Page 103 of Dragon Her Heels

“If the dragon puts up a fuss, just kick him in the lake and let Mr. Magic take care of him.”

“I trust you are aware you have changed that one’s nature.”

“It was better than somebody killing him because he’s an alligator. Mr. Magic the Bold is now a pet, and I’ll be feeding him at least a chicken a week. I believe he is hunting fish?”

“Mostly, yes, but he will take wild fowl, as you seem to have excluded them from your protections.”

“The alligators need to eat, and there are enough fish and birds to feed everybody.”

Hiring someone to restock the lake with fish would make certain of that.

“With appropriate interventions, this is the case.”

“I bet I could charge people a small fortune to pet Mr. Magic. He’ll love it. Even if I did it once a week, that’d give him all the treats he could hope for. I’d even buy him a cow leg if he likes chewing on those.”

“Please do not terrify insurance companies more than you already will, especially when you insist on insuring your horses.”

“Why do I need to insure them?”

“Theft.”

I scoffed at that. “Magic can take care of that. It will take a divine to consider stealing one of my babies.”

“That would be more effective than an insurance policy, yes. There is the matter of injury.”

“That’s what you’re for,” I informed him in my sweetest tone. “But I’ll be generous and bargain with you regarding your excellent veterinarian services for all my animals.”

The archangel held up three fingers. “I would ask this many things from you in exchange for either myself or one of my angelic brethren handling emergency or regenerative care of your animals. You will continue to use your farrier as normal, and your regular veterinarian will handle their vaccinations and basic checkups. We will handle anything that is not a part of standard care practices, including disease, injury, colic, and so on. I will give you a number to text when you have a problem requiring one of us. Entry care, for rescued and adopted horses, will count as a service we will handle. We will even do diagnosis if your vet cannot handle the matter promptly, but we do expect you to do basic diagnosis on your own.”

Knowing how pricy horses, chickens, and cows could get, especially when they decided to get a dumb idea in their heads, the angelic care would be priceless. “Does your work include appropriate care of their spines from early racing?”

“We will be handling the care and comfort of your raced thoroughbreds, yes. Mortal veterinarians can only do so much for that. We will also handle post race treatments to make certain they can continue to race.”

After the archangel’s blue fire settled and soaked into the filly, she had a drink, flopped into a large pile of bedding, and went about the serious business of napping. The mare, who endured similar treatment, did the same, and the archangel assisted her, taking care so the baby wasn’t injured in the process.

That the archangel felt a need to help the mare lie down worried me, but I trusted him to do his job—and harbored more than a little relief that the mare relaxed enough to chase after deep sleep. I drew deep breaths to keep myself somewhat calm before saying, “All right. Let’s hear your end of the bargain.”

“First, I request that you take a more active role in my sister’s salvation. My family drops many hints, but I am feeling the need to be more direct about the matter.”

“Your family is being thwarted by the very Universe herself; it’s not that they don’t want to, it’s that they can’t. And that seems to be rather vexing for them.”

I got the sense the archangel, hidden safely behind his shroud, nodded his agreement with my statement. “This is correct. I have a better sense of who she is, where she is, and why the Universe masks her presence. It is not that the Universe wishes to bar us from assisting and preserving a member of our family. It’s that the Universe is masking her power, aiding our gambit to prevent the End of Days from happening in the first place. The process of masking her power is why we are being blocked from accessing most information about her. I have made better progress than my brothers, but not that much better. It is quite frustrating.”

I bet; the archangel had as much to lose as I did. “You’re not making any offers beyond what I was already willing to do myself, so the first element of the bargain is easily met on my end. I like living as much as you do. I’m going to guess there is a catch, and the catch is that this arrangement will last for however long I live, for better or worse.”

“You are correct.”

“My house has plenty of space for her to stay if she needs a place to stay in the future.”

“It is less that she will need a place to stay but that she will be surrounded by the heavenly host and the forces of my brother’s many hells, and that is a lot for any soul to tolerate for long stretches. She will need to deal with our family for the entirety of her natural lifespan and beyond. Your home would become her sanctuary—and you will have the power required to safeguard her and keep even us at bay when she needs space to recover and thrive.”

“Any stays lasting longer than a month will require the gift of a horse, chicken, or cow as an offering. You can deliver the bribe to my gates when she is in residence so that she is not disturbed.”

Some conditions were easier to meet than others.

The archangel laughed. “Easily done. I will grant you that concession.”

“All right. What is your second condition?”