Page 91 of Dragon Her Heels

I would be in charge of monitoring one of the ovens as my contribution to the baking portion.

Lucifer also promised a bit of magic to cool the pies appropriately for consumption.

While I supposed someone with experience and confidence could handle the task with better grace, I approached the pie problem with the same determination I applied to the rest of my life. Whenever a white, powdery substance crossed my path, I confirmed what it was before adding it to my filling or applying it to the crust. I questioned a few of the steps, but I obeyed the instructions as though my life—and pride—depended on it.

Which they did.

After almost two hours of waging war against my culinary foe, I reached the baking portion, covered in sugar, flour, and an assortment of other ingredients, I’d made eleven pies, one with a crust I’d battled with out of spite. “Lucifer?”

The Devil appeared beside me, and he laughed at the destruction in his kitchen. “I only left you with ten crusts, Crystal.”

I pointed at the rogue pie, which appeared like all the others, although it had a snow leopard pie pan rather than a tin foil one. “I decided I had to at least try to make a crust, and that one had the easiest instructions and spread the most flour around your kitchen.”

“I admire your tenacity. Which pie is going to be the one you bake?”

I pointed at the snow leopard one and the one beside it. “You have two ovens here, so I will babysit both. I already heated the ovens, so mine are ready to go in.” I referred to the directions, read off how they were to be baked, and then added a few checks I’d learned from various tutorials, which involved closely monitoring the pie for the moment it reached a golden brown crust and how to check that the filling within was ready.

“I shall do as you ask.” All but my two pies vanished along with Lucifer, leaving me with two hot ovens and two disasters in the making.

Determined to not be the weakest link in my pie baking adventure, I stood a close and careful guard after checking four times the oven was the correct temperature for the type of baking dish I used, setting two different timers to know when I needed to check each.

The pie in the foil tin finished first, and once it passed the checks the instructions and tutorials suggested, I took it out and set it on the counter to cool.

Five minutes later, I worried for my homemade crust, which took longer to bake. Ten minutes after that, I spotted the first signs of the crust browning. Then, five minutes after that, the crust and filling passed its checks, and I removed it from the oven.

I took a cautious sniff of both, determining they smelled similar to what Isaac made when he opted to transform peaches into delicious treats.

I narrowed my eyes. Before I fell to the temptation of sticking my finger directly through the crust, which I’d decorated with poorly drawn flowers and smiley faces, Lucifer appeared and rescued both from my clutches. “These must cool, missy. You can go gather the others for the judgment of the pies.”

“I’m going to regret this,” I muttered, but I headed off to do as told, not caring I wore more pie than had made it into the crust. If he cared about his place remaining clean, he wouldn’t have set me loose in his kitchen in the first place. Rather than make use of the sitting rooms, everyone had stayed in the dining room, and someone had set the table again in preparation for eating pie. “You all are going to die. I refused to accept any help making these pies outside of Lucifer following my instructions to get them all baked. I wasn’t allowed to taste test to see if they’re edible.”

My mother raised a brow. “And you automatically assume you’re going to kill us with your baking?”

“I know what I did as a child, and I have no reason to believe this is not a terrifying repeat of that incident.”

“You were three years old.”

I scowled. “I don’t see how my status as a diminutive toddler has anything to do with the fact it was so bad I traumatized myself into having that as my first memory.”

My father threw his head back and chortled. “It was pretty bad. What I do not understand is how you, still a precocious three year old, had managed to roast a damned good chicken the next day.”

“I am excellent at cooking but suck at baking.”

The eleven pies I’d baked popped onto the table, and Lucifer strolled in from the direction of the kitchen a few moments later. “You don’t suck at baking. You gave up because you, a perfectionist of a toddler, had made something so bad you vomited trying to eat it.”

“Did you have to tell them that part?” I sat in my seat, leaned back to check on my chickens, who were in beds near each other, both sound asleep and likely under some divine being’s magical influence.

Under normal circumstances, Joy would have been doing her best to get on the table so she could have some pie.

Joy loved pie.

I, as an irresponsible chicken mom, gave her small tastes of good pie, refusing to subject her to the horrors single males of numerous species created in an ill-fated attempt to win a date.

“The leopard pie has a homemade crust, and we shall all partake of a sliver of that one,” Lucifer announced. “The others were all made with the same recipe and method, and they are all quite similar. You may have larger slices of that. As there are ten of those pies, which is a going rate of roughly half a pie per person, don’t be shy. There’s plenty of milk and ice cream for all so we may fully indulge.”

“Yeah, in food poisoning,” I muttered.

Darlene giggled, and she went for the pie in the leopard print. “Dibs!”