Evil Star

O'Shaughnessy let go of Matt and backed away.
    "He knew before it happened," he whispered. "Freeman knew."
    The headmaster looked at him, his eyes wide.
    Matt hesitated. He didn't want to stay here a minute longer. In the distance, he could already hear sirens.
    He walked away. Six hundred and fifty boys stepped out of his way, forming a corridor to allow him to pass. Among them, Matt saw Gavin Taylor. For just a brief instant, their eyes met. The other boy was crying. Matt didn't know why.
    Nobody said anything as he passed between them. Matt no longer cared what they thought of him.
    One thing was certain: He would never see any of them again.

    Chapter 5 The Diary
    "You don't have to do this," Richard said.
    It was the first time he had spoken since the train had pulled out of Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star York on its way to London. Matt was sitting opposite him, his head buried in a book that he had bought at the station. The book was meant to be funny but Matt couldn't even bring himself to smile. For the last hour he had been skipping from paragraph to paragraph but the story simply wouldn't let him in.
    "Matt. . . ?" Richard began again.
    Matt snapped the book shut. “You saw what happened at Forrest Hill," he said. "It was Gwenda! She'd come to kill me and she'd have killed everyone else in the school if I hadn't warned them."
    "But you did warn them. You saved their lives."
    “Yes. And they all came running up to thank me for it." Matt stared out the window, taking in the rushing country-side. Raindrops crawled slowly across the glass, moving from left to right. "I can't go back," he said. "They don't want me there. And I've got nowhere else to go. Miss Ash-wood was right. Raven's Gate wasn't the end of it. I don't think it is ever going to end."
    Two days had passed since the destruction of the school. The blazing petrol had spread from the gymnasium to the old buildings, and by the time the fire brigade had arrived, there hadn't been very much left. By then, Matt had returned to the flat in York, joining a shocked Richard, who had already heard the first reports on the midday news.
    The school did their best to keep Matt out of the newspapers — and fortunately, nobody yet knew the iden-tity of the madwoman who had been driving the petrol tanker. But there had been too many witnesses, too many boys willing to talk. And by the following morning, all the headlines were screaming the same impossible story: Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star BOY FORESEES
    SCHOOL
    CATASTROPHE
    PRECOGNITION
    BOY SAVES
    SCHOOL DID
    FORREST HILL
    BOY SEE
    FUTURE?

    At least nobody had a photograph of Matt apart from one muddy, almost unrecognizable image that had been taken on a cell phone.
    By the time the first editions came out, Richard and Matt were already gone. Richard had spo-ken with Susan Ashwood on the phone and she had arranged a "safe house" for them in Leeds — an empty flat where they had stayed overnight. While they were there, Matt had agreed to travel to London to meet the Nexus, just as they had asked. Looking back, it seemed to him that there had been something inevitable about it.
    "It was meant to happen. It was planned. ..."
    Susan Ashwood had said that, too. She had been talk-ing about the discovery of the Spanish monk's diary. But she could just as easily have been talking about him. It was beginning to seem to Matt that his every move was being dictated for him. It didn't matter what he wanted. Some-one, somewhere, had other ideas.
    "Maybe it'll work out okay," Richard said. "All you've got to do is meet this guy, William Morton. Get him to hand over the diary and then you and I can go back to York or somewhere and start over Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star again."
    “You really think it will be as easy as that?" Matt asked.
    Richard shrugged. "Nothing's ever easy where you're concerned," he said. "But at the end of the day, Matt, you're still in control.
    Whatever they ask, you only have to say no."
    • • •
    A taxi had been sent to meet them at the station and took them to a hotel in Farringdon. Matt hardly knew London. The first time he had been here, he had been under police escort, whisked in and out of an office with barely enough time to smell the air. Farringdon was an old part of the city which seemed to slip further back in time as the evening drew on. There were dark alleyways and cob-bled streets and even, in places, gas lamps. If an