Chapter Text
It was a cloudy Monday, and a slow day for work right until Lucifer Morningstar walked into my office wreathed in smoke and sin, and put out his cigarette in the homemade ashtray next to the door. He seemed to bring the clouds with him, and he smelled like the air right before a storm. We weren’t forecasted for lightning, but at that moment I swore I saw the electricity arcing off of him. He wore a hundred watt smile and Armani. A rich boy, trouble if I ever saw it.
I leaned back in my chair and looked him over. “The door says knock, sir. I could have been with a client.”
He smirked, cocky bastard. “They wouldn’t have minded. You’re detective Decker, aren’t you? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“All good things, I’m sure,” I shot right back. People didn’t like me much, but they couldn’t deny that I did my job. I got results, even if they weren’t always the results they came looking for, and I always got my guy.
My father would have said that pride always came before a fall, but I was a fired cop. I couldn’t fall much farther without the help of a pit.
Morningstar flopped into the chair in front of my desk. He didn’t sit, he lounged, like some sort of cat. One of the ones with teeth like daggers and eyes that glowed in the dark, beautiful and dangerous and probably about to get shot. His smile revealed even white teeth, human but still sharp. Everyone forgot that man was the apex predator these days. “They said you were the best. They didn’t say you were beautiful too.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Cut to the chase Mr…?”
“Morningstar, Lucifer Morningstar,” he supplied helpfully.
What a name. I snorted and continued. “Well, Mr. Morningstar, I’d appreciate it if you’d restrict your comments to ones pertinent to your case from now on. I work for…” I surveyed his outfit again, appraising the linen with an amateur's eye. In this city you learned how to spot wealth fast. “A hundred dollars an hour, and that’s better than you’ll get anywhere else. I work until there’s nothing left to turn up, and I want a deposit up front. I don’t do Saturdays, Tuesday nights, or school mornings Monday to Wednesday.”
That had lost me a lot of clients, but Trixie came first. She deserved better than a mother with an office on the seedy side of town who came home from work smelling like steel and death. I was determined to give it to her.
His brow wrinkled, but he accepted it without any further comment. “Very well. In return I expect you to keep quiet about this. Discretion is of the utmost importance.”
“Are you guilty of any major crimes that I need to know of?” I asked him. This was the most important part. No one in Los Angeles was innocent of everything, but I had to have some standards. Murderers and their ilk would have no help from me. Embezzlers and small time thieves were judged case by case. I wasn’t inclined to give Mr. Morningstar much leeway. He looked arrogant, sounded obnoxiously British, and had a face that would make anyone act rash. Cheekbones like that deserved some sort of warning; “Keep away from children and easily influenced souls”.
“Sodomy, adultery, solicitation of almost everything and possession of more drugs than you could name, darling.” he answered, looking like the cat that got into the creamery. He was so damn proud of himself it made the mind wonder what could have him keeping secrets.
I mulled it over. A hundred dollars an hour was good money, and Trixie ate like a starving dog these days, and was growing faster than I could keep her in clothes.
Morningstar must have sense my reluctance, because he dug deep in his pockets and pulled out more a botanical garden worth of green. Neatly folded notes were pushed across my desk toward me, and I realized it was all one hundreds.
Hells with it, I could deal with the repercussions later. For now I had lawyers bills to pay, rent due next week, and a little girl to keep fed on a single salary. I took the money, counted it out, made a note of it in my book, and fixed Lucifer Morningstar with a solid stare.
“It seems we’re in business, Mr. Morningstar. What do you want?”
To my surprise he didn’t jump to spill out his woes. Something had been eating him since he came in the door, I could feel it in my bones like a sailor could sense the wind changing, but he kept his anxious energy held tight to his skin, a storm in a devilishly attractive bottle.
He leaned in, dark eyes fixed on mine, smiling softly. “Not yet. I’m sure you don’t mind, but I need something over you first. Insurance, let’s call it. So, Chloe Decker, investigator extraordinaire, what do
you
want? What is your deepest desire?"
Hypnotist's eyes stayed locked on me, and he seemed so honestly confident that I just stared for a minute. Then the shock faded and I stood, chair crashing to the floor behind me. It had been half off at a liquidation sale, and it had the balance of a one-legged elephant. Morningstar started at the noise, and whatever spell he was trying to case broke.
“I don’t know what sort of corporate power-play mumbo-jumbo that was,” I told him, stepping around my desk and a snowfall of discarded paperwork on the floor, “But it stops now. You want my help, you play by my rules, and that means no trying to charm me. I’m a professional, not a snake. Play your little games on your own time, Morningstar, not mine.”
He stood too and somehow managed to not loom despite the handful of inches he had on me. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, drawing attention to the line of his neck and the muscles that became his shoulders. I realized with an ache how long it had been since Dan. It was a damn shame, my dead ex was a dirty cop and here I was staring at a man probably wore a cologne called Disreputable . Fortune smiled on me, he was too confused that his failure to notice.
“I’m sorry, did that not work? Do you have contacts in or something? Do you want me to try again?”
“Yes, none of your business, and no.” I growled, and wished I was the sort of person who could work with a fifth of brandy in them. Half the other PIs on the strip drank like fishes, but I’d never gotten in the habit. It made you too sloppy, too confident, and besides it was as much a cliche as the trench coat. Maybe it worked for bestubbled boys who’d grown up on pulp novels and B-movies, but someone had to be the adult in the room. “Look, just tell me your case so I can solve it. I have a reputation to keep up, and frankly I want you out of my office as soon as possible.”
Morningstar considered me carefully, eyes roaming over my face and only stopping to rest on my bare legs for a second. Maybe getting out from behind the desk after a day working customer harassment freelance wasn’t the best idea. Despite first impressions, he wasn’t the leering type. Instead he just… smiled. A more impressionable person might have called it ‘cheeky’, I just called it frustrating.
“You really weren’t affected, were you?” he said, soft like the rumble of thunder from the horizon. Everything about him reminded me of a hurricane. I’d lived in sunny LA all my life, and this was an education in storms.
“If by affected you mean, ‘ready to throw you out’, then yes, I’d say I am.”
“Peculiar,” he whispered, then shook his head and righted himself. “Well, maybe it will prove useful here. You see, I’ve lost something of unspeakable value.”
If it was a woman, I was going to shoot him myself. I prodded the ambiguous mass he had laid before me cautiously. “What exactly did you lose?”
He sucked in a breath, exhaled low, and said with forced casualness, “Only my angel wings.”
Well, that confirmed what I’d suspected since he walked in. This was going to be one of those cases. I probably needed to demand more money up front. In the meantime, I righted my chair, sat back down, and popped a migraine pill.
“Explain it from the top.” I told him.
“Well, it all started when I fell from heaven….”