The Good Witch’s Guide to Bad Choices (Charmed By Demons #1)

Chapter 1

one

LIZZY

I left my fucking weed on the nightstand.

Addendum: On the nightstand of my philandering ex-boyfriend, who doesn’t deserve it and won’t know what to do with it anyway.

Is this oregano, Lizzy? Gee, I don’t know, Brendan!

Why don’t you sprinkle it on your goddamn spaghetti and find out?

Better yet, sprinkle it on your housekeeper’s snatch, since that seems to be your new favorite meal!

He doesn’t know I found out about her yet, or that I left his sorry ass.

When Rachel summoned me to New York this morning, I soothed my aching heart by availing myself of Brendan’s corporate credit card and booking a thousand-dollar plane ticket from LAX—my singular act of retribution.

Well, other than cutting buttholes in all his pants and ordering a bunch of pink dildos delivered to him at his pompous-ass law firm, also courtesy of the corporate card, which I’m sure the partners will appreciate.

Still. Attending a family gathering with my sisters is not something I can do without my emotional support narcotics.

We learned this the last time. And my dealer blocked my number after that teensy-weensy Venmo glitch (by glitch, I mean my bank balance is seventeen cents), so I can’t even ask him for a hookup recommendation in New York.

Everything is terrible. Hence my curse-laden mini-meltdown, which was met with concern from the flight attendants, who escorted me back to my seat and bribed me into compliance with booze and tiramisu.

Quite fancy, the first-class accommodations.

I didn’t tell the kind ladies about the forgotten weed.

Or how my shit-ass landlord wrote me an eviction notice on a Hello Kitty Post-it last weekend on the same day an AI chatbot fired me from my job as a smoothie influencer, like some freaking anti-Lizzy Bonnivarde conspiracy.

I did tell them about the bottom-feeder I’d been cluelessly banging for the last eighteen months, and how I’d even more cluelessly hoped he’d ask me to move in, and then I walked in on him taking a trip downtown on Madame Housekeeper yesterday right there on the freshly scoured kitchen counter. I could still smell the Clorox Wipes.

He didn’t even hear me. I backtracked without a word—the scene rendered me speechless—and had a good cry in the Pita Paradise bathroom across the street.

A few hours and a bucket of hummus later, Brendan texted me to come over and then tried to fuck me from behind with my T-shirt still on.

Which… Fine. I allowed. But only because I knew it would be the last time.

I have a thing about closure.

What a raging asshole! exclaimed the flight attendants, Female Solidarity Mode activated.

What an unprofessional housekeeper! exclaimed my elderly seat-mate in 1B, and we all cracked up at that—we thought the old bat was asleep!

Now, safely de-planed on the east coast and tucked into an Uber, I’m enjoying a world-class buzz and my purse is locked-’n-loaded with enough tiny bottles of booze to see me through the family reunion from Hell.

The sisterhood code runs deep on Skyquest Airlines, which is more than I can say about my actual sisters.

We haven’t spoken since The Incident—three years and counting.

The only reason Rachel deigned to text me at all was that our alleged mother just croaked.

Alleged being the operative word; twenty-three years ago, the woman from whose uterus we emerged shipped us off like a bad return and never looked back.

But according to Rachel, Mommy Dearest left us everything: the house.

A plant shop. Unresolved generational trauma.

Since two out of three can be sold and turned into cash, you bet your ass I was on the first flight out.

A girl can only coast on her ex’s credit card for so long before her pride evaporates.

Or he finds out and has her arrested. Ahem.

“Are you sure we’ve got the right address, hon?” my driver asks. She slows and turns up a dark road, and I abandon my Brendan-funded fall wardrobe shopping order to peer out into the night.

Gone are the swaying palm trees and golden California sunshine I left behind this morning. Now, it’s all darkness and mist. Brooding oak trees pen us in on both sides, making a canopy over our heads. Their brown leaves shiver as we pass beneath them. So do I.

The driver catches my eye in the mirror. “Someone just walked over your grave. That’s what they say.”

I flash a tight smile. “Yeah, well. Anyone tries that shit while I’m in there, I’ll punch through the dirt and drag them down with me.”

A nervous laugh, then she goes back to driving, bumping us along the cracked pavement I now realize is not a road but a driveway. Seconds later, we crest the rise and the mist parts and the old house emerges in the dim.

Well. “House” is maybe too generous a term.

It’s definitely old. Victorian jobber, three stories high, painted a grimy yellow that might’ve been cute had it been properly maintained.

Rotted black shutters hang crookedly around every window, and weeds choke the whole lot, like the house is being eaten from the ground up.

A peaked tower rises up along the side with a busted window in front, sheer curtains ghosting out from behind the missing glass.

What I’m saying is… if you woke up this morning and decided it was a good day to get yourself chopped to bits and buried in a basement, you’d drive straight here.

I double check the address Rachel sent. Fifty-Eight Cobblestone Way. I don’t see any cobblestones, but the number’s painted right there on the off-kilter mailbox. Kate’s red Prius is parked in the turnabout—same peeling bumper sticker she’s always had. Make Art Not War!

More than all that, I feel it. A skittering across my shoulders, followed by a deep tugging in my gut, like the house is trying to lure me inside.

Either that, or the booze is kicking in again. Yes, let’s keep that going, shall we? I excavate a bottle of peppermint schnapps from my purse. Ah, what the Hell—make it two. Liquid courage, down the hatch!

I’m just starting to feel steady again—and minty fresh—when out of nowhere the driver goes, “Oh, shit. You’re one of them, aren’t you? The Bonnivarde Sisters.”

It’s little more than a whisper—the Bonnivarde Sisters. Like I’m some walking urban legend around here, even though the last time I set foot on this property I was still in diapers.

“I read about this place,” she explains, twisting around to face me.

Her eyes glow with intrigue. “Apparently, the daughter of the original property owners was murdered during some kind of witch hunt, like, four hundred years ago. They buried her out in the woods. It’s a cemetery now, but back then it was just trees.

There were all these wild theories about cults and witches and…

Sorry. Too much? God, I just love spooky shit. ”

I blink. Loudly. “Could you get my bags, please?”

I wait in the warm car while Spooky Shit hauls two suitcases from the trunk—all my worldly possessions.

Well, other than this house of horrors and the plant business somewhere in town, which I’m not holding my breath about.

Ninety minutes north of Manhattan with nary a Starbucks in sight, the entire hamlet of Graves Hollow is probably as dead as it sounds.

Do they even have Wi-Fi here? Electricity?

Indoor plumbing? These are the hard-hitting questions inquiring minds want to know.

Flinging myself out into the ruthless night, I peer up at the house again. Abandoned, that’s what it is. Just like the three sisters who once lived here.

The breeze kicks up, and I swear I hear the old girl moaning.

Relatable.

Still, this is upstate New York. Birthplace of fall vibes. The property must be worth a pretty penny, even if there are dead bodies buried under it. Just adds to the historic charm.

“I don’t suppose you’re in the market for a house?” I gesture grandly at the place, like I’m trying on a new career. Murder-house real estate agent, at your service. “Super spooky, am I right?”

A quick shake of the head, then she makes the sign of the cross and hastily deposits herself back into the car.

Guess her devotion to “spooky shit” only goes so far.

Again, my shiver takes hold. She smirks at me with raised brows, but wisely keeps quiet about the walking-on-your-grave bit, and off she goes, my last chance at escape vanishing in the mist.

I open the app and double her tip anyway. Brendan’s credit card is still feeling generous, even if I’m not.

The house is dark and dreadful, watching me. A silent chill descends. My breath fogs in the air. Somewhere in the distance, an owl lets out an ominous hoot.

Realizing that this is the part of the movie where the ditzy blonde gets mauled by a hatchet-wielding werewolf maniac, I collect my bags and brace for re-entry.

“Inheritance,” I remind myself. “You’re doing this for the inheritance. Nut up, buttercup.”

I stomp up the crooked walk with as much nut as I can muster, considering I’m dragging two wobbly suitcases and tinkling like a goddamn wind-chime from all those mini-bar bottles. It’s a miracle I make it up the porch steps without breaking an ankle.

The front door is, predictably, locked.

Pressing my face to a grimy window, I finally spot some lights inside. Electricity after all! Well. That’s one mystery solved.

The warm glow is coming from the back—kitchen, I think. I can just make out the shapes of my sisters huddled at the table, a mess of paperwork spread between them, coffee cups in hand, their smug faces smugging, glossy hair glossing.

Those bitches totally started without me.

I’m just about to Hulk-smash the doorbell when the porch light blinks to life and three locks unlatch—click, click, clank. The door swings open, groaning on rusted hinges.

And there, waiting to greet me with a welcoming smile and a steaming cup of coffee of my very own, is…

No one. Absolutely no one.