself together before she undoes the spell on the door and lets herself out, ignoring the glare she gets from the women waiting outside.

Carver should be here by now, she thinks idly. She catches sight of him across the room almost immediately, watching someone at the bar. When she follows his line of sight, she finds Lucifer looking morose and nursing a whiskey.

The Devil, a club owner in LA.

A hysterical laugh bubbles up in her at the thought but she bites down on it, examining him from afar. She should be afraid, he was the Devil. Satan himself, the personification of evil.

But Lucifer wasn't evil and that was just one interpretation out of many.

Chloe hadn't known him long but she prided herself on being a good judge of character and Lucifer was from evil. He was perhaps a little rough around the edges and often infuriating, what with his inappropriate flirting and cryptic responses but he cared about people, people like Delilah.

The vision had granted her invaluable insight into his past and though she could barely begin to conceptualize what he'd been through during his time in Hell, she'd felt the pain he was in. Lucifer, at his core, was deeply scarred and horrifically traumatized by the Fall. By the punishment given to him by his own father, the Creator.

Swallowing, Chloe brought her attention back to Carver. She needed time to think about what to do with Lucifer but right now, she needed to do her job. Meeting Carver's eyes, Chloe curses as the man stands abruptly and tries to flee.

She blinks in surprise as Lucifer cuts him off suddenly, dark eyes meeting hers.

Between the two of them, they subdue Carver, Chloe wrestling the gun out of his hands.

"You don't understand, I have to go! They're gonna kill her now! You just killed Lindsay!" Carver yells, bucking in her grip.

"Can we move this to the penthouse?" she asks Lucifer cooly, careful to keep her distance. He cocks his head and waves his hand towards the elevator, watching her carefully. Chloe takes that as her cue and leads the way, hauling Carter alongside her.

Upstairs, under the influence of Lucifer's mojo, Carver spills his guts and once he hands over his cellphone, Lucifer makes short work of setting up an exchange with Lindsay's kidnappers. As he talks, Chloe watches him from the doorway, her arms crossed against the cool night air.

"You're not going alone," Chloe informs him once he's finished the call.

Lucifer turns, adjusting his handcuffs and unable to meet her eyes. If it were any other person, she'd ascribe it as a nervous gesture but Lucifer and nervousness didn't seem to be congruent concepts.

"I thought you'd left," he hedges.

"A girl's life is at stake. I leave when the job is done."

Lucifer doesn't reply at first, the slight clench of his jaw the only indication he's cottoned onto her double meaning.

"Well, I promised no police and a deal's a deal, especially one with the devil." He pauses then, acutely aware he's raised the elephant in the room. He flashes her a wry smile. "Besides, I'm the only one not risking his life with this. Immortal, remember?"

Chloe shakes her head. "I don't care. I'm coming with you."

He squints at her, confused. He hadn't expected her to stay, Chloe surmises. Truthfully, if it hadn't been for the case, she wouldn't have but he didn't need to know that.

"Fine. But you're staying in the car."

The silence in the car is stifling.

Lucifer hadn't felt this uncomfortable since he'd had that regretful tryst with Wilhelm, a dashing 18th century farmhand from Germany. The man treated handjobs the same way he'd milked his goats and he certainly wasn't known for his gentle touch. Lucifer shuddered, adjusting his trousers. Never again.

The detective hadn't spoken a word on the drive over and they'd been sitting there for well over ten minutes in complete silence. He almost preferred if she'd simply left, never to be seen again. He hadn't expected to see her still at Lux after she'd found out the truth but he should have known she wouldn't leave without finishing the job.

Lucifer knew without a doubt however that this - this would be their final case together, she'd confirmed as much. Their partnership was over. She knew the truth now, she'd felt the depths of his sinfulness. There was no coming back from that.

The detective's voice jarrs him from his thoughts, quiet in the silence of the car. "You keep saying you're immortal. Does that mean you don't feel pain?"

Lucifer stares. The detective turns to face him, her features in sharp relief under the harsh light of the nearby streetlights. Hesitantly, he answers, "Well, I... I do feel something, but it's not pain so much as a pressure, a nuisance, really."

"What about weapons? Do bullets bounce off you, knives break off their handles, that kind of thing?"

"Well, there's no wound or blood, if that's what you mean."

They lapse into silence once again until minutes later, the detective speaks again.

"I'm not afraid of you, Lucifer… But I have questions and I - I need time to process everything." She attempts a smile but it falls flat, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears. "Can you give me that?"

There's a burning sensation in his chest, warmth flooding through his veins like liquid gold.

I'm not afraid of you.

In Lucifer's infinitely long life, very few humans had ever uncovered the truth of who he was. Even fewer were the ones who hadn't gone insane upon such a revelation. But only one, before now, had ever uttered those words.

He thinks of her now, untamed dark hair and curious brown eyes, the gentle hush of paradise surrounding them as they lost themselves in the sweet ecstasy of the forbidden. He'd tasted the tender flesh of many mortals since then but hers had been the first, the sweetest, tinged with lingering divinity.

He hears the echo of Eve's words now in the detective's voice. Could he give her that, she asked, as if she hadn't already given him the thing he desired most after eons of being vilified. The words crowd on his tongue and he wants to tell her he would give her anything, that he would strip the very stars he'd created from the night sky and present them to her as a lover would a diamond necklace.

In the end, all he can utter is, "Yes".

It feels like salvation.

The first time Lucifer bleeds, he jumps in front of a bullet to protect her.

They head into the warehouse after Carver and it's in its cavernous hallways that they find Carver facing off against one of the kidnappers. There's alarm bells ringing in Chloe's head and they only grow louder when the second kidnapper steps from the shadows.

She listens as Lindsay airs her grievances against Carver, as Lucifer tries to advocate on Carver's behalf but Lindsay isn't interested. Not in what Lucifer has to say, not in what Chloe has to say.

"Why do humans think they can rectify one evil with another?" Lucifer says, disdain clear in his voice. She couldn't see his face, her back to him as she keeps her gun trained on Kevin, but she can imagine it.

"I mean, it's clearly the first time this reptile has truly loved a woman, and this is his reward?"

"Get away from her!" Kevin shouts, his finger twitching onto the trigger. "I'll shoot you both."

Behind her, she hears Lindsay yelp and something clatter to the floor. Kevin fires and before Chloe can even flinch, Lucifer is standing before her, an impenetrable wall, shielding her.

Their eyes meet and Chloe's breath hitches as blue eyes meet red. She felt an instinctive primordial fear surge through her then, every nerve in her body screaming at her to run away. She wondered distantly if this was how prey felt upon being pinned by a predator.

Except there was no prey or predator here. Lucifer had saved her. Blood pumping loudly in her ears, loud enough to drown her racing thoughts, it's the only tangible thing she can latch onto. Lucifer had saved her.

In the distance, there are sirens.

The red in his eyes melts away, stifling the fear that keeps her rooted in place. Chloe snaps into action, putting distance between her and Lucifer. She takes advantage of the way Kevin has frozen in horror, gaze flickering from the gun in his hand to Lucifer and back. She disarms him quickly.

"Lucifer, you alright?" she asks, her voice carefully measured. She knows the answer will be yes, he's immortal after all but it was a reflex in her line of work. But he'd said it himself, bullets couldn't hurt him.

"Detective."

Lucifer's voice is small, pained. Alarm shoots through her. When she turns, Lucifer is staring at his hand, wide eyed. "I'm bleeding."

"What?"

He turns his palm, dark red coating the surface of it. "Son of a bitch, that really hurts!"

He collapses, one hand pressed to his side.

"I thought you said you didn't bleed," Chloe exclaimed, stepping up to prop Lucifer up as unis flooded the scene, taking Kevin and Lindsay into custody.

"I don't," he insists. "What's happening to me?"

Chloe didn't know. She was still reeling from the night's earlier revelation.

What did it mean that the Devil, previously indestructible, could now bleed?

Author's Note: Writing this chapter was a bit of a challenge but finally its done. Hope you all enjoyed! Huge shout-out to Incarnadine91 for beta-reading.

'Psychometry - a form of extrasensory perception that occurs when physical contact is made with an object.' I expanded this concept and took some inspiration from the original Charmed where Phoebe could get premonitions from associated objects and people alike.

Let me know what you think of the chapter!

(Also, have a little sneak peek for Chp 3: ""Ella? Hey, it's Chloe. I need your help.")