Any Last Witches?: Good Cluck Chicken Magical Mysteries, #2

By Kathryn Lin

Welcome back to Windfall, Nevada.

An RV gathering of eccentric characters out in the desert, a crazy new moneymaking scheme that threatens to bankrupt her mom, and a broomstick that refuses to fly. There's never a moment of peace for Tara Hart.

When a dead body turns up in the middle of the desert, Tara ends up as the main suspect, under the suspicious eye of the town sheriff.

With the help of her witchy godmothers and a snarky silkie chicken, Tara sets out to clear her name.

Can Tara put out the multiple fires in her life before it's too late and everything burns to the ground?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Road Less Unraveled Press
• Release date: Nov 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201649708

Book preview

1

I never wanted to wake up. In my dream, I was basking on a tropical beach with an ice-cold drink in my hand while waves crashed on the shore. The hot sun tanned my bare skin while a warm breeze tickled and took away the sting of the heat.

I was about to turn around in my hammock when a chicken started squawking in my ear like an air siren.

Bok! Bok bok bok! Bok!

The alarmingly loud call jolted me back to reality. With my heart pounding a hundred beats a minute, I jumped out of bed, ready to battle the threat. It took a while for my sleep-addled brain to make sense of what was going on. I blinked to clear the sleep from my eyes and sighed.

It was Henrietta. The black silkie chicken was my familiar and for every bit of advice she gave me about being a witch, she made sure to dish up a side of snark to go with it.

I glared at the laundry basket in the corner of my room where Henrietta had just laid an egg. Even though I bought her a fluffy cat bed for her nesting spot, she still insisted on taking over my laundry basket.

She was busy fluffing the wood shavings inside the basket and preening her feathers with her beak. Despite nearly giving me a heart attack, Henrietta was not a bit bothered by the early morning wake-up call she just emitted.

I rubbed my eyes and stretched.

Do you have to sing your egg song every time you lay an egg? Flopping back onto my bed, I put on my glasses and picked up my phone from the nightstand. The time flashed on the screen. I let out a long groan. It wasn't even seven in the morning yet.

You know, you are the worst roommate ever.

Henrietta looked up at me from her nest and blinked lazily. She communicated with me through the bond shared by familiars and their witches.

Well, excuse me!

Anyone without magical abilities would have only heard her clucking in annoyance.

It's not like I'm letting out a fart. Let's see how quiet you would be if you had to lay something the size of an egg every morning.

I sighed. It was useless trying to argue with her. She had a retort for everything. I had been back in my hometown of Windfall for less than a day when Henrietta invaded my bedroom and never left. What kind of witch was I that I was assigned a chicken as a familiar instead of a normal animal, like a cat or a gerbil?

Closing my eyes, I tried to drift back to sleep, but it was hopeless. With adrenaline racing through my veins, I was wide awake now.

I let out a sigh and kicked off the covers. Mom had the day off from her job at the gas station, so she was probably sleeping in. I might as well get an early start and make breakfast for us.

After I pulled on a pair of jeans and a black tee, I reached under Henrietta and grabbed the egg she had just laid. Making my way to the kitchen, I mentally went through what I could make today, waffles or pancakes. To my surprise, the smell of freshly brewed coffee greeted me. Mom was at the stove cooking something. I peered over her shoulder and saw that she was flipping pancakes.

Standing at just a touch over five feet tall, my petite mother could not be any more different from myself. I often felt like a giant ogre towering over her, with my gangly limbs and muscular build. While she had a healthy glowing tan, my skin tended to burn within fifteen minutes under the sun. With my pale complexion and thick rimmed glasses, I looked like a vampire who lived inside a library. I often wondered what my birth parents looked like. Were they tall and quiet like me, or outgoing and whimsical like my adopted mom?

Mom wore a bejeweled pink satin robe with her gray-streaked blonde hair wrapped up in a matching pink satin turban with long purple feathers sticking up out of the front. Even though it was early and her day off, she already had her face done in heavy dark eyeliner and black lipstick, making her look like goth Barbie.

There was already a tower of pancakes on a plate, so she must have been cooking for a while. The coffee maker let out a series of happy burbling sounds as coffee dripped into the pot below.

Morning, Mom. You should have slept in and let me make breakfast.

I opened the fridge and added today's egg to the carton that contained Henrietta's other eggs from this week. Even though these eggs were fresher than anything I could buy at the store, it didn't feel right to eat something that I saw come out of my friend's butt. It would be a shame to let them go to waste, though.

Esmeralda probably didn't have any reservations about eating these eggs. My witchy mentor and boss at the bakery where I worked loved to bake. She was sure to appreciate the freshly laid eggs. I pulled the carton out of the fridge and placed them on the kitchen counter. I reminded myself to bring them with me to work.

I poured a cup of coffee and added two splashes of cream before spearing two pancakes onto my plate.

Mom came over with the frying pan and placed a couple of strips of bacon on the side of my plate.

I couldn't sleep. I booked a stall at that RV gathering outside of town for the next couple of days, but I'm running out of time to set up my stall. There's so much Bijoulia and Soosalu stock to organize. I can't decide which products I want to promote the most.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes and hid my reaction behind my mug of coffee. My mother was always falling prey to money-making schemes and multilevel marketing scams that promised to let her work from home. Soosalu clothing and Bijoulia jewelry were just two of her more recent business ventures. In the past, she had also dabbled with vitamins, essential oils, and detox shakes made with some kind of sea algae. The guest room in our house was filled floor to ceiling with unsold merchandise from her past business ventures.

Mom joined me at the table and drowned her own pancakes in maple syrup. I almost have my display planned, but I can't find my rose gold Bijoulia jewelry. Do you think someone could have snuck in and taken it? I heard that gold jewelry with gemstones are all the rage right now, what with all the stress and anxiety about the future. Gemstones have calming and healing powers, you know.

I chewed my pancake a little longer than necessary before I replied. Did you check the guest room? You know how forgetful you are when you're busy with work. The jewelry was probably misplaced when you were moving things around. I doubted that anybody would want the jewelry even if we gave them money to take it off of our hands. There was nobody in the world who would mistake the chintzy gold plated costume jewelry for the real thing.

Maybe. I'll have a look again later today. Mom sipped her coffee. I have a good feeling about the jewelry. She held out her arms to the side, revealing the bracelets on her wrists. I can feel the positive energy from the gems flowing through me already.

Henrietta waddled into the room. While she had one good leg, the toes of her other leg were curled up like a clubfoot. This gave her stride a distinctive half limp, half waddle. I was curious about what caused her condition, but I didn’t want bring up any questions that would make her uncomfortable.

She settled in a beam of sunlight that came in through the patio's sliding glass door. Her ebony feathers glistened under the morning sun as she stretched out for her morning sunbathing session. Henrietta shot me a look before she stretched out her wing. If she really believes in all that bunk, I have a place where she can shove her gemstones.

I shot Henrietta a look. I wanted to say something back, but my mother would have committed me to the loony bin if I started having a conversation with our chicken. As a witch, I had the ability to understand speech from animal familiars, but my mom did not have any magical ability, so all she could hear was Henrietta clucking like a chicken.

Even though I was adopted, my mother raised me as her own flesh and blood. Since magic could only be passed from witch to witch through blood, I knew my powers did not come from her. It wasn't until I lost my job as a flight attendant in Los Angeles recently and came back to Windfall, that I found out that I was a witch. Thankfully, I