“We were having a dance,” I said again. “And we were . . . dancing. Everything was fine. Then he appeared. He was just there . . .”

“He?”

“The man, the guy. The Ripper.” Saying “the Ripper” made me queasy. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “He stood right in front of me. I mean . . . I could feel him. I could feel something. He told me to come outside with him . . . I didn’t want to, but . . .”

Only now did it occur to me what might have happened if I hadn’t gone. It was possible that he would have just walked away, that Boo would be fine right now. It was equally possible that he would have shoved a knife directly into Jazza’s neck. And now that I had a chance to run over the possibilities, I felt myself begin to quake.

“He asked me if I knew where we’d met. I thought it was at school, but he said we met at the Flowers and Archers on the night of the second murder—”

“You were at the Flowers and Archers on the night of the second murder?”

“My . . . friend. Jerome. He wanted to go. We just went to the street, not to the pub. You couldn’t get near the pub.”

“I was there,” Stephen said. “And you’re saying he was too?”

“That’s what he said. He said we met there, but I don’t remember him.”

“But he remembered you,” Stephen said. “So you must have reacted to him in some way. Even just looked at him, moved around him. He knew you could see him.”

“Well, yeah. He knows I can see him. He knows I have it. This thing. That we do. Because he had it too.”

“He had the sight?”

Something on Stephen beeped. He slapped his pockets until he found his phone, then read a message. He grabbed the remote and switched on the television. The familiar red BBC logo lit up the room.

The newscaster was standing outside on the street bathed in the glow coming from dozens of cameras and their lighting equipment.

“. . . a very strange evening here at the Ten Bells, where the international Ripper conference was held this evening. Conference organizer Richard Eakles had just started his presentation when witnesses say there was a power cut. Eakles claims that while the room was in darkness, someone pushed him up against the board and wrote a message . . .”

The image cut to a picture of the whiteboard, the words written in all caps, in a firm hand. THE NAME OF THE STAR IS WHAT YOU FEAR.

“The meaning of the message is unclear,” the newscaster went on, “but some people have noted that the quote is similar to one from the Bible . . .”