BOOK ONE: “The Tide that Stole the Night” by Kenryu Hayek
The book, in brief
Someone takes the harbor tide chart and hangs it back missing a night. The company follows that absence through a chapel loft, a parlor box, a closed hotel kitchen, and the marsh’s second mouth.
What the town hid twenty years ago is not a cape-and-dagger mastermind. A cannery ran an off-the-card night to make a number. James Mensah went into the water and lived because Maria Quinn and two loft women pulled him out. The board stamped the night ordinary. A clerk steamed a date. Sunday sang too much. People left.
David Voss, seven that night and in planning now, took the chart so the company would chase ghosts instead of a survey pin that threatens a marsh sale. The five do not put him in the paper. They put the night back on the family tables. Ruiz lets Jonah pencil a note on the city chart. Theo learns to wait at the door. Leo puts the camera away without being asked. Asha and Jonah touch and do not pretend it is only a plate.
Job 1 is finished enough. Book Two is already sitting in the jobs book: who first taught this town to steam a date.
If you want the next working session, the highest-value move is a length pass: hold the plot still and grow Chapters 3–14 to the same density as 1 and 2. That is how this becomes a full-size YA novel without losing the quiet ethic.