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  Any Witch Way But Goode

  (Un)Lucky Valley Book Two

  Michelle M. Pillow®

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  Any Witch Way But Goode © Copyright 2019 by Michelle M. Pillow

  First Electronic Printing June 10, 2019

  Published by The Raven Books LLC

  ISBN 9781625012289

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Michelle M. Pillow.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence.

  Michelle M. Pillow® is a registered trademark of The Raven Books LLC

  Contents

  About Any Witch Way But Goode

  (Un)Lucky Valley Series

  Author Updates

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Fooled Around and Spelled in Love

  Join the Exclusive Club!

  About Michelle M. Pillow

  Free Reading Guides

  Please Leave a Review

  Curses and Cupcakes

  About Any Witch Way But Goode

  Welcome to Lucky Valley, where nothing is quite what it seems.

  From NY Times & USA TODAY Bestselling Author, Michelle M. Pillow, a Cozy Mystery Paranormal Romantic Comedy.

  The Garden Gnome Bed and Breakfast might be a new kooky weekend getaway spot, but for Lily Goode the inheritance represents the promise of a stable future for her and her siblings. Unfortunately, the house isn’t the only thing she inherited. The bed-and-breakfast also comes equipped with witchy Aunt Polly, troublesome garden gnomes, a town that hates her, newfound magical powers that misfire, and a werewolf boyfriend she shouldn’t have asked to move in with her.

  When a guest is found dead during her grand opening, Lily knows she has to solve the mystery of what happened before the B&B is closed forever.

  Lucky for her, Aunt Polly is here to help save the day.

  (Un)Lucky Valley Series

  Better Haunts and Garden Gnomes

  Any Witch Way But Goode

  More Books Coming Soon

  Author Updates

  To stay informed about when a new book in the series installments is released, sign up for updates:

  http://michellepillow.com/author-updates/

  To the most amazing Bailey.

  * * *

  To John for putting up with author insanity.

  Chapter One

  Lucky Valley, Colorado

  Forever was a really freaking long time and looking longer by the day.

  Nolan Dawson and a happily ever after might be all Lily Goode could ever want in life, but that didn’t mean she was capable of having it. There was a fear inside of her, a whisper that warned her not to get too attached. She expected him to come to his senses and change his mind at any moment, and each new day added onto their future made it all the more likely that he would.

  She’d known the man, what? All of three weeks before she’d invited him to move in with her on a post-magic-using high. And if that wasn’t enough, she’d partnered with him in business. To an independent woman that had to look a little desperate—move in with me, work with me, be with me every second of the day.

  What she’d initially thought was going to be a romantic ride off into the sunset had turned into a straight shot of cold, hard reality. Their life together was filled with stresses. There were days that Lily had about all the reality she could take.

  And who said I love you to a man after three weeks? Surely that was too soon, too easy. She normally wouldn’t say that after three years—not that any of her relationships ever lasted that long. Lily wasn’t an I-love-you kind of gal. She had her reasons for being that way.

  What if his feelings for her were a spell she unintentionally cast on him? What would happen when it wore off? She had to be ready for that level of heartbreak. She couldn’t fall apart, not now, not with so much riding on her shoulders

  Fear of being abandoned made her question if this life is the one she deserved. She hated that her mind tried to find reasons as to why she might end it first.

  Nolan was a werewolf who was always there. Always. He never left. She supposed that is what living together meant, but he still had his own house in town. Would he go back there when he became sick of her?

  Well, fine, he never left except to chain himself in his old basement during a full moon, when he became a vicious, uncontrollable creature who would eat anyone who crossed his path. Talk about some serious man-period side effects.

  But it wasn’t just self-doubt over her relationship with Nolan that caused her stress levels to skyrocket.

  It would seem Lily was full of questionable decisions. For that, she blamed her dead mother. The reemergence of Marigold Crawford in the form of a surprise inheritance had thrown Lily’s entire life off track. All those childhood fears and emotions that she’d thought she’d grown out of reared their ugly heads.

  Jesse, the sister Lily had known her whole life, refused to come to Colorado to accept her part of their birthright out of protest of their dead, neglectful mother. Apparently, Marigold (aka Mom) left her a safe-deposit box that only Jesse could open. No one knew what was inside. Jesse didn’t seem to care.

  Mara, the sister no one had known existed until a few months ago, was living with her in the house Lily had inherited from the aforementioned mother. The sanity with that sibling was questionable, and Lily was pretty sure Mara was a habitual liar. Though, to be fair, the girl had been born and raised in a barn.

  Then there was Aunt Polly, who was a few almonds short of a fruitcake, and who kept trying to redecorate the house in super-feminine floral prints and doilies. Polly also had the largest collection of creepy-ass gnome statues known to man. Every time Lily turned around there was another one popping up somewhere. Her home was literally a garden gnome sanctuary.

  When she had stepped out of the shower that morning, she’d found two of the creepers on the bathroom floor—one holding a flower, another with a sign that read “thanks” (Lily did not want to know what that referred to)—and a third sitting on a miniature toilet. He and his throne had been on the bathroom sink. There was no clue as to how they got there.

  Even now, she found herself staring at a garden gnome standing by the front door, with its annoyingly cheerful face and chubby cheeks painted with too much pink. Not once had she seen them move, but sometimes when she glanced away and then back, they were no longer in the same place.

  Add to all of this craziness the fact that Lily’s moody brother, Dante, also lived with her. That in itself was fine. She’d lived with Dante and Jesse all of their lives. But now Dante had a pet raccoon (Polly called it a familiar) named Bartholomew, who they couldn’t keep out of the house. The animal kept finding his way back inside.

  But wait, there’s more. Much more.

  She was pretty sure someone had been stealing from the guests during Garden Gnome Bed-and-Breakfast’s opening week. Already three shiny trinkets were missing.

  During all of these chaotic life changes, Lily had found out she was a witch. With powers and everything—misfiring, bad-luck-inducing, wayward, haphazard, shooting-out-of-the-tips-of-her-fingers, unwanted superpowers. One bad sneeze could send her teleporting through the Colorado wilderness (and it had).

  The steady whoomp-whoomp-whoomp of a nail gun meant progress was being made on the repairs outside. That definitely went into the plus column of her relationship with Nolan. He was handy with power tools. No other contractor in a fifty-mile radius would touch anything on the Goode Estate. Her ancestors weren’t remembered fondly in the area.

  The estate included the Victorian house, a couple of cottages, and an old barn. Mara had burned the barn to the ground. Lily couldn’t say she blamed the woman, considering their mother had kept Mara locked away inside it like an animal for years. If she behaved, she was sometimes allowed into the house. Marigold had always feared that Mara’s supernatural father’s powers had cursed the youngest sibling and the world needed to be protected from her. Because of that, Mara had a lot of unresolved issues, and who could blame her? Marigold had been insane.

  The Victorian was halfway between the haunted ghost town of Old Lucky Valley (nicknamed Unlucky Valley) and a town-town called Lucky Valley. Lily owned Unlucky Valley, because why not inherit a haunted ghost town filled with spirits who hated her family?

  Lily preferred the ghost residents. Sure, an army of dead miners had shown up on the lawn to scare her into running away, but…

  Never mind. She didn’t prefer either town. They all hated her.

  The people of Lucky Valley blamed the Goodes for every piece of bad luck that befell the locals. Like Lily just waited around, willing soufflés to cave in and people to slip on cracked sidewalks for the heck of it.

  “It’s not like I’m busy trying to open a business or anything,” she muttered to herself, “inviting strangers into my home so I can support my family. This isn’t just some bleak, bleak, terrible hobby.”

  For that reason, she didn’t host a grand-opening party. None of the townsfolk would have attended.

  Hello, sir?

  Lily wasn’t sure where the whisper was coming from, only that the male voice had invaded her mind off and on for the last week. No matter how she tried to find the source, in the end it was just a whisper of a thought. At first, she believed it was a gnome. Then she assumed it was the feral cat hanging around. Now she was concerned it was a sign of madness.

  “Go away,” Lily whispered to the chubby-faced gnome still staring at her. She stood in the living room before a small check-in desk she’d set up near the wall. From her location, she could see across an antique couch past the front hall into the library. The vantage point showed anyone coming in or out of the front door.

  Nothing in the home felt like it belonged to her. Sometimes she wished the antique furniture would break and stay broken, especially the couch. That ugly thing’s legs had come out from under it and yet there it was, standing as good as the day it was made…back in the 1800s.

  Lily sighed as she studied the guest registry. Until the cabins were repaired (or she started kicking people out), her houseful of family left her with three rooms to rent out of a seven-bedroom, three-story home.

  “Hey, Lily, want some coffee?”

  Lily glanced up as Mara passed through the living room. Her sister wore pajama pants and a crop top as she stumbled toward the kitchen in fuzzy slippers. Going after her, Lily grabbed her arm, “Dammit, Mara, I told you we had guests staying here. You can’t walk around like that anymore.”

  “Uh, yeah I can. You said to pretend I am a guest here and to talk up the place,” Mara countered. She gestured to her outfit. “If I’m paying for a room, I’ll wear what I want.”

  “You’re not paying for anything, pickle,” Lily reminded her. “Just put a bra on, for heaven’s sake. The Elliotts have a kid with them.”

  “He’s eighteen.” Mara dismissed the concern. “Trust me. He’ll leave you a good internet rating after meeting me.”

  I can see why our mother locked you up for most of…

  Dammit. No. No, that was mean. She couldn’t think things like that.

  “Just wear a bra, please,” Lily whispered.

  “I will if you and Polly stop calling me pickle,” Mara countered.

  Lily doubted that would ever happen. “And leave the scones for the real guests. I swear the baker charges extra because I’m a Crawford-Goode.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Mara shrugged. “Why do you think I use a fake name?”

  “There is cereal in the pantry,” Lily insisted.

  “No, Herman ate it all last night,” Mara said.

  “Lobsters don’t eat cereal,” Lily answered.

  “Then it was the raccoon,” Mara called, “or that cat of yours.”

  The feral nuisance that kept staring at Lily was supposed to be her familiar, at least according to Polly. The cat didn’t act very friendly, and on some level it made sense that Lily’s familiar would be grumpy and unsociable.

  Lily went back to the registry and stared at it as if her intense focus would change her circumstances—three rooms to rent out and a family to support.

  Vanessa Jensen had left early, and in a huff, because she thought someone had been rummaging around in her room. Evidently, they’d re-arranged her towels and done a long list of other things that couldn’t be proven. Her anger had seemed disproportionate to the situation.

  “Thanks for the one star, Vanessa,” Lily muttered. That little sad rating stared at Lily every time she looked up her bed-and-breakfast online. The review had been just as scathing, “Tacky décor, character actors on staff, and boring locale only outdone by the indifference of management to the invasion of privacy issues I encountered. A definite must-avoid.”

  Lily etched an x by the woman’s name and then sighed deeply, momentarily pitying herself.

  Vanessa had been replaced by the truck driver Earl “Willy” Williams, who snored so loud the Elliotts complained. Willy reported that he’d lost a silver flask which he was certain had been on his nightstand but now it wasn’t. Otherwise, he appeared fairly happy…and not the kind to leave online reviews.

  The Elliotts were polite, in a bland sort of way. The wife smiled, the husband said things about birds or something, but after each conversation, Lily could barely remember what they’d talked about. Their son clearly had a crush on his phone. Lily had caught Frank Jr. taking selfies with several of the gnomes…some in highly questionable positions. The Elliotts were her best shot at a five-star to counteract Vanessa’s angry review. Mrs. Elliott was missing a single diamond earring, but so far thought maybe she’d lost it and wasn’t blaming the B&B.

  Lily glanced toward the door. Chubby Face had disappeared.

  Finally, there was Janice Foster, who basically kept to herself as she typed on her laptop, moving from room to room as if she couldn’t quite settle on a location to work. She hardly spoke except to ask politely for fresh towels, and that the staff be on the lookout for her favorite pen—a platinum-coated fountain pen that had been a gift from someone she’d rather not name for fear of looking pretentious, but he was a famous horror author.

  This was Lily’s life now.

  “Miss Goode?” Marion Elliott spoke softly as she gave a worried smile.

  Lily glanced up at the woman and reminded herself to return the smile. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but have you seen my son?”

  “Oh, ah…” Lily glanced around as if that limited view would give her answers. “No, I don’t think he’s been down for breakfast yet.”

  “That’s so strange.” She gave a small frown, sighing. “Okay, thank you.”

  Lily observed the woman as she looked helplessly around the living room. “Is something the matter?”

  “He didn’t come in last night,” Marion said. “His bed doesn’t look like it was slept in. It’s not like him to make his bed.”

  Lily thought of Mara and did her best to keep smiling. “Maybe he fell asleep somewhere. The weather was beautiful last night. Let me ask around for you.”

  Junior hardly seemed like the camping type, unless camping was code for k egger with classmates. The suggestion seemed to calm Mrs. Elliott some and Lily went to look for Mara. She found her sister leaning against the kitchen counter eating a scone.

  At Lily’s appearance, Mara pushed the pastry fully into her mouth, puffing out her cheeks. She gave an innocent grin even as she struggled to chew.

  “Dammit, Mara,” Lily whispered.

  “What?” The word was muffled by food. She struggled to swallow before managing to add, “I was hungry. Just have Polly pull more out of her magic picnic basket.”

  That wasn’t the point.

  “Seriously, Lil. Stop being a freak,” Mara scoffed. “Polly said that we could magically lift a barn and do all these fixes in like an afternoon if we pooled our powers. Who needs the stupid bakery if they’re going to overcharge you? We can make our own out of thin air and—”

  “We’re doing this my way,” Lily interrupted. “Limited magic until we fully understand the consequences involved. Where do you think that food comes from that Polly magically pulls out of her basket? For all we know, we’re taking it out of a hungry kid’s mouth.”

  “You’re kind of a downer. You know that, right?” Mara said. “You need to chill.”

  Remembering why she’d gone to the kitchen in the first place, Lily asked, “Is Frank Jr. in your room?”

  Mara looked stunned for a few seconds before snorting with laughter. “Is that a joke?”