"I'm right, aren't I?" Chloe asked as they waited for their food. Linda sat across from her at an outdoor café, legs crossed under the table. She sipped from a straw at a colorful cocktail with an orange slice on the rim of the glass. Chloe had avoided giving in to temptation, though she'd taken a taste of Linda's drink and agreed it was delicious. She needed a clear head today, even though she was on leave and had a sham wedding to put off.

"Who you invite is up to you," Linda said carefully. "You can have as many or as few people as you want there."

Chloe watched the people strolling by, wondering how many of them were carrying similar emotional burdens. When she'd first arrived, Linda had already claimed this table, out on the patio and next to a railing. She'd shown Linda her ring and delivered the news with an attempt at an optimistic smile. Linda had inspected the ring with raised eyebrows and a faint upward tilt of her lips.

Chloe's optimism had steadily trickled out until she pressed her lips together. Now she was skirting around the issue, circling ever closer to the drain. Inevitability weighed heavily on her; it was only a matter of time before Linda punctured her fantasy.

It was Linda who'd joined her in Lucifer's penthouse when she needed the support, and it was Linda who'd helped Lucifer grow as a person, and it was Linda who he called when he needed to talk through his bonkers nightmare stories, and now it was Linda who met her eyes and asked the question Chloe herself didn't want to consider.

"Chloe," Linda said, "are we happy about this?"

And that was a bomb dropped into her chest. Not are you happy or how do you feel. No, Linda wanted to know if we were happy, if she needed to slap on a smile and support Chloe's decision regardless of her own feelings on the matter. Do I need to lie for you, that's what Linda was asking, and Chloe didn't hate lying like Lucifer did, but this was different, wasn't it? This was Chloe putting her friend in a bad position – this was Chloe asking Linda to lie, and with that asking her to pick apart the emotional fallout during Lucifer's sessions.

"Is he worth it?" she blurted out. Now it was out in the open, where someone could see it and poke at it and look at her with pity. But this was Linda, both friend and psychiatrist with questionable ethical boundaries who did not believe feelings were stupid. Linda hadn't scoffed when Chloe needed her as emotional support to see if Lucifer had run away again, and she didn't scoff now. She pursed her lips, thinking over Chloe's question with focused attention. She gave the matter serious, worthy thought. And then she said:

"That's a complicated question, Chloe."

"Of course it is," Chloe snapped. "It's always complicated with him."

Linda hummed quietly, sipping her drink.

"It's also a question I can't answer for you," she said around her straw. Chloe sighed and leaned back in her chair. She flattened a hand against the table, chewing at her bottom lip. She was engaged to Marcus. She was wearing Marcus' ring. She should be happy – no, she should be thrilled. She should want to text all of her friends a picture of the ring in front of her smiling face and laugh at their happy responses.

Chloe remembered Dan's proposal and her excitement. She had looked forward to being his wife, to sharing their lives and careers with each other. Imagining life with Dan had been a pleasurable daydream. Imagining life with Marcus…

Choe sighed.

"Shouldn't I want this?" she asked. She met Linda's eyes just as two sandwiches were placed in front of them both. Linda thanked the server while Chloe pulled the toothpick from the top of her club. A simple, predictable sandwich for a simple, predictable life. She and Marcus would share their lives while Lucifer eventually, inevitably faded into the background. Marcus would make sure of that. He hadn't even been able to tolerate a necklace gifted between friends. Chloe reached up to her neck to touch the bullet which wasn't there. Her eyes watered. Linda watched her quietly, knowing when to let thoughts run their course.

How long did she have left with Lucifer? Would their friendship survive the lead-up to the wedding? Would the implied seating arrangement far across the room from Chloe be the catalyst? Would he take the not-so-subtle hint and begin removing himself from Chloe's life entirely? From Trixie's life? Would Maze leave too?

She was crying before she realized how much her spiraling thoughts hurt. Imagining her life without Lucifer was hard, yes, but imaging Trixie's questions – imagining explaining to her canny daughter that Lucifer wouldn't be coming around anymore, as Marcus entered their lives – knowing that one day Trixie would figure it out, might even understand immediately that Marcus was the reason for Lucifer's absence –

"Chloe?" Linda's calm voice cut through the spiral; a napkin flashed into Chloe's eyeline. She reached out and wiped her cheeks with a murmured noise of embarrassment.

"You should want this, yes," Linda said. Her expression hovered between sympathy and frustration. "You should be excited."

I'm not. Chloe's throat closed around the words. I want to take it back.

She couldn't say it out loud. Not even to Linda, who watched her with a therapist's patient understanding. Linda reached out her hand, her expression kind. Chloe reached out and took her friend's hand. She breathed shakily, closed her eyes, and squeezed. Without a word, Linda squeezed back.


The woman who called herself Judith Esperanza stood against a railing of Santa Monica pier and stared far out into the Pacific. She marveled at how, this far up, she couldn't smell the ocean itself, as though humanity had pushed the ocean's force away from the pier. She ate scoops of a bright red raspado purchased from a street vendor, sometimes pausing to click the edge of her plastic spoon against the front of her teeth. The ice cooled her well enough for the temperature.

Her own homeland shared borders with the Pacific and Caribbean oceans, vastly different in temperament. She didn't like to think of her homeland often, though she sought out its comforts where she found them. Los Angeles had more familiarity than expected, so long as she avoided certain areas overrun with gríngolas. At each vendor, in each store, she alternated her pattern of speech – sometimes Venezuelan, sometimes Chilean, rarely Argentinian for how difficult she found the accent – but always she reverted to her native Colombian when she stood by herself, observing the people around her.

She was lonely and starved for the company of others. She pushed that yearning deep, as she did every moment when surrounded by those who could never be company. She finished the raspado and tossed the cup and spoon into the first trash can she found. She wiped her sticky fingers on a napkin and walked down the wooden pier, stood underneath the Route 66 sign, and asked a passerby for a photo with her disposable camera.

He grimaced and spoke to her in German, indicating he didn't understand what she wanted. She gestured with the camera, pointed to herself underneath the sign. He smiled with a quiet "ahhhhh" and took the requested picture. She thanked him, Ecuadoran for a flashing moment.

Last night's dress, shoes, and barrettes were discarded in the early hours of the morning. She'd found a twenty-four-hour store and purchased black leggings, an oversized pale-yellow t-shirt, and green flip flops. When she'd returned to the motel, she'd dug through her suitcase for the pair of scissors she kept sealed into a side pocket and took to her hair with sure fingers, cropping the length to just over her shoulders. She'd pulled out a pair of glasses with unaltered glass, which she'd set on the bathroom counter for use today – two large, round frames which covered her face down to the top of her cheeks.

Now, the sun glared against those same glasses, and she squinted down at the beach. She'd added a gray fanny pack to her wardrobe before leaving the motel at ten thirty in the morning sharp, where she stored her cash for the day, a fresh disposable camera, the flip phone, and a passport with her newest identity. The beach called to her, its waves beckoning from a distance. She walked until the sand ground between her foot and the rubber flip flops, and her feet sank a few inches with every step. She stopped when her toes reached the edge of the wave's path and smiled when the water washed over her ankles. Here the smell of the sea couldn't be held back; she inhaled deeply, expanding her chest with sea salt air. For this moment, alone and free, she felt terribly powerful.

The phone chattered from her hip where the fanny pack had shifted as she strolled down to the beach. She answered after the first ring, saying nothing into the speaker. A voice murmured into her ear; her brows twisted together.

"No puede ser," she said. It can't be. The voice persisted. She pulled the phone away from her face and snapped it closed. Her eyes looked out over the ocean, all sense of power crumpled away. Her expression was blank, though inside she roiled as strongly as the waves lapping at her legs. For a long moment, she considered walking forward into the ocean, as far as she could, then abandoning her feet to swim until her arms stopped working and she sank into the depths. She turned instead and walked back toward the road, sand sloshing from her soggy flip flops. She slipped on the water and grit trapped between her toes a few times but kept the flip flops on. She liked the discomfort they brought her, the grounding annoyance.

Lucifer Morningstar hadn't died last night. He had reported to work this morning, earlier than usual and very much alive. No apparent injuries or struggles to move. He was healthy and safe.

The woman called Judith stood on the sidewalk near the pier, staring back into Los Angeles. Her hands hung at her sides, fingers slightly clawed and twitching. Anger flashed through her; she pulled in a sharp breath, blinking in the sunlight.

She needed a new plan.


Lucifer was holding Ella's favorite pipette and twisting the end back and forth. She had given it to him ten minutes ago to keep him momentarily busy as she ran the most prominent sections of fingerprints she'd been able to preserve. Somehow he'd managed to be distracted by the increasing and decreasing numbers indicating milliliters of liquid for a whole twenty-eight seconds before snorting and starting to bother her again. She'd given him a ninety-nine well plate, a case of clean tips, and a petri dish full of water to practice, then turned the entire thing into a challenge by simply questioning if his fingers were really as dexterous as he claimed.

"I'll have you know that not a single lover has left dissatisfied," he'd declared, before settling into the task of wrangling his larger hands into doling out measurements of fifty milliliters into ninety-nine tiny wells using an instrument he'd never held before. At the third well he'd depressed the plunger so hard that the tip fell off the pipette; at the seventh he somehow managed to pinch his fingers. By the fifty-sixth he only cursed every few times, otherwise intent on his task to prove her wholly wrong about something he couldn't properly remember now.

Ella ignored him in favor of watching her monitor. None of the prints were a strong enough hit to be promising, except for Lucifer's own thumbprint. She'd asked last night if he could try drawing the woman and hadn't bothered bringing the stick figure holding its stick gun to the precinct. She might sit him with a sketch artist; he might work through favors, but Ella worked through cheeriness. She knew she could swing an afternoon if needed.

The bullets provided ballistics from a single gun, giving her something to match if they ever found it. They still needed to review videos from LUX; last night she'd only managed to watch three before her eyelids had insisted on finishing her interrupted sleep, and Lucifer had spent more time complaining about her inadequately long couch to focus on anything else.

Now, with the fingerprints a bust, the videos were the last piece of evidence she had to analyze. She needed Lucifer's eyes for the task since she couldn't tell much from an angry stick figure in a square dress. She looked at him, tongue against his upper teeth, as he oh so delicately aliquoted a minuscule pool of water into the seventy-eight well.

"Alright, Wobble time," she said. She tapped his shoulder, earning a grumpy huff and a flapping hand to shoo her away. She pulled up the website and clicked on the latest SukiSue video, uploaded in the early hours of this morning. Related videos included others from LUX from different days, a group of women walking on a sidewalk at night somewhere, and a bar fight.

The video started way louder than she expected; she flinched and scrambled to turn the volume down as Lucifer cried out in exasperation. She looked over to see that he had hit the plate with the heel of his hand, splattering droplets of water everywhere.

"Bollocks!" He looked at Ella, annoyed. "All that work, now gone to pieces!"

"You could start over," she offered with a cheeky smile. He scoffed.

"It'll have dried before I get halfway done. I assume my dexterity's honor is defended, anyhow."

"Good," she said. She waved him over to stand in front of the monitor with her. He left the mess on the bench, standing next to her, hands buried in his pockets. At sight of LUX's interior, he brightened.

"Ah, yes! My adoring fans and their not at all creepy videos, uploaded for the masses."

"Right." Ella dragged the video back to the beginning. "Watch close, tell me if you see her."

"Well, she was only there for a few moments, really." Lucifer watched anyway, studying the faces drifting in and out of the camera's view. The camera remained trained on him, regardless of his location – sometimes close up, sometimes far away, but always with him in the center.

A few minutes in, Lucifer sighed.

"I do appreciate myself a great deal, but even I can admit this is boring, Miss Lopez," he said. "How long does this go on?"

Ella rolled her cursor over the video. "An hour and forty-three minutes." She looked up at him. "Anything you can help narrow this down with?"

"I had just finished Notorious, a bit of Duran Duran for a slow night."

Ella skimmed the video ahead with the cursor, watching for when Lucifer approached the piano. Once he was playing, she let the video resume.

"I can't read about it, burns the skin from your eyes!" the Lucifer in the video sang. The one next to her hummed along, tapping his foot to the beat. He protested when she began skimming forward.

"No appreciation," he murmured when she stopped at the end of his performance.

"Now what?" Ella watched as video Lucifer spread his hands, soaking in the adoration around him. Definitely an actor.

"I go to the bar for a drink, and our femme fatale comes to speak to me."

They watched as video Lucifer did just that, slamming back enough drink to make Ella's stomach growl in sympathy. As he raised the fourth glass to his lips, the camera suddenly zipped closer on the back of a long-haired woman standing nearby. She was in profile to the camera, her features nervous, and she shifted from foot to foot.

"Hello, Mariana," Lucifer hissed.

The video began trembling as video Lucifer turned to acknowledge her, gleaming with mischief. She never turned fully to the camera; her apparent fear was noticeable even from this distance. Ella watched her friend turn from leering miscreant to gentle benefactor in a few brief sentences, and then he gestured her toward the elevator. They turned and he guided her across the club, camera trembling ever harder, until they summoned the carriage and were lifted away.

"Welp," Ella said. She skimmed backwards and took a screenshot of Mariana's profile. It wasn't ideal for facial recognition, but it gave them a place to start.

"Anything else you remember?" Ella looked up at Lucifer, whose face had taken on a frustrated glare.

"She spoke Spanish," he said. Ella jotted that down in her limited profile notes.

"What did she say to get you with her?"

"She said she needed help." Lucifer sounded vaguely betrayed; Ella sighed and shook her head.

"Oh, buddy." Ella stretched her arms and wrapped them around Lucifer's middle; he grunted and squirmed. "She shouldn't have taken advantage like that," she offered as he pulled away and straightened his jacket.

"Yes, well, she did, and I dare say –"

"Lopez!" Lieutenant Pierce popped open the door to her lab, making her jump at his abrupt tone. "You flirting or working in here?"

"Uh…" Ella stood mute, eyes wide. Lucifer drew up to his full height at her side.

"She hardly needs checking up on," he said. He waved a hand at the Lieutenant, dismissing him. "Run along now, Pierce – I'm sure you have somewhere to be that isn't here."

Pierce scowled for only a moment; his lips turned upward, ever so slightly, and suddenly he was downright satisfied.

"You're right," he said, casual air and snide tone, "wedding to plan and all."

He closed the lab door and strode away while Ella perked up and Lucifer furrowed his brow.

"A wedding," he murmured.

"A wedding!" she cried. She pulled her phone out and checked her messages – nothing from Chloe yet. "Ohmygosh! Decker!" She started to call her friend, then stopped and looked up at her other friend, and suddenly she was having a serious crisis of loyalties as Lucifer's face clearly did not say hooray I'm so happy but instead I would very much like for that man to disappear and oh nooo…

"Uh…" Ella stood flummoxed again. She was happy for the prospect of beautiful Pecker babies, but Lucifer just looked so…so something, and also he'd maybe kind've been shot at last night, and besides, Chloe hadn't told her yet, so technically she didn't know.

"So!" she said too loudly, hands waving to force Lucifer's eyes back down to her. "Mariana!"

"Mariana," he agreed.

"We need to talk to your staff from last night," she said. Lucifer began the process of dialing his manager on duty to figure out the schedule and begin asking after who they needed to speak to. Ella checked her phone every few minutes, waiting for Decker's call.