Ashtoreth House

Lilith’s battered black Prius rumbled and groaned as she drove into yet another three-stoplight town in her voyage across the midwestern United States. “Welcome to Nivennah!” a weathered wooden sign announced beside the road. Ahead, a mixture of houses and storefronts hailing from the 1800s greeted her eyes, all looking like they’d seen much better days.

“Doesn’t look like a witch town,” Lilith muttered to herself as she drove past a quaint Methodist church and a mom-and-pop 1950s-style diner. Truth be told, Nivennah looked like every other small town she’d driven through over the past few days. But WikiWitch told her that there were magic users in this town, and Lilith was bound and determined to become a full-fledged witch in her own right. Her talents for manipulating air and water had gotten her kicked out of her family home, but there had to be somewhere that people like her belonged.

Maybe, despite its ordinary looks, Nivennah was just the sort of extraordinary place Lilith was looking for.

She eased her Prius, affectionately called Winifred, into the parking lot of a strip shopping center anchored by a Dollar General. Some locals were lounging outside of an Ace Hardware in Adirondack chairs, smoking and shooting the breeze, but they fell silent when Lilith got out of Winifred and headed their way.

“Hello!” she greeted them cheerfully. They stared at her like she was from another planet. Then again, she might as well have been, with her heavy goth makeup, black leather and lace corset, fishnets, and black platform combat boots. The lime green streaks in her dyed-black hair and the piercings in her ears, nose, and eyebrows likely didn’t help matters at all. The locals wore flannels, worn-out jeans, and judgmental expressions.

“You ain’t from around here,” one of them observed, punctuating his remark with a puff of tobacco smoke.

“No. I’m looking for a place to study magic. Heard there might be something of the kind here.”

The locals exchanged glances. One of them let out a low whistle. Another shook her head and muttered an excuse about needing to buy shoelaces before disappearing into the Dollar General.

“Can’t help ya, ma’am. Think you might be better off lookin’ somewhere else,” one of the men advised. The rest opted to stare through Lilith as if she were a pane of glass, making her wretchedly uncomfortable.

“Okay. Thanks.” She forced a smile and then walked slowly away from them, debating whether to try inside any of the stores in the strip center for directions. But none of the people she saw looked friendly, and she could feel the eyes of the people she’d approached boring into her back, willing her to leave.

“Would that I had people-influencing magic,” she mumbled as she got back into Winifred. The Prius protested several times before starting, and Lilith cursed as her eyes fell on the gas gauge, which pointed towards E. She didn’t have a lot of cash to spare, but she wasn’t likely to get anywhere without feeding Winifred.

Fortunately, there was a Marathon gas station a block down the two-lane road from the strip center. Lilith filled Winifred’s tank and then went inside, hoping she’d find someone more willing to talk to her. There was just one cashier in the store and a couple customers milling about. None of them looked particularly approachable, but Lilith wasn’t one to be deterred from her mission. Even so, she grabbed a couple of random items to take to the cash register so that the cashier would have to talk to her.

“Will that be all for you, ma’am?” the attendant behind the counter asked as she rang up Lilith’s Pepsi and Fritos.

“I’m here to study magic. I heard there are powerful witches here in Nivennah. Do you know where I can find them?” Lilith asked. She’d never been the type of person to beat around the bush.

The cashier’s eyes widened for an instant before narrowing with mistrust. She fiddled with the crucifix pendant at her throat as she spoke. “Can’t say as I know of any witches, ma’am. I’m too old for believing in fairy tales, and by the looks of things, you are, too. That’ll be $5.94.”

Lilith fumbled for her credit card and a civil reply. She sputtered a bit, casting about for words, until her card came out of her skull-embossed wallet.

“All my sources have said there’s strange happenings in this town. Unexplainable medical cases. Remarkable life spans. Some even say that in Nivennah, the dead don’t stay dead,” she pressed as she paid for her snack.

“My expertise is in gas station management, ma’am. If you’re looking for someone to talk about medical cases, go to Ashtoreth House. Plenty of pharmacists and other doctor types in that family.”

“Pharmacists? I’m not here to get a prescription filled. I want to study–”

“I’ve helped you all I can, ma’am. Here’s your receipt.” The cashier pushed Lilith’s snack and receipt across the counter with a harrowing frown. “As your business is done here, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’ve got other customers waiting.”

Behind Lilith, someone cleared their throat loudly. She turned to see a massive man with a heavy brow behind her, a case of energy drinks in one hand and bags of beef jerky in the other.

“Right,” Lilith mumbled. She snatched her chips and soda off the counter and hustled out of the Marathon. Winifred was far more welcoming than anyone in the gas station; she even started without a fuss this time. Lilith dropped into the driver’s seat and sighed.

“At least the cashier gave me a clue,” she told herself, trying to find the energy to be optimistic. “Ashtoreth House…”

But doing a Google search on her cracked android phone didn’t turn up any results for Ashtoreth House. It did, however, tell her that a Dr. Igor Ashtoreth, pharmacist, had recently passed away in the area. The obituary cited several surviving family members, and a little more internet sleuthing turned up an address that Lilith typed into her GPS.

“Only clue I’ve got. I have to see where it leads,” she said as she told the GPS to start navigation. The little machine took her about two blocks from the Marathon to a large Victorian house with a turret and intricate woodwork on the gabled roof and wrap-around porch. Lilith gaped at the ornate home for a few moments after she parked on the side of the road. It was cheerfully painted in peach and white–not Lilith’s style at all, but paint was an easy fix. Maybe her mother had been right to try to push her to go to medical school instead of pursuing a cosmetology license, if this was what doctor money could buy.

Lilith shook her head and got out of the car. She wasn’t going to get answers by staring at architecture–even though the house also had a slate roof and stained glass in some of the windows, she realized as she got closer. It was truly a beautiful home. And above the door, in ornate gothic calligraphy, was a sign that read “Ashtoreth House.” No doubt this was the place the Marathon cashier meant.

Lilith strode onto the front porch, took a deep breath, and knocked on the antique wooden door.

Her knock echoed a bit, as if the space behind it was quite hollow. She waited for a few moments, but no one answered. She tried the heavy brass knocker next, which made a more impressive sound than her fist but yielded the same result. Then Lilith noticed an antique doorbell button to the right of the door. She jammed her thumb into the button, expecting that nothing would happen.

Instead, a sonorous tolling like church bells in a graveyard filled the air and vibrated the porch beneath her feet. The air around Lilith seemed to darken, and her heart leapt in her chest. Was this the magic she had been searching for? The sound of high heels on wooden floors met her ears under the tolling, and then all sounds died as the front door of Ashtoreth House swung open.

Behind the door stood a woman with elegantly coiffed hair in a black blazer, blouse, and pencil skirt with pointed-toe stilettos. She was fresh-faced and beautiful with dewy skin, blood-red lips, and a small wing on her inky black eyeliner. Crystals adorned her ears, neck, and wrists, plentiful yet tasteful.

“Lilith Iscariot,” the woman greeted Lilith with a slight smile. “We wondered when you would arrive.”

“We? What– How do you know my name?” Lilith spluttered, completely caught off-guard.

“A lady never shares her secrets. And we would thank you to leave ours alone, as well.”

“What do you– I haven’t said anything to you–”

“People talk. And news travels fast.”

“Who are you? Clearly you have power of some kind. I’m looking for someone to teach me how to be a real witch. Would you take an apprentice?” Lilith rushed to get all the words out before the mysterious woman could interrupt her again.

“We have no need for witches of your kind in Nivennah. Please take your search elsewhere.”

The door started to swing closed, but Lilith pushed herself inside, commanding a gust of wind to help her fight the door. “I have not come this far to be turned away like this! Do you know how long I’ve been searching for other people with a magic gift? I knew I couldn’t be the only one–”

“Enough.” The woman snapped her fingers, and Lilith’s lips suddenly refused to part, no matter how much she tried to continue talking. “We have heard much about you and your quest, Lilith Iscariot, and we of Ashtoreth House want no part of it. Your kind of magic has no place here. Nivennah cannot be home to us both.”

Wind whipped through the Ashtoreth house foyer and scraped Lilith’s face, taking the charm with it. “How can I prove myself to you, Ashtoreth?”

The woman cringed. “Doctor Jessabel Ashtoreth, if you please.”

“Let me show you what I can do. I know if you just give me a chance, you’ll change your mind about me. I can belong here.”

Jessabel laughed in a way that made Lilith’s skin crawl. Half a dozen skeletons walked out of the sitting room to Lilith’s right and arranged themselves behind Jessabel, violet light glowing in their hollow eye sockets.

“A novice mistake, to challenge a witch in the seat of her coven,” Jessabel replied. “But your persistence is amusing. If you insist, you can try to fight for a place here.”

Lilith swallowed hard. It didn’t seem to take Jessabel any effort to command the skeletons. For the first time, it occurred to her that she might be out of her depth, but she squashed the thought immediately. This was the best chance she’d found to achieve her dreams since she’d left home, and she wasn’t about to waste it. She called up a swirling orb of water in one hand and guided a gust of wind with the other, ready to shake the skeletons to smithereens.

“Bring it on.”