White. Everything is bathed in white light. It is a luminescent vastness and a cosmos of sexual energies. My spiritual sanctuary. Welcome.

I sit upon a white throne, a dais atop a mountain of white—a mound of white crushed velvet fabric beneath me, endless reams of it. At the platform’s base, a snake follows the folds of fabric upwards. It is a slow, sensual journey punctuated by a darbuka’s gentle, rhythmic, hypnotic pounding. Another snake slithers into view. The two adders intertwine—briefly—before separating and continuing their respective journeys.

They reach a pair of female feet. Naked, pale, beautiful. My feet. The snakes glide over them, wrapping upwards to encircle my ankles. And now, if we were a film crew—with a camera operator—we’d move wider, pulling to soft focus on the white crushed velvet fabric of my dress, visible only from the waist down. The snakes disappear upwards, under my skirt—a hand strokes my knee. The hand belongs to a centaur. He lifts the hem of my dress and dips his head to kiss my ankles, then slowly follows the trail of the snakes. I encounter heaven at the touch of his lips. I surrender to his touch, languishing in pleasure. Other exotic supernatural creatures—angels, demons, hybrids—caress and arouse every part of my body. A leviathan teasingly sucks my left nipple while a shapeshifter who—with her long, dark hair and luminescent violet eyes—could be mistaken for my twin sister—trails its fingers up and down the softness of my stomach. Together they morph in and out of visibility, their very presence enough to tip me over the edge into an explosive orgasm, which never reaches its peak due to a sharp jab in my ribs, jolting me awake.

*

“Huh?” I survey my corporate—and very real—surroundings in confusion.

“You were snoring,” my friend Mia whispers, pulling her elbow away from my side. It is the second day of the international annual sales conference for KX Realty Group, and so rudely pulled into this reality, I struggle to suppress a yawn. A middle-aged accountant spruiks the tax benefits of selling prestige properties off the plan. Behind him, a PowerPoint slide shows a graph charting short, medium, and long-term investment growth. It is all too boring for words, and I can stifle my yawn no more. Mia is one of the other real-estate representatives from Australia. She catches me in the act and winks. I wink back mischievously.

My name is Ketzia Knowles—at least, that’s the name most people know me by. I also have another name, my witch name—but more of that later. This is the first year I have topped over ten million dollars in property sales for KX Realty Group and the first time they’ve invited me to this conference. The novelty of being counted as one of the elite few to attend is starting to wear off, and I am feeling the tiredness accumulated over the preceding weeks. Granted, the previous couple of days have been rather frantic. Firstly, of course, was getting to the conference. The company provided first-class travel to the resort at which it is being held this year—on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. Coming from Sydney, I’d had to adjust to a different time zone, and I’m struggling against the giddy symptoms of jet lag. Day one of the conference was yesterday. About three hundred sales reps are participating this year, which made for many meets and greets. The first networking session had left my mouth sore from smiling and my hand feeling like it was going to fall off from all the handshaking. But that is what sales is all about, and I know that to make it to the next level, I need all the international contacts I can get.

On the stage, the accountant is getting apoplectic about international tax laws, demonstrating on yet another pie chart how KX Realty Group takes advantage of each country’s different rules and regulations to get the maximum return for its investors. It is beyond boring. My eyelids slam shut with a determination I didn’t know they possessed, and I’m dragged back to my spiritual sanctuary. Sure, I need to understand the maths behind the investment scheme, at least enough to speak intelligently about it with a client. But maths has never been my forte. There’s no way I would have made it to this conference, let alone sold even one hundred dollars’ worth of property, if I had to rely on a good head for figures to hit my sales targets. No, my sales skills lie entirely elsewhere.

I didn’t always intend to be a real estate salesperson, even a well-paid, prestige-market one. I’ve always wanted to be a psychologist. I did well at school and had good enough marks to enter university. Studying psychology was okay but not as profoundly fulfilling as I’d expected. While studying, I worked part-time as a receptionist at a local real estate office. Occasionally I would have to fill in for an agent and show a client around a property. I enjoyed this aspect of my job and discovered that I had a flair for interacting with the clients and making them feel like buying the places I showed them. Often potential clients want to sign on the dotted line immediately. My boss noticed the increase in sales and offered me work as a sales representative. He also offered to pay for all the study fees associated with getting a real estate agent’s licence. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. So, I deferred my psychology degree indefinitely and started working full-time as a real estate agent. Something else I started doing at this time was practising witchcraft.