❝ WHERE'S THE DREAMS THAT I'VE BEEN AFTER? ❞
In which Mariah Rose, an undercover legend, returns to the LAPD and faces her number one fan.
[LUCIFER SEASON 4]
BOOK FOUR IN THE ❝ CHILDREN OF DARKNESS ❞ SERIES
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WITH THE RISK of sounding morbid, Mariah quite liked cemeteries. She didn't like the grief always associated with them, but she liked the unspoken rule of peace and calm, and how even the busiest people were finally allowed to rest. As a child, she had found comfort in one of her father's bedtime stories about ghosts and how they didn't have to be evil — while her other parent had insisted that Mariah was bound to have nightmares, it had done exactly the opposite, and so, with a sense of final serenity, she took in a deep breath of the foggy graveyard's cool air.
She didn't usually have a reason to step through the stereotypical rusty gates, but now, with Kai back in her life, she was making room for his new habits — whether it meant a new favorite pizza topping or visiting Charlotte Richards' decorated grave every week. He was hardly a man of routine, but Mariah relied on exactly that, turning the tables for a change as she shuffled to sit down on the grass beside him by a sturdy maple tree.
"Thank you for coming", Kai acknowledged once they had been stewing in the silence that was deeply uncharacteristic for him, his usual smirks long gone as he glanced between Mariah and the beautifully etched headstone. The abundance of renewed candles and roses suggested that Charlotte had been loved, and while curious about how they had come to be friends, Mariah didn't ask, but only placed a hand on Kai's back.
"I think you would have liked her", Kai contemplated out loud, surprising Mariah with a frown. There weren't many people that sentence applied to her — she was very finicky like that — but when the Nolan didn't seem to carry any sarcasm in his words, she trusted his judgment and nodded solemnly at the thought.
Visits like these also put things into a new perspective. Her problems suddenly seemed so minuscule in the grand scheme of things, and she supposed that while one of the criminals she had plotted to catch was still somewhere out there... She still had the life she needed to find him.
By the time they were trekking past the rows of gray and back to Kai's trusted car, he was snapping out of his haze and nudging Mariah with a familiar grin. "Are you excited to get back to working cases?" he inquired with a wiggle of his eyebrows, "with me, specifically?"
A dry chuckle rose from her throat at that. "Have you given up the gummy bears?" Mariah wondered tauntingly, and when he, as expected, shook his head, she snorted at the memory of the wrappers all over her desk. "Then, no." Despite the teasing, though, she couldn't deny that she had missed teaming up with Kai, putting their two smart heads together to solve crimes side by side — it had been like that for years before she had been sent undercover.
"I guess it's the second-best option while waiting for Lopez and her lab results", she voiced then, undeniably burdened by the footage from the crime scene that was yet to get them anywhere, but choosing to see the good, Kai swung an arm over her shoulders and nodded.
