The Name of the Star. Maureen Johnson

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      Copyright

      First published in hardback in the USA by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group in 2011

       First published in paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2011

       HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

       1 London Bridge Street

       London, SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      THE NAME OF THE STAR. Copyright © 2011 by Maureen Johnson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Maureen Johnson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

      Source ISBN: 9780007398638

      Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007432257

      Version: 2018-06-19

      Dedication

      For Amsler.

       Thanks for the milk.

      Contents

       Cover

      Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      The Return

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      9

      Persistent Energy

      10

      11

      12

      13

      14

      15

      The Star That Kills

      16

      17

      18

      19

      20

      21

      22

      23

      24

      Inner Vileness

      25

      26

      27

      28

      29

      30

      31

      32

      Terminus

      33

      34

      35

      36

      37

      38

      Acknowledgments

       About the Publisher

      DURWARD STREET, EAST LONDON

       AUGUST 31

       4:17 A.M.

       EYES OF LONDON WERE WATCHING CLAIRE JENKINS.

      She didn’t notice them, of course. No one paid attention to the cameras. It was an accepted fact that London has one of the most extensive CCTV systems in the world. The conservative estimate was that there were a million cameras around the city, but the actual number was probably much higher and growing all the time. The feed went to the police, security firms, MI5, and thousands of private individuals—forming a loose and all-encompassing net. It was impossible to do anything in London without the CCTV catching you at some point.

      The cameras silently recorded Claire’s progress and tracked her as she turned onto Durward Street. It was four seventeen A.M., and she was supposed to have been at work at four. She had forgotten to set her alarm, and now she was running, trying to get to the Royal London Hospital. Her shift usually got the fallout from last night’s drinking—the alcohol poisonings, the falls, the punch-ups, the car accidents, the occasional knife fight. All the night’s mistakes came to the early-shift nurse.

      It had been pouring, clearly. There were puddles all over the place. The one mercy of this doomed morning was that there was only the slightest drizzle now. At least she didn’t have to run through the rain. She got out her phone to send a message to let them know she was close. The phone emitted a tiny halo that encircled her hand, giving it a saintly glow. It was hard to text and walk at the same time, not if she didn’t want to fall off the pavement or walk into a post. Am running lake…

      Claire had tried to type the word late three times, but it kept coming up as lake. She wasn’t running lake, she was running late. She refused to stop walking and fix it. There was no time to waste. The message would stand.

      …Be there in 5…

      And then she tripped. The cell phone took flight, a little glowing ball of light, free at last before it clattered to the sidewalk and went out.

      “Bugger!” she said. “No, no, no … don’t be broken …”

      In her concern over the fate of her phone, Claire first didn’t take notice of the thing she had tripped over, aside from faintly registering that it was somewhat large and weighty and it gave a little when her foot struck it. In the dark, it appeared to be a strangely shaped mound of garbage. Something else put in her way this morning to impede her progress.

      She knelt down and felt along the ground for the phone, sinking her knee directly into a puddle.

      “Wonderful,” she said to herself as she scrabbled around. The phone was quickly recovered. It appeared to be dark and lifeless. She tried the power button, not expecting any result. To her delight, the phone blinked on, casting its little light around her hand once again.

      This was when she first noticed that there was something sticky on her hand. The consistency was extremely familiar, as was the faint metallic smell.

      Blood. Her hand was covered in blood. A lot of blood, with a faintly jelly-like consistency that suggested congealing. Congealing blood meant blood that had been here for several minutes, so it couldn’t be her own. Claire shifted around, holding up her phone for light. She could see now that she had tripped over a person. She crawled closer and felt a hand, a hand that was cool, but not cold.

      “Hello?” she said. “Can you hear me? Can you speak?”

      She got up alongside the figure, a smallish person dressed