1

It sounded like claws scratching against the side of the house.

Giant claws.

Ben’s eyes flew open. Where am I? he wondered. The room was inky black, thanks to a pair of heavy curtains that blocked the moonlight. The mattress felt lumpy, and the quilt smelled like mothballs. Only one thing was recognizable—the soft gnawing sound of Snooze, Ben’s hamster, as he chewed a toilet paper tube. It wasn’t unusual for Snooze to be wide awake in the middle of the night. He was nocturnal, after all. But the other noise?

Screeeeeeech.

Had a window just opened?

Ben sat up and clutched the pillow to his chest. As his eyes adjusted, he remembered that this wasn’t his regular bedroom. No glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, no dinosaur-shaped nightlight in the corner, no mother or father down the hall to ask, “What’s going on out there?” This was the cramped, extra bedroom right next to the kitchen at his grandfather’s house.

And the noise had come from… the kitchen.

Back in Los Angeles, Ben’s father had installed a high-tech home-security system. If anyone tried to break in, alarms would ring and guards would come running. But Grandpa Abe didn’t have anything like that. The only alarm system was his black tomcat, Barnaby, who hissed when disturbed.

Hisssssssss.

Uh-oh.

Ben froze. Maybe it would be best to stay in bed. If a burglar had decided to take something from Grandpa Abe’s house, then so be it. What could Ben do? He wasn’t any good at karate or judo, and he certainly didn’t know how to use a lasso. The only time he’d gotten into a fight was when he wrestled Eli Finklebaum to the ground after Eli had cut in front of him, for the umpteenth time, in the snack line at school. It’d been bad enough having to wait ten minutes to get a bag of chips, but to have Eli snicker and push his way to the front every single day was totally unfair. And when he took the very last bag of Barbecue Curlies, the one Ben had been craving—well, it was an event that the students at Oakview Hebrew Academy still talked about.

Whoooosh.

A sudden burst of orange light glowed beneath the bedroom door, then disappeared. Ben sniffed. Smoke!

He scrambled out of bed. If there was a fire in the kitchen, the door would feel hot. But it was cool to his touch, so very carefully, he cracked it open.

Moonlight trickled in through the front windows. Barnaby stood on the table, surrounded by dirty dishes, his back arched, his fur sticking up as if someone had rubbed a balloon all over it. Tendrils of smoke rose from a singed hole in the tablecloth. Barnaby stared at the counter, hissing like a snake. Ben poked his head out of his bedroom just far enough to get a better view.

At Grandpa Abe’s house, the kitchen window was always left halfway open so Barnaby could come and go as he pleased. But on this night it had been opened all the way. And someone was reaching through.

Correction—not someone. Something.

The intruder’s arm was covered in black scales and was long enough to stretch down the counter. Its paw, which was bigger than a Frisbee, had four fingerlike claws.

If it hadn’t been for all his adventures over the last few days, Ben might have thought he was going crazy. But he knew, without a doubt, that the creature reaching into his grandfather’s house in the middle of the night was a dragon. A real, living, fire-breathing dragon. Ben had seen it before, but never up close. A brave person might have said hello. But Ben would never describe himself as brave. And talking to a dragon in the middle of the night felt risky. “You’re a cautious boy,” his mother always said. “There’s nothing wrong with being cautious.”

Ben pressed himself against the wall, his heart flip-flopping as the dragon’s claws tapped along the counter. The dragon grabbed a bag of bagels, then tossed it to the floor. It shoved aside a roll of paper towels and a ratty old rag. It moved over plates, around coffee cups, then paused at the toaster. With a quick yank, it pulled the cord from the wall socket and whisked the toaster right out the window. Outside, a shape moved toward the lawn.