The The Name of the Star (24 page)

He smiled at me.

I was cold from the inside out. My
hair
was cold. My
thoughts
were cold. It was as if every cell in my body stopped doing its cellular duty and stiffened in place. My blood became still and had no life-giving power, and my breath crystallized and pierced my lungs like shards of glass.

“Have you ever met any more like us?” he asked. “Or are you all alone in the world?”

Some impulse told me to lie to him. Telling him that I did meet some people and that they were the
ghost police
. . . It seemed like I was asking for more trouble than I was already in.

“Just some weirdos,” I said. “Back home.”

“Ah,” he said. “Some weirdos back home.”

A leaf drifted down from a tree and started to pass slowly through his shoulder on its way to the ground. He flinched a bit and brushed it away.

“Your name—Aurora. It's very unusual. A family name?”

“My great-grandmother,” I said.

“It's a name full of meaning. It's the name of the Roman goddess of dawn and of the polar lights.”

I had Googled my own name before. I knew all this. But I decided not to interrupt him to tell him that I was aware.

“Also,” he added, “of a collection of diamonds right here in London, the Aurora Pyramid of Hope. Lovely name. It's the largest collection of color diamonds in the world. You should see them under a UV light. Marvelous. Do you have any interest in diamonds?”

That's when I saw Boo. She was walking toward us very casually, like she didn't even see him, talking away loudly into her phone in what sounded like a pretend conversation. She must have seen me leave, or seen him. Whatever the case, she was here.

“That girl,” he said. “I've seen you with her. I get the sense she annoys you.”

“She's my new roommate.”

Boo was doing a really good job at pretending she couldn't see him. She was waving at me and talking really loudly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Boo was saying into the phone. “She's right here. You talk to her . . .”

“She's very loud,” the man said. “That's something I find quite annoying, how everyone speaks so loudly all the time into their mobile phones. Those weren't around when I was alive. They make people so rude.”

Boo reached out to me, both hands on her phone. She was gripping it strangely, fingers on the keypad.

He lurched forward and grabbed her by the wrists. In one fluid motion, he swung her into the road, directly into the front of a passing car. It was so fast—two seconds, three seconds. I watched her hit the car. I watched her break the front headlight and slide up over the hood and smack into the windshield. Then I watched her roll down as the driver skidded to a stop.

“Next time,” he said, “tell the truth when I ask you a question.”

He was right in my face. I felt no breath coming out of him because, of course, he didn't breathe. He was just cold. I kept absolutely still until he backed away and walked off. The driver's screaming stirred me to action. He was out of his car and standing over Boo, saying, “No, no, no . . .”

I stepped into the street, to where Boo was. My legs felt like they weren't quite connected to my body, but I kept moving forward and got down on the ground next to her. There was some blood on her face from where she'd been cut, but mostly, she looked like she was asleep. Her leg was at a terrible, unnatural angle.

“What was she doing?” the driver cried, grabbing his head. “What was she doing? She jumped—”

“Call for help,” I said.

The man from the car was still clutching his head and having a meltdown, so I had to yell at him. He took out his phone, his hands shaking.

“Boo,” I said, holding her limp hand, “you're going to be okay. It's all going to be okay. I promise. You are going to be fine.”

I heard the driver giving the information about where we were, his voice cracking. People hurried up to us. Other people were on phones. But I kept my eyes on Boo, my hand on her hand.

“What happened?” the driver said. “Was she drunk? Did she jump? I don't understand . . . I don't understand . . .”

He was almost crying now. Of course he didn't understand. He'd just been driving his car down the street, and all of a sudden a girl on the sidewalk flung herself into the road. It wasn't his fault, and it wasn't her fault.

“Do you hear that?” I said to her, listening to the approaching sirens. “Help's almost here.”

I heard someone running toward us and looked up to see Stephen. He got to his knees and examined Boo quickly. Then he took the phone that was still in Boo's grasp.

“Come on,” he said, pulling me to my feet.

“I'm not leaving her.”

“There's an ambulance and several police cars right behind us. You have to move. Now.
Now,
Rory. If you want to help her, walk with me.”

I took one last look at my roommate lying in the road, then I let him lead me to the awaiting car, and we sped off, lights flashing.

D
AMN, IT FELT GOOD TO BE A RIPPEROLOGIST.

That was the first time Richard Eakles had ever been able to say that, even to think it. Being a Ripperologist had never been cool. Since he was fifteen years old, Richard had been obsessed with Jack the Ripper. He read every book. He obsessed over every site. He was on the forums. By the time he was seventeen, he was going to conferences. And now, at twenty-one, he was a webmaster of
Ripperfiles.com
—the Ripper site and database widely regarded as the best in the world. Oh, some people—they need not be named—had laughed at his hobby before. No one was laughing now. Now he was needed. Ripperologists were the only ones who could help. Ripperologists had been conducting the Ripper investigation for over a hundred years.

In fact, tonight had been his idea. He'd posted it on the forum. Maybe they should have a conference, discuss theories? The idea took off like wildfire within the Ripperology community. Then everyone wanted in on the action. The BCC. CNN. Fox. Sky News. Japan News Network. Agence France-Presse. Reuters. The list went on and on. And it wasn't just the press that wanted in. Scotland Yard was going to be in attendance as well, and—some people said—MI5. Rippercon was the hottest ticket in London tonight, and he was one of the stars.

And they had the perfect venue, the Ten Bells, the famous pub located smack in the middle of the Ripper zone, a pub frequented by several of the victims back in 1888. These days the Ten Bells was overrun by students and tourist groups fresh off the Jack the Ripper tours. The students came for the cheap drinks and run-down sofas and chairs. The tourists came to take in the ornate original tiling and to drink real English beer in a real English pub where Jack the Ripper had probably
been
.

Tonight, though . . . it was a lot harder to get in. Satellite news vehicles lined the street. There were police and crowds of onlookers and people with cameras. At least a dozen news reporters were outside, giving reports. The pavement was ablaze in camera lights. Richard had to hold up the badge he wore around his neck and squeeze his way in.

Inside, it was even more intense. The Ten Bells was just a normal-sized pub, not the kind of place where you could really fit a major international news conference. The space behind the bar had been converted into a pit for the news cameras, all trained at the one small table at the front of the room, and the small screen and whiteboard that he had requested for his presentation. The windows had all been covered in heavy material so that no one could look inside.

He had done a little quick research online and found that when you went on camera, you weren't supposed to wear patterned clothing. It made the camera go crazy or some such. So he had settled for a plain black dress shirt over his black REMEMBER 1888 T-shirt. He took a moment to greet a few of the other prominent Ripper bloggers, who had been allowed to have the few remaining tickets, then took his place at the table. They really had assembled an amazing panel for tonight, the top Ripperologists from around the world. Three of them from England, two from America, one from Japan, one from Italy, and one from France—every one of them an expert on the case.

Since Richard had helped to put this event together, he was going to be speaking first. His presentation was the most general, but outsiders needed the basic facts.

After making sure that everyone was in place, Richard stood up and faced the crowd. God, it was hot in here. He was already sweating. He gripped the dry-erase marker tightly in his hand.

“Good evening,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Tonight's discussion will focus on the fifth canonical murder in 1888. We'll start with an overview of that night, then we'll go into some specifics, some theories, and some 3-D re-creations of the scene. So, let me begin . . .”

So many cameras. So many cameras pointing at him. His whole life had been building to this moment.

“Murder number five,” he said. “Mary Jane Kelly. Last seen alive just after two in the morning on the ninth of November, 1888. Her body was discovered in her lodging rooms around ten forty-five the same morning by her landlord, who had come to collect her rent. Kelly was the only victim to be murdered indoors, and her body was considerably mutilated, most likely because the Ripper had the time and privacy to do things in the way that he . . . really wanted. Her clothes were folded neatly on a chair, and her boots placed by the fire. Hers was also the only crime scene to be photographed. We're going to put those photos up now. Please be warned that even though these photographs are of a very low quality by modern standards, they are still extremely graphic.”

Richard gave the signal for the lights to be turned down. Even though he had seen this photograph hundreds—maybe thousands of times—it never failed to chill him. This was the photograph that showed just how brutal and terrible the Ripper was, why he needed to be identified, even though he was long dead. The skin of her thighs had been removed and set on a table next to the bed. Her internal organs had been removed, some set around her body in a pattern. Mary Kelly needed justice. Maybe, now that all this was happening, maybe now she would finally get it.

The crowd in the Ten Bells stared at the photograph. It had been shown around a lot in the last few weeks. No one was reacting with the appropriate horror as he ran through her extensive injuries. A few reporters and prominent bloggers took notes. The police sat and listened with folded arms.

“All right,” Richard said, “we can bring the lights back up.”

The lights didn't come back up.

“All right,” he said, louder. “The lights, please.”

Still no lights. In fact, everything in the room shut down. All the camera lights went out, as did the power on his computer. There were groans and yells as dozens of live-feed cameras went out at once, and people began bumping together in the intense dark.

Richard stayed where he was, by the board, wondering what to do next. Should he just keep talking? Or should he wait until they were on camera again? It was very difficult, this being in the middle of an international news story.

He felt the pen being removed from his hand and the brisk squeaky noise it made on the board. Someone was writing something on the board, but he couldn't see who. He stepped toward the board, toward the spot where the person had to be and felt around in the dark. There was absolutely no one there.

The pen was gingerly put back into his hand.

“Who are you?” he whispered. “I can't see you.”

In reply, the unseen person shoved him forcibly up against the board, crushing his face into it. Then the lights came back on.

Richard heard a confused grumble pass around the room as they took in the sight of him splayed against the board, arms spread. As he backed up a few inches and tried to regain his poise, Richard saw something written on the board in large, bold letters:

 

25

S
TEPHEN WAS DRIVING WITH A GRIM, FIXED INTENSITY. We sped past the school, past a huge cluster of news trucks and police cars surrounding Spitalfields Market. I had to sit in the back, because you can't sit in the front seat of a police car unless you're actually a police officer—so I must have looked like a criminal to anyone passing by. A young, crying criminal in zombie makeup.

“How did you know where we were?” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

“She phoned me and said you had gone missing from the party, then again from the street once she found you.”

“I want to go to the hospital.”

“That's the last place you're going,” Stephen said, glancing at me through the rearview mirror. “You're already in HOLMES.”

“In what?”

“HOLMES. The Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. You're in the police database, that's what it means. You're a witness in the Ripper murders, and you're under protection by us. And the police establishment doesn't exactly know we exist. This all just got very, very complicated.”

“Complicated?” I shot back. “Boo's back there in the road, possibly dead, and all you can say is that this is
complicated
?”