The Night Is Alive by Graham, Heather
Prologue
Then
Abby didn’t know why she awoke; she might have heard a sound in the night. Whatever it was, she’d gone from being curled up, enjoying a dream about the great tenth birthday party she was going to have at her grandparents’ tavern, the Dragonslayer, to being pulled out of her dream, as if she needed to be awake. And aware.
There was someone in her room, she thought. Someone with a kind, handsome face staring down at her, eyes filled with great concern.
Then the face was gone and she was instantly wide-awake.
And scared.
She slipped from her bed and out of the room in the apartment above the Dragonslayer, running to the door in the little hallway that led to her grandparents’ suite. Neither of them was in bed.
That scared her more. Her grandparents weren’t in their bed.
She instantly knew she should be quiet. The fear she felt was instinctive, and she tiptoed in bare feet down the curving metal stairs to the ground floor.
Halfway there, she stopped. Her heart seemed to squeeze and her whole body froze.
She wasn’t afraid of the tavern, she never had been. It was filled with old ships’ wheels, countless figureheads, paintings, etchings, maps and more. The elegant beauties, dragons and mythical creatures that gazed down at her from the walls were part of her heritage.
No, she wasn’t afraid of anything in the Dragonslayer, but...
Someone was there, someone who shouldn’t be. He was standing at the entry, looking through the cut-glass window on the front door, and it wasn’t her grandpa Gus.
He was tall, and beneath his tricorn hat, his rich black hair fell down his back in curls. He had a neatly manicured beard and mustache. His black boots were tight on his calves over tan breeches. He wore a crimson overcoat with elegant buttons that matched those on his vest, and a white shirt with lace at the throat and sleeves. He seemed improbably imposing as he stood there—as if nothing could pass by him. She couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness, but she knew their color.
Just as she knew him.
He was the man who’d been standing by the bed, watching over her.
She’d seen images of him dozens of times. He’d been loved—and hated. He’d sailed the seas on a constant quest for adventure, some said. For his own riches, according to others. He’d never killed a man, although he’d made good on many threats regarding severe thrashings. He’d kidnapped a wealthy man’s daughter and held her for a fortune, but when she was rescued, the girl had wanted to go back to her captor. He never broke his word.
Of course, despite his sense of honor, he’d been hunted. He had been the pirate, Blue Anderson. He was her umpteen-great-great-uncle.
Had been.
He was dead. He had been dead for more than two hundred and fifty years.
But there he was—standing in the darkness, watching whatever was happening outside the door. Watching with intense interest.
He looked up at her suddenly, as if he realized she was there.
He studied her for a moment and then he smiled, inclining his head curiously and nodding.
He could tell that she saw him.
If she’d been able to move, she would have. She would have screamed and gone running back to her room to hide under the bed.
But she couldn’t move. She could hardly breathe, much less scream.
He smiled again, tipped his tricorn hat, glanced outside one more time and then slowly disappeared.
As he did, she heard the door open. Her eyes darted to it with fear.
It was her grandparents coming back into the building. But it had to be about four in the morning, and they didn’t go out at 4:00 a.m. From the stairway window—she hadn’t managed to move yet—she realized there were flashing lights in the parking lot.
Flashing lights. The kind police cars had.
“Not to worry. They got him, Brenda, my love,” Gus told her grandmother.
“Yes, but... Oh, Gus! That horrible man might have gotten in.” Her grandmother sounded worried. She was such a wonderful grandmother—different from most, perhaps; she wasn’t much of a cookie baker. But she came to all of Abby’s school events. She loved to dress up, she read stories and acted out all the characters. She was slim and energetic, too; she loved a long bike ride.
“Hey, so what? He would’ve stolen what little cash we have in the register. But he didn’t get in. We woke up, we called the police, all is good,” Gus said. He looked up then—just as Blue had done, but of course, she couldn’t really have seen Blue. That would’ve been seeing a...
A ghost.
“Hey, munchkin, what are you doing up?” Gus called to her.
She willed her frozen lungs to function. “I woke up,” she said. Her voice sounded funny, and she forced herself to move. “I—I just woke up. And I couldn’t find you.”
“It’s okay, now, Abby. Everything’s okay. You can go back to sleep,” Gus told her.