Grey Magic

1. A Good Trick

No one appreciates the irony of her situation more than Raven Kane. She would have laughed, except that it doesn't seem so funny at three in the morning when she is lying, skin-on-fire, in a strange hotel bathtub.

Raven Kane. Burnt-out witch. Hot skin, blue lips.

The burning always starts with a fever. Not a regular high temperature caused by a velcro-legged virus, but a fever of the skin. The first time it happened — 27 years ago — Raven had just lain there, in her nursery nightgown, while the fire spread from her feet upwards, as if she were burning at the stake in some parallel life — paralysed by the fear of her destiny. Sometimes she had wished to burn up altogether, to blaze away the worried looks of her parents, to incinerate the innate knowledge that she was so very different to the other kids. Sometimes, as a child, she wished to relinquish her strange power altogether; to be nothing more than a sad glint of ashes in the creeping morning light.

Now she lies in the cold water listening to her heart slow. Watching, as the red burn leaks out of her skin. The opposite of a sun lizard. Raven likes to think of herself as a hip, multi-tasking, hexing-and-texting witch. That has always been her highlights reel. But the dark and sticky truth is —

There's a tentative knock on the hotel room door. It's the waiter from the downstairs bar.

"Hello?" he calls. "Miss Kane?"

"Bring it in here," Raven says. "Quickly."

She hears his footsteps stutter into the empty room, allows him to see a flash of flesh through the slightly ajar bathroom door: a long, blushing arm resting on the lip of the tub. Raven senses his hesitation; hears him clear his throat. Imagines him adjusting his bowtie.

"I'll just leave it here," he says. "Just call down if you need more."

"I need it in here!" yells Raven. Is the man deaf? How can you be a decent bartender if you're hard of hearing?

The barman teeters into the tiled room. When he sees Raven he jumps and tries unsuccessfully to cover his eyes. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry."

"You're sorry?"

"You're naked!" he says, as red wings bloom along his cheeks like Rorschach ink blots.

"Of course I'm naked," Raven says, "I'm in the bath."

The waiter quickly averts his gaze; searches for something else to focus on. Raven sees him look at the spider-shaped pile of lingerie on the counter — black satin, charcoal lace — and sees his eyes skitter away from that, too. Finally, with some relief, he finds a safe zone: her worn-out toothbrush, reposing happily in a scuffed glass mug. Beyond the mug and its identical twin, Raven is still there, inside the mirror.

"The ice," her reflection says. Of course he has forgotten. He lifts the metal buckets as if to prove he hasn't.

"Pour it into the bath," she says.

He still seems uncertain but does as he's told. The ice crashes in. Raven closes her eyes and sinks down into the arctic water with a sigh. She feels his gaze sweep over her body as her heat melts the ice. Despite so much of her skin being on show, she feels his eyes inspecting her face, looking at the silver amulet — a wolf's head — on a chain around her neck. Her Fenrir. She knows that her dark make-up is smudged. He will be wondering why she has been crying.

"Stop looking at me," she says, startling him.

"More ice?" he asks.

"More ice," she says.

You shouldn't do that to them, you know, says a voice that sounds like a masculine version of her own.

Do what? asks Raven.

You know full well what, says the voice.

You're no fun.

Fun is not my mandate.

I wasn't doing anything. I needed the ice.

Did you have to embarrass the boy?

Are you kidding? This is probably the most interesting thing that's ever happened to him.

You give yourself a lot of credit.

Yes, well... Someone has to.

She hears sounds deep in the walls. Moaning. Whispering. Who else is awake at this hour? Certainly no one from the conference. It must be the staff getting ready for the day. Hotels never sleep.

Is it normal, do you think, says Raven, to have conversations with yourself?

What do you mean 'normal'?

Well, do other people do it?

Would that make it 'normal'? Anyway, what does it matter?

She sinks down, trying to immerse her whole body, but she's too tall and her knees stick out of the water like hot, pink islands.

Joan of Arc heard a voice, says Raven.

So did Jesus.

That doesn't bode well.

What do you mean?

Well - look what happened to them.

She runs an ice cube over her thigh. It glides over her flickering skin and vanishes. It is its own magic trick.

It's getting worse, says the voice. You have to do something about it.

The waiter reappears. Without hesitating, as if he had planned his actions while walking up the stairs, he marches in and dumps the contents of his pails at Raven's feet.

"More?" he asks, his cheek-flush faded.

Raven opens her legs a fragment. "Please," she says.

The silver buckets clatter out of the room.

Sometimes the skin-fever brings with it auditory hallucinations: chanting, shouting, the sound of an angry mob. The crackling of a spiteful fire. Raven has always dreamt of pitchforks and pyres, but her current predicament is far less dramatic. It's a slow burn — a burning out — an unhurried ember losing its glow. Descending, devolving, degenerating into those familiar grey cinders. A well-known curse in Chinese witchcraft is: 'May you get what you wish for'. That and 'May you live in interesting times'. Raven has been hexed with both.

She often wonders if she experiences these episodes because her energy has an intense empathy for her foremothers in Essex or Salem; if the attacks are, in fact, echoes of her previous or future lives. Whatever the reason, she thanks the Universe daily for the Age of Enlightenment.

She slips her body further down, puts her face under the water, holds her breath for as long as she can. Her knuckles hum with the cold.

Of course, she uses the term 'enlightenment' loosely. There are still plenty of Pitchforks around.