Chapter Text
The “in session” light is illuminated red as he approaches, but he knocks on the door and enters the bright office without waiting for an answer. Wearing a lovely plum-colored dress with a wide peplum, her hair swept into a French twist, Doctor Linda sits, scribbling on her notepad. Handjobadiel lies supine on the couch, tear tracks glistening on his ruddy, salt-abraded cheeks.
“I just don’t understand why the humans won’t take me seriously,” he sobs.
“Right,” says Lucifer, grabbing the candy dish and dumping a rainbow pile of jellybeans into his hand, “have you considered not introducing yourself as Handjobadiel?”
Handjobadiel sits up, sniffing. “Why? What’s wrong with my name?”
“Oh, every—”
“Nothing,” Doctor Linda says before Lucifer can finish. “Nothing is wrong with your name, Handjobadiel.” She makes a face, tapping her pen against her notepad before continuing. “Though … um … it’s possible it doesn’t translate. Have you considered, maybe, shortening it?”
“Shortening it?” Handjobadiel’s eyebrows knit. He brushes long brown strands of hair from his face. “Like … to what?”
Doctor Linda thinks. Brightens. “Why not just Job? That’s still very Biblical.”
Sugary sweetness melts on Lucifer’s tongue as he chews. The infusion of gourmet snacks had definitely improved the state of Hell.
But Doctor Linda glares over her shoulder. “Lucifer.”
“What?” Lucifer says, face contorting as he tries with his tongue to scrape jellybean goop from his teeth. “This is supposed to be therapy for the damned, but he’s stealing the couch time from people who actually need it—”
“Hey, I do need it,” protests Handjobadiel.
“—all because Dad had a terrible sense of humor.”
“What’s that mean?”
Lucifer rolls his eyes. “Brother, your name is a bloody sex act. Of course, they don’t take you seriously.”
“Lucifer!” snaps Doctor Linda.
Handjobadiel blows his nose into a tissue. “But. Love is nice, isn’t it? Why would the humans laugh at love?”
“Brother,” Lucifer says impatiently. “Speaking of. I love you. Truly. But you needn’t any therapy. What you require is a name that isn’t bloody idiotic.” He gestures toward the window, the sunshine. “Think of the avenues that would open to you if you chose a new label! One you willfully selected.” He clenches a fist and shakes it. “Empower yourself. Take some bloody ownership of your life.”
“But ….”
Doctor Linda has her hands clapped over her eyes like she’s counting to ten in her head. “I know,” she adds through her teeth. “I know that’s a lot to process, Handjobadiel, but Lucifer isn’t … entirely wrong.”
Lucifer preens. “Thank you, Doctor. I’ve been practicing these past millennia.”
“Is that why you ditched Samael?” Handjobadiel wonders.
“Yes!” And really, really no. “Though at least Samael doesn’t imply a pickle got tickled.”
“Job,” says Handjobadiel, turning the word on his tongue. “Job. I’m not sure I like it.”
Lucifer bites back instinctive, scathing sarcasm. “Yes, well, you work on that, will you?” He has more important things to worry about than his clueless brother. “Besides,” he says more gently as he plunks the candy dish atop a fat first-edition copy of Sympathy for the Devil: My Time with Lucifer Morningstar. Doctor Linda had gotten published a few years after he’d left, once she’d edited her devilish tale to her liking. He puts a hand on her shoulder. “Darling, would you not like a break? You’ve been down here since my last flyabout.”
Doctor Linda frowns. “Wait, I have?”
“You have,” Handjobadiel says, voice wavering. He sniffles. “Why else do you think I’m in Hell? I don’t come here by choice—you weren’t in your other office.” Another sniff. “No offense, Brother.”
“Why is it,” Lucifer grits out, “every time someone says no offense, they’ve given every bloody offense?”
“Well, I know you made it better, but—”
“Better? Better? It’s got bloody jellybeans!” He jabs his thumb toward the window again. “And sunshine! And therapists!” And Chloe.
“That’s true,” Handjobadiel admits. “You’re right, I misspoke. Better was an understatement.” But it still sucks, he doesn’t add.
Whatever. Lucifer hasn’t time for this.
“Why did you not call anyone to take you home?” he says to Doctor Linda. “You know I’m always available for you.” Not to mention she had God on bloody speed dial.
She glances at her wristwatch, shaking it. “We really have to fix the time thing. I keep losing track when I’m down here.”
“Yes, yes. That’s next on my list to pester Amenagod about. But, first … break, Doctor?”
Nodding, she stands, and sets her pen and notepad onto her chair. Her golden hair catches the light. “I’m sorry, Handjobadiel; we’ll have to pick this up later.”
Lucifer holds out a hand, and she grasps it. Her soul is warm to the touch, and despite her time in Hell, she feels hale, hearty, and full of love. Pulling her into his arms, he unfurls his wings.
“Goodbye, Brother,” he says.
Handjobadiel waves glumly like Eeyore, seeming content-ish (or not) to ponder his name choices alone.
Lucifer lifts away, cradling Doctor Linda. The bubble that is Hellish reality pops, and they enter the Between. He slips through shimmering filaments connecting dimensions. Heaven and the Silver City sit at the opposite end of Creation, far, and yet impossibly close, now that he can enter freely. Another beat of his wings, and the kaleidoscope of light and thought rips like wet membrane, spilling them into a particular paradise. Endless green grass bows in the celestial wind, contrasting with sky the color of lapis lazuli.
“You’re really comfortable spending so much time in Hell?” he says, setting her down. He gestures at the beauty surrounding them. Idyllic. Yet he’s always reminding her to return from below. She’d died years ago but had never stopped working. “I worry sometimes you’re missing your just rewards.”
“I’m not missing a thing,” she replies. “Lucifer, I want to be in Hell with you and Chloe. It’s fulfilling and meaningful. It keeps me engaged, and for me that is a reward. I’m so proud of you and the changes you’ve made. We all are. Of course, we’ll chip in where we can.”
Something warm burgeons in his chest. Amenadiel had also been helping, making requested alterations here and there. Lucifer’s friends, nephew, daughter, brothers and sisters. Chloe. They apply their unique skills where they do the most good.
For the first time in his life, every piece in his vast puzzle fits where it should.
He hasn’t anything missing. But Linda ….
“What about Paolo?” he asks.
“Trust me”—her voice drops low and suggestive, her expression growing pointed—”we more than make up for any absences.”
“Oh, naughty, naughty, doctor,” he purrs, following her implication. “Very well, I suppose I can’t argue with that.”
And she laughs. “Believe me; it works for us.”
She’d married the sommelier she’d met at Maze and Eve’s wedding. He and Doctor Linda had been a love match, albeit not at first sight. She’d written a sequel—Celestial Psychology: Thoughts on God, Love, and the First Dysfunctional Family. They’d bumped into each other in Hawaii when she’d been blowing her massive book advance, and at age 61, she’d tied the knot with him on the shore of Waikiki, almost the entire heavenly host in attendance. Rory had been there, so Lucifer had missed the original, but he’d heard tales, gotten glimpses in photographs.
Bending forward, he kisses Linda’s temple. “Speaking of Paolo, give my love, will you?”
“Wanna hit the beach with me?” Dr. Linda asks, nodding in response. “The mimosas here are to live for.”
He smiles. “Oh, no, thank you. I’ve places to be.”
“Take care, Lucifer.”
“As always,” he answers, and then he flies to a neighboring nirvana, not too far away.
From horizon to horizon, a swath of flowers sways in the breeze. Sunset paints puffy clouds with jagged reds, burnt oranges, and pink pastels. Lucifer lands on the westernmost rise, pausing to inhale the scent of petrichor as damp, spongy grass sinks beneath his Louboutins. He walks down a small dirt path to where Eve kneels in a white sundress and red sunhat. She wields her trowel to toil, humming a soft, aimless tune he remembers from too many millennia ago.
“Hello, my dear,” he murmurs, smiling as she looks up. “Thought I’d pop by.”
“Lucifer!”
She drops the trowel, which lands in the dark soil with a thud, and then squeals as she launches to her feet to embrace him. Arms linked, they traverse her floral labyrinth: sunflowers, poppies, zinnias, roses, asters, all bursting with color as they soak up Heaven’s undying sun. She’d been cultivating a while now. Each subsequent visit, the Garden seems bigger.
He regales Eve with his latest exploits, and Eve talks of her beloved flowers, and the books she’s read, and the club in Ibiza she’d just found that makes the best appletinis.
“Oh?” he says, perking up. “Sounds lovely. Shall we go next time?”
She grins. “Why not now? They’ve got a 1926 Macallan that never runs out.”
With a snap of her fingers, the scenery changes, birdsong and sunlight replaced by a bass throb and neon-colored rave wands. They grab a high-top table in the corner, and dance, and laugh, and play, and drink—the whiskey is exquisite, smokey and smooth, with hints of toffee. Until the hours wind down, and he remembers he has places to be.
“Are you certain you’re not bored?” he confirms before he leaves, as he always does.
“It’s my Heaven, not Adam’s. Of course it’s not boring.”
“True enough.” He kisses her cheek.
She hugs him close. “Until next time?”
“Always.” He steps back to unfurl his wings. “And don’t forget we have—”
“Right, right, I remember. Thurs—” She loses her grip on her appletini. The glass crashes to the table and shatters.
“What?” His word is a reflexive stutter, but then … he realizes. From the twinge behind his heart. The connection forged in Hell, reawakened by sudden proximity. “Mazikeen,” he breathes out, turning, the sweltering club air slipping through his feathers.
Maze is wearing hunting leathers and spiked heels that could be weapons. “Well, that didn’t go like I planned,” she observes. “Fuck. Also ow.” Her flinty expression shifts to one of confusion. “Lucifer? Wait, is this Hell?”
“Nope,” says Eve. “Not Hell.”
“It would seem I stand corrected,” Lucifer enthuses, too awed to be sad at the implications. “Demons can grow souls.”
Maze chokes with emotion, confusion morphing into pleasant, wistful pain. “Eve.” She claws past him. Black leather crushes white silk. Their lips smash together, their fingers tangling in each other’s hair. “I’ve missed you.”
“Me, too,” replies Eve.
“And what am I?” huffs Lucifer over the sound of smacking lips. “Chopped liver?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Maze says, breathless, euphoric, laughing. “I talked to you last week.”
True. He’d helped her bag a serial killer. She hadn’t called for help—of course, she wouldn’t. But she’d been mid-chase when he’d visited, so he’d joined her visceral game of cat and mouse.
“Right, then,” he says. “Well, perhaps we’ll talk later? This Thursday, we—” But neither Eve nor Maze pay him attention, too entranced in a feast of intimate remembrance. Ah, well. “I’ll … tell Squee to add another place setting,” he decides on his own, a smile tugging at his lips.
And then he fucks off, as Maze requested.
Never let it be said Lucifer Morningstar can’t follow instructions.
A girlish falsetto shriek bisects the vehicle as Lucifer wrenches the wheel. Burnt rubber reeks, and he cackles with glee. Daniel’s Camaro whips around its front wheels, painting clockwise skid marks on the pavement, before Lucifer forces it to sheer into a parallel parking spot, which is hugged front and back by hulking SUVs. The car lurches to a halt, smoke curling past the windows.
“And that,” Lucifer explains, panting, “is how you should be parking, Daniel. You’ve no excuse to be sensible anymore.”
“Holy fuck,” says Daniel, windblown and wide-eyed. His hair looks as though he’d not used a comb after he’d washed himself on spin cycle. “Holy fuck, man. How do your tires last more than five minutes?”
“This is Heaven. Who bloody cares how long the tires last?” The seatbelt creaks as Lucifer turns to face Daniel fully. The stairs leading into the restaurant sprawl beyond the passenger door. Patrons peer at them curiously from a covered patio. BEST WAFFLES IN TOWN! proclaims a banner hanging from the railings. “And must you scream like that every time? It’s not like you can die again.”
“Shut up; you’re not always dignified either.”
Lucifer scoffs. “When am I not dignified.”
“You were crying into your chips that first dinner party with Chloe.”
“That was the onion dip.”
“Riiight,” Daniel intones, rolling his eyes. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“It was,” Lucifer insists.
“I mean, you’d think Heaven’d have tear-proof onions. Just saying.”
“Well, stop saying it. I’ll not be maligned this way. The Devil is not a sap.”
“Fine. Fine, man.” Daniel licks his lips, peering at the rearview mirror. A Ford Expedition sits centimeters from their bumper. Sunshine gleams in the pristine black paint. “Dude, how will I even pull out after?”
“That’s what she said.”
A breath gusts from Daniel’s lips, like he can’t quite not laugh.
“Really, Daniel, connect your desire with intent, and the car will move. How have you been in Heaven this long without learning the mechanics?”
“I guess it just … hasn’t sunk in yet.”
“Hasn’t sunk in? Hasn’t sunk in? You’ve been here for bloody decades!”
“Dude, I spent a long time in Hell first. You got any idea how much pingpong I’ve played?”
“True. I ….” Lucifer looks at his lap. He’d spent a long time in Hell also, waiting, wanting, thinking of her. Of them. “I suppose I can empathize.”
“With the pingpong?” Lucifer opens his mouth to retort, but Daniel shushes him with a gesture. “Nah, man. I’m kidding. I get it. I’m”—when he blinks, his eyes grow misty—”I’m glad we both found the way out.”
Lucifer applies will, and into his hand pops a dip-filled dish. “Must be the onions.”
“Yeah.” An awkward, grieving sound—not a cry, not quite a croak—fills the quiet. “Thanks.”
Silence stretches as Daniel collects himself, and they don’t discuss his dissolution. Lucifer vanishes the dip, laughing inwardly as the ceramic dematerializes from his palm. How things have changed—the Devil possesses identical control in Heaven and Hell. Idly, he strokes the leather steering wheel. It’s soft and supple against his skin.
“Daniel?”
“Yeah?” Daniel’s voice arrives wavering.
“Why this car? Love me a classic Chevy, as you well know, but you’re in paradise. You could get yourself a bloody Bugatti if you desired.”
“I dunno. Sentimental value, I guess?” Daniel glances toward the restaurant, noting Charlotte watching them from the railing. He waves through the window, and she waves back, smiling before returning to their table. “This was the first car I bought out of college, you know. I love this car. I was gonna teach Trixie to drive in it.”
“Ah,” says Lucifer.
“I wish I hadn’t missed it. Teaching her. Kids should know how to drive stick. It’s an essential life skill.”
A pit forms in Lucifer’s stomach. He’d missed teaching Beatrice and Rory as well, though at least he’d tried with both—one too early, one too late. “Well, we’re here now,” he says. “We can be a presence now.”
“You can, maybe,” Daniel grumbles.
Lucifer recognizes the longing in his tone. He’d felt it himself. For years. Millennia.
Hello, Detective, he remembers murmuring at last, not too long ago, and Rory had followed soon after, dark eyes glistening.
Hi, Dad, she’d said—she’d called him Dad again—and wrapped her spindly arms around his waist. I’m sorry I made you go.
Nonsense, he’d replied roughly, it’s done now.
His heart and soul, returned to him.
He looks away, at the whirls of tire treadmarks scrawled across the pavement. Doing donuts on the blacktop seems a quintessential metaphor for his life: chaos that had ultimately come to rest in the perfect parking place. Where he is now? Healer, father, friend, lover. He fits into so many categories that aren’t monster. His wait had been worth enduring.
“You’ll see Beatrice again, Daniel. I promise. That’s”—Lucifer grips the steering wheel so hard he leaves dents in the metal—”what Heaven is. A guarantee.”
“I know, I know. It’s just weird, you know? I can’t exactly hope it happens soon—how fucked up would that be—and yet ….”
“I know just how you feel,” Lucifer admits.
Perhaps ….
Perhaps Lucifer had added a spot of salt to the onion dip when Chloe had returned to him.
“You sure you don’t wanna come in for waffles today?” Daniel prods.
“Oh, no. I’ve places to be.” Lucifer sniffs, straightening before emotion can crush him underfoot. “Speaking of daughters, have you anything to convey before I take my leave?”
“Just … tell her I love her.”
“I always do that. Anything el—what? What is that face?”
“Nothing. Just. Surprised, sometimes.”
Lucifer frowns. “By me?”
“By everything.”
They share a warm look. “Daniel, I can empathize with that as well.”
Ms. Lopez had always been tiny. Now, she’s a living drip of flesh and bone. She sits on her couch, wrapped in an old rainbow-colored afghan, her dark eyes clouded but still full of soul, her shoulder-length hair a brittle solid silver. Her expression softens the moment he touches down in her living room.
“Lucifer!” Her vocal cords are raspy from passing time and tale. “I’d know that cologne anywhere.”
“Hello darling.” He brushes off his suit before sitting beside her.
“You came!” She grips his arm with knobby, liver-spotted hands.
“Of course I came,” he says, ignoring the obvious wisecrack. “This is a momentous occasion!”
She snorts. “No kidding. Stupid Fox. Only took ‘em sixty-five years to listen to fans.”
“Me.”
“What?”
“They listened to me. Not fans.” After decades of listening to her rant about the travesty that was Buffy’s HD remaster, he’d taken matters into his own hands. A favor here. A favor there. An artfully applied scare or several. “I convinced them to redo it for you.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“When do I lie?”
“Dude, you are unbelievable,” she gushes, lifting her arms partway like she wants to tackle him, but she’s too frail.
He does the work for her, hugging her close. “You know I’d do anything for you.”
His assertion earns him a wet kiss on the cheek, which he even enjoys, not that he’d ever admit it.
They chat while they wait, Ms. Lopez peppering him with questions. How is Chloe? How is Dan? What about Linda? What’s Amenagod up to? She’d lost touch with Maze over the years—easy to do when Maze had stayed young and violent, and Ms. Lopez had grown old and sedentary as she’d hit centenarian status and refused to quit. Nonetheless, Lucifer warns she might receive a funeral announcement.
“But she’s fine?” asks Ms. Lopez. And then she laughs. “How weird is it to think dead can be synonymous with fine.”
“Indeed,” Lucifer replies, kissing her temple. “And, yes, she’s fine. Reunited with Eve and giving all of Heaven quite the sensuous show.”
“That’s so romantic.”
“More like pornographic. Not that I’m complaining.”
Over Ms. Lopez’s shoulder, an end table covered in framed pictures greets him—pictures of her extended family, of Carol’s. Pictures of their children, and their children’s children. He’d met them all. Ms. Lopez introduces him as Uncle Lucifer, even though, visually and logically speaking, the title makes no bloody sense. But her descendants play along and are as hug-addicted as she is. He’s been squeezed hard enough by enough Lopez-Corbetts, he sometimes wonders if he’s got any stuffing left.
“Got the popcorn!” Rae-Rae announces as she flounces into the room, folding her dark wings behind her.
“Hey, Lucifer,” says Carol. “How’s Dan?”
“Doing fine,” Lucifer answers. “He says hello.”
Carol had been cradled in Rae-Rae’s arms, and he stumbles as his feet find the floor, his old body not quite up to balancing anymore. As Rae-Rae guides him to his walker, the hulking paper bag he’d been clutching drops from his bony fingers.
“I’ll get that,” Lucifer says, scooping up the bag and trotting into the kitchen to grab the usual serving bowl—nothing special, just an old plastic punch bowl, big enough to serve as a receptacle for enough popcorn to feed four.
The sketchy street stand in Guadalajara Ms. Lopez had found on her honeymoon with Carol had become their regular concessions provider for movie marathons. Their popcorn had the perfect balance of spices and lime juice.
They regather in the living room, setting up drinks and snacks. Carol graciously takes the recliner, allowing Ms. Lopez her usual status as filling in the angel sandwich on the couch.
The credits roll.
“In every generation, there is a chosen one; she alone will stand against the vampires,” the narrator states melodramatically.
Ms. Lopez cups her mouth with wrinkled fingers and squeals. “Holy shirt, the new HD is fantastic! The color balance is perfect.”
“Ells,” says Rae-Rae, a conspiratorial whisper, “I thought you had cataracts.”
“Shh! I can pretend!”
Though Carol is snoring softly before the end of the first act, Ms. Lopez remains rapt. Lucifer rests his cheek against her hair, smiling, soaking up her enthusiasm like a needy sponge. “Oh, I know that chap,” he says, pointing at the stodgy British librarian. “He’s quite—”
“Giles has a Hell loop?” Ms. Lopez asks. “Giles?”
“Well, no,” Lucifer says. “Not anymore.” He frowns. “He thought my accent sounded fake.”
“It is fake. You’re not British.”
“It is not fake. I was bloody here first, I’ll have you know.”
“Guys,” Rae-rae interjects, a whine, “you’re missing the good parts!”
“There are good parts to the first season?” Lucifer asks.
Which earns him a surprisingly strong punch in the arm. Laughing, he settles in. He has places to be, but not for a few more episodes, at least.
A bass beat thump-thump-thump greets him through the floor when he pops into the wine cellar in the basement, well out of sight of unsuspecting patrons. Lux had endured relatively unchanged since it’d been marked a historical landmark during his Earth tenure. God having stake in the building, of course, doesn’t hurt either.
“Hail, Satan,” says Patrick Jr. The blasé brown-haired bartender is reaching for a 2052 cabernet.
“Oh, dear, who ordered that?” Lucifer wonders. “That was a terrible year for cabs.”
Patrick shrugs. “Hey, I just work here.”
“Typical,” replies Lucifer, grabbing a far superior malbec imported from Argentina. The bottle—its gold label shimmering in the dim cellar light—sloshes as he liberates it from the lattice wine rack. “Well, say hello to your father, please.”
“Sure thing,” answers Patrick.
“And tell him if he’s been hit by any falling objects recently, for once, it wasn’t me.”
Patrick’s chuffing laugh chases Lucifer as he bounds up the steps, skipping three at a time. Beyond the writhing dancefloor, he finds them in their usual booth in the back, farthest from the bar: Amenadiel, Charlie, and Lezmegadiel, the former dressed head to toe in white, the latter two donning black uniforms and nametags. Saraqael, meanwhile, tends bar, looking an odd combination of constipated and eager. She’d been struggling to learn the cocktails since she’d started.
“So … ‘No, yeah,’ means yes?” Lezmegadiel is asking as Lucifer approaches.
“Right,” answers Charlie. He’d gotten his tall stature, soothing voice, and intimidating gray wings from his father, though he’d received his mother’s nose, emotional intuition, and bright brown eyes.
“And ‘Yeah, no,’ means no?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He’d gone to Stanford and graduated Summa Cum Laude, though he’d majored in philosophy rather than pursuing the precursor for a medical degree. Lucifer often wonders if anyone in Charlie’s graduating class had realized God and Satan had been sitting side by side, cheering from the bleachers.
“But ‘Yeah, no, for sure,’ means absolutely?” continues Lezmegadiel.
Charlie smiles. “You got it, Uncle.”
Lezmegadiel slumps, pressing his face against his palms, where he growls in frustration. “How am I to answer prayers appropriately when the humans use such confusing colloquialisms? It’s baffling, I tell you.”
Amenadiel squeezes Lezmegadiel’s shoulder. “If I can figure out Lucifer’s nonsensical emojis, Brother, you can figure out human vernacular. I have great faith in you.”
“Speaking of emojis,” Lucifer says, sliding into the conversation as he sidles to the table, “what’s this I hear of an ill-timed aubergine?”
Amenadiel winces like he’d just watched a train crash. “Oh, the eggplant.”
“Yeah, that was bad,” says Charlie in a sinking tone. “We’re banning eggplants for at least a decade.”
“Why shouldn’t I have sent the eggplant?” asks Lezmegadiel, affronted. “It is a noble fruit.”
“Yes, and it’s also a penis,” says Lucifer. The malbec bottle thunks as he rests it on the table. “Now, what happened, precisely? I’ve gotten forty-seven different versions from forty-seven different siblings.”
“Wait, what? It’s what?”
Charlie sighs. “Someone prayed for a bountiful harvest.”
“I only texted the eggplant to assure her she’d been heard!” chimes in Lezmegadiel.
“And her boyfriend de-fin-ite-ly heard,” adds Amenadiel.
“Oh, dear,” says Lucifer.
“Luckily, I was able to smooth things over.”
“You?” Lucifer snorts. “You smoothed things over?”
“Well, I am God now. That counts for something.”
Which … Lucifer can’t exactly argue with. He turns to Lezmegadiel. “Brother, perhaps you should run your prospective texts by me in the future.”
“Or me,” adds Charlie, cringing. “Uncle Luci ... your litmus test for appropriate eggplant usage is a bit”—the cringe becomes a full body shudder—”not great.”
“How dare you,” retorts Lucifer without bite. “I’ve stunning command of all things aubergine.”
Everyone sniggers except Lezmegadiel. “I don’t understand how the eggplant is a penis.”
“Really? Does it not remind you of an engorged, erect—”
“Anyway,” Amenadiel interrupts, “are we still on for Thursday?”
Lucifer blows out a humoring breath. “Yes, Brother, as always. I’ve only popped by for the tea about this texting tragedy.” He taps the wine bottle. “Oh, and for the malbec.” He has places to be, after all.
Everyone gives him an understanding nod. Amenadiel smiles. “Enjoy your visit.”
“Of course I will. For now, though ….” He raises his hand, and over trots a human server Lucifer doesn’t recognize. He points to a rack high above the bar, where the locked safe is situated. “A double of the top-shelf Bowmore, please. Neat.”
The server gives the bar a doubtful look. “Sir, that’s our most expensive bottle. Do you have a tab here?”
Lucifer grins, leonine and predatory. “Oh, my, you are new, aren’t you?”
A small transparisteel window overlooks the barren brown terrain of Arabia Terra. Beatrice Espinoza-Maldonado sits at a thin metal desk in a shoebox office, only a sleek curved monitor obstructing her view, not that there’s much to view except miles of Martian dirt. The fabric of reality bends, and he pops in behind her.
She possesses no papers or knickknacks to unseat, but the gust of wind from his arrival knocks flat several picture frames. Cold walls bow his feathers like suspension bridges. The compact rooms of the Mars One station ping his claustrophobia, but her smile makes his uneasiness simple to smother.
“Hi, Lucifer!” she chirps as he folds his wings.
“Hello, small human,” he greets warmly, holding out the malbec. “Brought your favorite, direct from Lux as always.”
She’d left behind middle-aged, yet still somehow bounds for him, nearly knocking over the vaporizer pumping in artificial lavender scent. Her body collides with his, and she ensnares him with the expected bear hug.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she rasps, sounding more emotional than usual. But then he remembers the date. Almost four years to the day.
“Of course,” he murmurs. “Of course, I’m here.”
Words he can say now, and he says them liberally.
Some things—like hugs—Beatrice hadn’t aged out of while he’d been gone. Some things, though …. He marvels all over again as her soft silvered hair brushes his chin, and her warm, hitching breaths buffet his neck. How had she gotten so bloody tall?
Stopping only to place the malbec on her shelf, he pulls her against him in return. His fingertips brush her navy-colored flight suit, and they stand together, happily tangled as he listens to her heartbeat. Her life, now long and storied.
“Captain Espinoza-Maldonado,” he says, reading the name placard on her desk. She’d been Commander before. “They’ve promoted you.”
“Yup!” she says. “Sinclair retired. So, not president, but as the ranking official here, I think it counts.”
“I concur. Congratulations, my dear!”
“Thanks. It feels good.”
He pats the space between her shoulder blades. “Your mum and dad both send their love. As does Maze.” She’d already heard of Maze’s demise, thanks to his delayed arrival.
The child chuckles sadly as she pulls away. “She did not.”
He snorts. “Well, she would have, I’m certain, if she hadn’t been busy snogging Eve into another death.” The little death, that is.
“Sounds more like her.”
And then things sink into awkward silence. Followed by a wet-sounding swallow as she deflates, her bravado escaping like air from a needled balloon.
He tries to think of something useful to say. Something halfway comforting. Beatrice had never quite made peace with the fact she’d been gone—literally trapped in a spaceship halfway home—when Chloe had passed. The first time he’d visited Beatrice, still stuck in space and hysterical she might miss the funeral as well, she’d done nothing but sob into his lapel, begging him to fly her back.
He wishes he could fix her pain—arrange some kind of face-to-face for heartfelt words, but … life and afterlife shouldn’t mix. Humans often react to Heavenly bliss like they react to Hellish guilt—it’s so terribly easy for them to get stuck, addicted to bludgeoning themselves with either extreme. And Beatrice hugging her mum at long last, getting to say goodbye in person? That would be a bloody Venus flytrap of bliss and guilt. No afterlife locale would be safe for a mother-daughter meeting of that magnitude. And Chloe and Daniel would never forgive him if he chanced it.
The one time he’d nearly convinced himself the risks were worth the reward—just after that first tearful visit—Chloe had found him in the hall. Ash had formed a fluffy gray layer atop his suit and hair, he’d stood so long in indecision.
I know you want to make her happy, Chloe had said, and I love you for that. But, please, don’t. Even if she doesn’t get stuck, I think it’ll do more harm than good.
I can’t stand to see a child feel abandoned, no matter what the cause.
I know.
She wanted to be there, and she wasn’t.
I know. But she and I talked about that before she went to Mars. She knew the risks, and we did say goodbye over the com.
The com is not the same! There’s a ten-minute delay!
I know. But it’s something.
He’d sighed, frustrated and aching with the desire to do something. Anything. This is the difficulty of loving humans. You’ve ends. I dislike it.
But Chloe had smiled. Kissed him. True, but we also have beginnings. Like this one.
You did come back to me, he’d admitted, trembling.
And she’ll come back, too. Someday. Just give it time, yeah? Let her live her life.
“Your mum is happy,” he says aloud. “I promise.”
Beatrice shivers in his grasp. “And you don’t lie.”
“I do not,” he confirms, rubbing her back. Her body curls against him. “We’re having a dinner party this Thursday. We have them often.”
She perks up. “What?”
“Every month. We alternate between Heaven and Hell for the sake of fairness. Your mum and I. Daniel and Charlotte. Linda. Eve. Charlie, Amenadiel, Rory. Maze, now, too. Your grandparents. All our various friends and family who live in either place.”
The child pulls away, running mascara and smudged liner blotching her eyes, giving her a racoon-ish appearance. “Really? Like … with canapes and wine and …?”
“Precisely! You wouldn’t believe the performances Penelope, Father Frank, and I put on. Did you know your nana can sing as well as act?”
“Lucifer … she can’t really act. Have you seen her movies?”
He gasps. “Oh, no, you take that back! Ms. Penelope Decker will always be Queen.”
Beatrice laughs, wiping her face on her sleeves. “That’s … a mental image.”
“Isn’t it just?”
“You never told me this before.”
His chest tightens. “I … thought it might make you hurt.” And that’s the last thing he desires.
But it would seem he’s accomplished the opposite. The tenor of their encounter shifts as she laughs again. “Thanks, I needed that. Now I’m gonna be imagining impromptu performances of Althea in Hell while everyone eats damned canapes served by demons and talks about their hellish days.”
“Not”—he grins—”entirely inaccurate.”
She returns to her desk, tapping the curved screen a few times, each impact accompanied by a tell-tale beep or boop. Lights flash against her pupils. He doesn’t pry, instead sitting in the metal chair across from her, taking in the sights. Through the window, brown sky reminiscent of Los Angeles smog meets sharp crags and brown dirt like any desert. He doesn’t understand the human fascination with this planet—to him, it’s drab and filthy, too much like Hell pumped through color filters—but he supposes if they’re to get anywhere interesting, they must start small. Sort of like he had with one little facsimile of Doctor Linda’s office. Plus, the Rover’s bloody fun to drive. 59.91 million square miles with not a single idiot pedestrian to hit.
Beatrice claps her hands, standing again. “All right, it’s ready, but I’m driving this time,” she says as if she’d heard his thoughts. “No ifs, ands, or buts.”
“But—”
“I said”—she wags her index finger at him—”no buts. NASA is still upset about last time.”
He’d paid for the damages, of course, not that they’d known. The price of being a mysterious bloody benefactor. “Very well,” he says with a dramatic sigh. “Perhaps next time?”
She gives him a look.
“Or … not.” Bollocks.
“How long can you stay?” she asks, ignoring him.
“A few hours, at least.” No more, though. He has places to be.
She moves around the desk again, holding out her arm. He links elbows with her. The vehicle bay is on the other end of Mars One. The portal doors slide apart, and they step into the hall beyond. A few more turns, and they’ve entered the bustle of the station. Hundreds of scientists and astronauts, doctors and programmers, engineers. Smart people. Brilliant people, like Beatrice herself.
He commands little attention these days—he’s sort of an open secret amongst station residents. The Devil is real. He loves their captain like a daughter, and every month on the final Monday, he visits. When they’d seen him outside without a spacesuit, signing his name in the dirt, once they’d ruled out mass hallucination, they’d had no option but to believe him.
“Your dad doesn’t appreciate my driving either,” Lucifer says as their seatbelts click.
The child is still rolling her eyes just like her mother as they zip into the cold Martian sunshine.
The stifling air stinks of stale sweat, smoke, and weed as a writhing massive mass of hundred thousands clot Barra da Tijuca, cheering, singing, screaming, dancing. Lucifer would call this clamorous chaos a cacophony, but the music thrills his soul. A spectral echo of Freddie Mercury struts the stage, bare-chested and animated, flamboyant and burning like the star he knows he is. From this vantage, though, far into the crowd, he’s a pinpoint of peach, red, and white, moving in a stark smear of stage lights.
Instead, Lucifer stares at the dark sky, purplish with light pollution from a booming urban area, but he can still see his stars. Beautiful flashbangs of distant memory. Of Creation. People holding up Bic lighters mirror the image from the ground.
He spreads his limbs to form a letter X. Hands lift him over the crowd. His body is moved, and in that moment, beneath the stars he made, gripped by pandemonium, he could pretend he’s Falling.
“Best,” shrieks Rory somewhere to his left, “Hell loop. EVER.”
“Told you!” he shouts back, grinning like a fool as they float on their backs across a pulsing sea of outstretched, waving limbs.
The 80s aren’t good for much, but they’re great for crowd surfing, excellent for Queen, and perfect for bonding with his daughter. He’d found this loop a few months earlier—one of the stage hands had damned himself for being here fixing stage lights instead of home saving his wife from being murdered. Lucifer and Chloe had been helping him let go of his guilt, but in the meantime, an iconic snapshot of Rock ‘n Roll history remained, begging to be enjoyed by at least someone. Lucifer had helped Freddie Mercury release himself long ago, and this far into Earth’s 2000s, Queen was becoming a rare occurrence in Hell.
“Can we see the Stones next time?” Rory yells, her body arched, arms reaching. “I wanna watch Jagger when he’s shaking a mic instead of a cane!”
“Coincidentally,” Lucifer replies, “also an excellent band to see in Brazil! Give me a bit—I’ll find something!”
“Awesome!”
No, he’s not Falling at all, he thinks, as the crowd envelops them.
He’s flying.
And he has nowhere else to be.