The summer had been particularly humid. For weeks now Alexa had been leaving the window open in an attempt to get a decent night’s sleep, but it had just ended up making the busy street noises of central Birmingham even louder. Tonight was no different. A slight breeze blew, gently tickling the curtains. Alexa stirred in her sleep, rolling over onto her back. Again the wind blew but this time with more of a purpose.

A white mist crept in through the open window and spilled out underneath the net curtains. It moved across the room and hovered over the bed for a moment, as if waiting for instruction. As Alexa inhaled, the mist spiralled down into her mouth and disappeared. Her eyes opened for a second, turning a deep red before returning back to their normal blueness and closing again. She continued to sleep peacefully; perfectly unaware that anything had just happened to her.

****

The last few nights had been dreadful. True, it had been unseasonably warm, but waking continuously with hot sweats and a burning sensation running through her body, Alexa suspected that she might be coming down with something. This was hardly surprising; she was always a bit run down towards the end of term at university. Even so, it had never been as bad as this before.

She couldn’t afford to be ill now. It was the final week of medical school before they finished for the summer. Alexa just could not wait for eight weeks of summer vacation to arrive; she was desperately in need of a break. She hadn’t planned much yet, but that was the way she preferred it. All she wanted to do was catch up on some sleep and make a start on the pile of novels that she had collected over the last year, but had never had time to read.

Needless to say this last week would be a busy time, cramming in the last of the lectures and visiting hospitals in preparation for her first placement, which she would be starting in September. Alexa couldn’t wait. Finally she could feel like a proper medical student, seeing real patients instead of spending all day sitting in a lecture theatre.

The alarm woke her. Alexa groaned. She placed a hand on her clammy forehead. Once again she felt like she had barely slept. Burying her face in the pillow, she reached her arm out to the floor, fumbling around for her phone. Locating it, she slammed her hand down on the snooze button in an attempt to silence it. The ringing continued. She slammed her hand down again, this time hitting it at a slight angle and sending her mobile spinning along the floor. She moaned in frustration and sat up as she glared at the phone in the middle of the room.

Instantly the noise stopped. A spark appeared followed shortly by a puff of smoke which seemed to emanate from the phone. She rolled out of bed and picked it up off the floor, pressing down firmly on the power button in an attempt to turn it back on, but with no success. Alexa threw the phone down on the bed and sighed. She could already tell that this was not going to be a good day.

****

Claire Baxter was a lovely girl, model medical student and a great friend. She did, however, have one major flaw; she was always running late. Fortunately on this particular Monday morning, following the mobile phone incident, Alexa was also running late.

‘We had better get a move on,’ Claire said as she reached Alexa’s house, only a few doors down from her own. As usual her long, blonde hair was still damp; she never had the time to dry it in the mornings. Claire struggled to pull on her denim jacket whilst attempting to hold both her handbag and a bundle of overdue library books at the same time.

As they were in the second year of their course they had both decided to live in Selly Oak, typical of medical students attending the University of Birmingham. Fortunately it meant that most of the students they knew only lived within a four street radius of each other.

Like most university students, at the beginning of the first year they had both become best friends with the people they had been allocated to live with in the student halls of residence. These amazing friendships lasted all of two months, after which, they both realised that actually they had nothing in common with these people at all, aside from the fact that they attended the same university.

For Claire it wasn’t too bad, the people she lived with were okay, just not the sort of people that she would normally choose to hang around with. Alexa, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. Her ‘roommates’ would stay up all night, playing their music at top volume and running up and down the staircases between the flats. This meant that Alexa had to endure a year of sleep deprivation, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The fact was that these people lacked any knowledge of normal hygiene. They were not familiar with the concept of washing up. Instead they would leave their plates and bowls out until they turned mouldy, then just throw them in the dustbin and buy new ones. The shared bathroom was even worse. It was a year later and Alexa still cringed at the thought of having lived there.

Early on Alexa and Claire had agreed to move into a house with the flatmates from their student halls. By the end of the first year they had already come to regret this decision. Having signed housing contracts months ago, however, they were both stuck in the situation and were forced to spend the whole of their second year living with people who they really did not get on with.

Fortunately their timetable meant that they were spending most of their days in the medical school and on most of the nights Alexa would make herself busy going to as many classes as possible at the university sports centre. It had originally just been a way of getting out of the house but within a couple of months she had become completely addicted.

At first Alexa had no idea which classes to attend as she had never really been into any kind of sport. In the end she settled with kickboxing and combat, thinking they may come in somewhat useful living in such a rough area of town. After all, Selly Oak was not the safest of places; there were always police roaming the streets. She had even had the pleasure of witnessing a mugging taking place in broad daylight, leaving the victim with a bloodied nose and an empty wallet.

Alexa and Claire couldn’t wait until next year when they would no longer have the issue of living in houses of questionable quality and in a questionable area of town. A few short weeks and they would be moving in with their mutual friends in the more upmarket area of Harborne, a suburb filled with trainee doctors due to its convenient location next to the medical school, local hospitals and also many drinking establishments. The close proximity of their new house to the medical school meant that hopefully they would be able to get to lectures on time, something that they hadn’t managed to achieve in a while.

‘Lectures start in fifteen minutes. It’ll take us a good twenty minutes to get there,’ Alexa replied, pessimistically. She fumbled around with her keys, trying to lock the front door. Having been flustered all morning, she had just about managed to pull on her usual look of jeans, vest top and a cardigan when she realised it was already time to leave the house. Alexa had applied a quick coat of mascara to try and make herself appear more awake and then dashed downstairs just as Claire appeared outside her front door. ‘We’ve got Professor Ashcombe first as well.’

The unfortunate truth was that unless you were sitting in your seat when the clock read 9 a.m. Professor Ashcombe would delight in pulling you up in front of the entire cohort of four hundred students and give you a five minute lecture on the importance of punctuality, that was before publically ejecting you from the lecture theatre. This had already happened to Claire and Alexa twice this year and Alexa was worried her friend would end up giving her somewhat of a bad reputation.

Alexa attempted to tame her long, brown hair by running her fingers through it as they set off towards the medical school. Eventually she decided just to have done with it and tie her hair into a ponytail instead. She never normally wore it this long. Her hair had now grown well past her shoulders mainly because she still hadn’t found a hairdresser she trusted in Birmingham.

In the past she would just wait until her visits home when her neighbour, who happened to be a mobile hairdresser, would come around to tidy up her ends for her. Now that Alexa had no reason to go home it just hadn’t occurred to her that she should find someone more local to do the job.

The fact was that Alexa could not cope with the awkward small talk that occurred when sitting in the hairdresser’s chair. They would always ask about boyfriends, which she rarely had, or holidays, which she had neither the time nor the money for. When they did ask about her job they either appeared slightly put out or began inappropriately explaining every medical problem they had ever experienced in their lives, something which she could most definitely do without.

‘It’ll be fine. We’ll just have to power walk it,’ Claire answered.

That was another of Claire’s traits, she was always so pleasantly optimistic. Everyone fell in love with her instantly: patients, teachers, guys. It was an attribute of hers which Alexa truly envied. Alexa was much more focused and could often come across as frosty or bossy, and as a result had the habit of unintentionally ending up on the wrong side of people.

They didn’t have much time for conversation as they rushed to their lecture. Alexa did however mention her inability to sleep as well as the hot flushes she had been experiencing. She hoped that together they could come up with some sort of differential diagnosis. Although on this occasion, Claire was unusually unhelpful.

‘You’re probably just coming down with a cold. You’re always so stressed out. You just need to relax; it’s the summer holidays next week anyway.’

‘I suppose,’ Alexa replied, fending off a yawn.

As they reached the medical school she glanced up at the clock tower. It was already five past nine. They looked at each other momentarily before turning around and walking straight back down the steps and away from the building.

‘So, back to bed it is then,’ Claire stated, not particularly bothered that they were missing their lecture.

****

Alexa’s day didn’t seem to get much better from then on although she did manage to convince Claire that spending a couple of hours in the library might be more beneficial than heading back to bed at nine in the morning.

Alexa strolled back to her house, taking a slight detour through a much nicer area of town. The houses in Edgbaston were a far cry from the ones situated in Selly Oak. Each one was detached with a large front garden, many of which had been paved over to accommodate the multitude of cars the residents owned. Alexa found herself wandering down the roads picking out the ones she wouldn’t mind owning herself, and somehow seemed to discover a new house every time. There were several, however, that Alexa found far too pretentious for her liking, with gates that required you to be ‘buzzed in’ and statues of lions and other animals guarding their doorways. It had added a good fifteen minutes to her walk but Alexa didn’t mind.

Unlocking her front door she could feel something brush against her leg. She looked down to see a small, black cat pawing at her jeans.

‘No, you’re not coming in,’ she said, bending down and giving the cat a stroke behind the ears. This was the same creature that had been following her around all year.

There were countless stray cats roaming the streets of Selly Oak, and around most of Birmingham for that matter. Alexa suspected it may be due to the lack of bins in the city. People would just toss their bags of rubbish out onto the street the night before they were due to be collected and by the morning they would already have been attacked by an assortment of wildlife. In the summer it was even worse, the rubbish would fester in the heat and the stench would linger in the air long after the rubbish had been collected.

This particular feline seemed to catch her attention more than the rest of them. There was something about its eyes that drew Alexa in, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Alexa couldn’t help but give in every so often and put out a bowl of tuna or chicken, basically whatever she had left over from her evening meal that night.

This animal reminded her very much of a particular village cat from back home. Every day after getting off of the school bus it would follow her back from the bus stop and then just spend the rest of the day standing outside of her grandmother’s cottage. Alexa never did find out who that animal belonged to.

Missing morning lectures had given Alexa the time to go back home and file an insurance claim for a new mobile phone, though she didn’t really know how to explain how the damage had occurred in the first place. She closed the lid on her laptop and sat back on her desk chair, staring up at the stacks of medical textbooks that glared at her from the shelves above. The sheer weight of them was causing the wooden slats to bow in the middle, though replacing them seemed far too much of an effort for such a novice at DIY.

She stood up on her chair, allowing her to reach the top shelf and retrieved a couple of textbooks. She climbed back down, threw the books onto her bed and began researching some of the symptoms she had been experiencing. Hot flushes, night sweats, it was all too general. It could be down to anything, but then again, it could be down to nothing. Defeated, she tidied the books away and held her head in her hands; she knew that something just wasn’t right.

Alexa wandered downstairs just before midday. Her housemate Jess was sitting in her pyjamas watching the television. Actually, housemate is the wrong word; Jess was just someone she had to endure living with. The girl was a total mess and the worst part was that she really didn’t care. She stayed in bed all day and spent most evenings drinking which made her foghorn voice even louder than it already was. Her hair was back-combed so much that she looked like she had been dragged through a hedge sideways, and due to her inability to work the washing machine, she had been living in the same oversized jumper for the last week.

‘Morning,’ Alexa said, but as usual received no reply. She crossed the living room and headed towards the kitchen, in desperate need of a cup of tea. Being raised by her grandmother she was brought up to believe that a cup of tea really could solve any problem.

Alexa came from a small, but very loving family. Well, at least that is what her grandmother had always told her. They had never found out how she survived the house fire but somehow Alexa had emerged from the burning building completely unharmed. Her parents, William and Catherine Powell, were not so fortunate. Alexa was grateful that she couldn’t remember much about the whole ordeal.

She was only two years old when she lost her parents and was sent out into the countryside to live with her maternal grandmother. Her grandmother was a very religious woman and insisted that Alexa had survived due to some sort of divine intervention; she had always said that Alexa was destined for great things.

Of course she loved her grandmother very much. She was the only living family member she had left. Alexa was grateful, however, to be able to move out at the age of eighteen when she was accepted at the Birmingham College of Medical and Dental Sciences. As nice as the countryside was, Alexa craved the excitement of the city. She felt like she was constantly waiting for something exciting to happen and had chosen to study Medicine to try and give her life a sense of purpose. She wanted to do something important, to help people and save lives, probably because she wasn’t able to save her parents.

Alexa loved university and enjoyed the challenges and freedom that it provided her with, despite her unfortunate living arrangements. Every other weekend, during her first year, Alexa would make the ninety mile car journey back home to visit her grandmother.

During the summer between her first and second year her grandmother had passed away. Alexa had brought her up her morning cup of tea but was unable to wake her. She found it comforting that her grandmother had departed from the world peacefully, during her sleep, the way she had always planned for it to happen. Nevertheless, at only twenty years old Alexa Powell had now been left completely alone in the world. Now she was left living with people that didn’t even care if she was there or not.

Alexa stood in the doorway of the kitchen and observed the horror before her. It was just like first year all over again. There was a whole new ecosystem forming on the work surfaces. She turned around and glared at Jess.

‘Jess you were supposed to clean the kitchen, your rubbish has been lying there for over a week now.’

Jess seemed to ignore her and continued watching the television. Alexa took another step into the living room.

‘Jess, you need to clear up after yourself. There are other people that live in this house you know,’ Alexa continued, trying not to raise her voice.

‘Chill out, will you?’ Jess mumbled, still not drawing her eyes away from the television screen.

Alexa was fed up; she had put up with this for a year and her patience was now growing thin. She needed to let Jess know exactly how she felt.

‘Jess, clear up your mess, now!’

Jess picked up the remote control, pointed it at the television and pushed the standby button. The screen went black. Finally, she looked at Alexa.

‘Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t tell me what to do. I moved to university to get away from my mother, not to find a new one,’ she finally spoke. Jess stood up and went to walk out of the room. ‘I’m going back to bed.’

Alexa could feel her blood boiling. She was already having a bad day and dealing with Jess was only making it worse. Her forehead began to burn up again; she felt like she was about to pass out. She clenched her fist for a moment, trying to prevent herself from lashing out. Jess mumbled again under her breath as she left the room.

‘I can’t wait until you move out.’

At that moment, Alexa could feel a great warmth emanating from her hand. She looked down to see a ball of fire hovering above her palm. She gasped, whipping her hand away and sending the fireball plummeting towards the floor.

‘No!’ She shrieked, throwing out her hands in some insane attempt to catch it. It disappeared into nothing only moments before it hit the carpet. She lurched forwards, falling onto her knees as Jess re-entered the room, obviously having heard the commotion.

‘What on earth are you doing in here? It smells like burning! You’ll set the smoke alarm off,’ Jess said, staring at Alexa, who was unable to say anything. Instead Alexa remained in a heap on the floor, nursing her hand, which was neither burnt nor painful; she just seemed to be experiencing some sort of odd stinging sensation. Jess grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen and began waving it in front of the smoke detector, trying to prevent it from going off.

‘I…I…’ Alexa stammered, failing to form a complete sentence. She pulled herself to her feet, trembling slightly. ‘I need to get out of here.’

She stumbled out of the lounge, up the stairs and locked herself in her bedroom. Jess looked on, confused.

‘What a freak.’

****

Alexa couldn’t understand it. She knew that conjuring fire was physically impossible. In the end Alexa decided that she must have imagined it. She put it down to a mixture of stress and sleep deprivation. Consequently she spent the remainder of the afternoon lying in bed, attempting to get some rest.

Alexa slept surprisingly well that night and was well refreshed for her induction on the wards at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital the next day. Her week seemed to have picked up and she decided that it was probably best not to mention the events of Monday to anyone. She knew it sounded crazy and there was no way she would be able to explain it to Claire without her thinking that she was losing her mind.

On Wednesday they met again for an afternoon of lectures, catching up briefly on how their hospital experiences had gone. Alexa didn’t bring up the fire incident. She didn’t know how to find the words to begin explaining it to Claire when she couldn’t even make sense of it herself. They made their way up to the lecture theatre and found two seats near the back, ready for a two hour lecture on ‘History Taking in a Hospital Environment’.

‘I want to gouge my own eyeballs out with this pen,’ Claire mumbled, holding up a Biro before burying her face in her crossed arms. The lecture had only been going for twenty minutes but he had already managed to lose the attention of most of the audience. Alexa didn’t reply, paralysed by boredom.

Throughout the presentation there had been a mumbling noise emanating from the group of guys sitting beside them. This alone was rather irritating but combined with the droning of the lecturer, it was almost unbearable. To make matters worse Alexa knew that if she said anything to the guys they would either ignore her or make more noise just to be annoying. She had endured it for just over an hour when it happened.

Alexa took a deep breath and was about to tell them to be quiet when a girlish scream filled the air. The noise had come from one of the guys. Everyone turned their attention to the student whose desk appeared to be on fire. The lecturer’s instructions were inaudible over the sound of chatter. The walkways became jammed as nearly four hundred students tried to leave the lecture theatre all at once, the fire alarm sounding above them. Alexa just sat there, completely stunned. Claire grabbed her by the arm and dragged her up.

‘Come on, I think lectures might be finished for today,’ Claire laughed, finding the situation more amusing than anything else. Alexa followed her, watching as the fire spread to the adjacent seats.

She started running. She ran out of the lecture theatre, down the stairs, through the foyer and out down the steps of the medical school. She chose not to take any notice of the people staring at her as she pushed her way through the crowd. She sprinted through the car park and past the huddle of professors and medical students that were gathered outside.

A fire engine pulled up outside, causing Alexa to panic further. She continued running, aware that most people were now watching her strange behaviour. She headed across the road and down into the main campus, stopping just before she reached the library. She paused for a moment to catch her breath before pulling out her student identity card and entering the building. Giving a nervous smile as she passed the librarian, she swiped her card and went through the turnstiles before settling down in front of one of the computers.

As it was late summer the main library was all but empty. Everyone else had now finished their end-of-year examinations and the medical students remained at the university only until the end of the week. The silence gave the building an ominous air. Alexa was aware that she could hear the sound of her own breathing, which still had not normalised after her sprint from the medical school. She clicked the computer mouse, pulled up an internet search engine and typed her first phrase.

Creating fire.

217,000,000 results. Not very helpful. She didn’t have the time to trawl through even one percent of the links. She tried again, inputting different search criteria.

Producing fire with your mind.

22,000,000 results. It still wasn’t specific enough, though this time the word ‘pyrokinesis’ kept appearing. Well, at least she had a name for it now. She took a moment to think before trying one last search. She began typing I think I am pyro… but it just didn’t sound right to her. She held her finger down on the backspace button until the words disappeared from the screen and tried again.

I think I have pyrokinetic abilities.

254,000 results. Still a lot of options came up but these looked much more helpful. This time a sponsored result also appeared at the top of the screen. Clicking on it brought up a very plain looking webpage with a dark background, which contained only a few sentences in bright yellow font.

‘Elemental abilities: aerokinesis, pyrokinesis, botanokinesis, hydrokinesis – the ability to produce and control an element. If you have one of these abilities please contact me. Blessed be.’

The webpage gave an address for a shop, The Witches’ Familiar, which oddly enough was situated in the centre of Birmingham. Alexa took this as a sign. She quickly scribbled down the address and logged off of the computer just as Claire appeared in the doorway.

Before Claire was able to say anything Alexa spoke, ‘I think we need to talk.’