Chapter 1

The Night the Light Went Out

The lamp died at eleven minutes past two, and Ada Merrow was the only person in Gullhaven awake to see it.

She had been sitting on the seawall with her knees pulled up under her coat, counting the sweeps of the beam the way her father had taught her when she was small. Four seconds of dark, one second of light. Four seconds of dark. It was the heartbeat of the town, and she had never once known it to skip.

Then it skipped.

The beam swung out over the water, caught the white crests of the swell, and simply stopped. Not faded. Stopped, as if someone had closed a hand around it. The lantern room at the top of the tower went black, and the sea, which had been silver and restless a moment before, turned to ink.

Ada was on her feet before she understood why. Out past the Teeth, the line of rocks that had eaten more ships than anyone in Gullhaven liked to count, something moved. A shape, low and long, with a single green running light at its bow. It was coming in on the tide, straight for the gap that only the beam could show you.

"Turn," she whispered. "Turn, turn, turn."

It did not turn. For one long breath the green light hung there, and then it was gone, and there was no sound at all. No crash, no splintering, no shouting. Just the waves folding over themselves, the same as always.

By the time she reached the lighthouse door her lungs were burning. The door was open. It was never open. Her father kept the key on a cord around his neck and joked that he would be buried with it.

"Dad?"

The stairwell swallowed her voice. One hundred and twelve steps spiraled up into the dark, and somewhere above her, very faintly, she heard the scratch of a pen.