I would like to thank a wonderful student of mine, John Maslin, for research help and for reading and giving feedback on many early versions of the book. His input was invaluable.

A big THANKS GUYS goes out to my Creative Writing classes in the school year 2005-2006. Your brainstorming was lots of help (and quite amusing).

I also want to thank my fabulous daughter, Kristin, for making sure we sound like teenagers. I couldn't have done it without you. (She made me write that.) -PC

I want to thank my lovely "mam," better known as PC, for being such an unbelievably talented author and so easy to work with. (Okay, she made me write that.) -Kristin

PC and Kristin would both like to thank their dad/grandpa, Dick Cast, for the biological hypothesis he helped create as the basis for the House of Night's vampyres. We love you Dad/G-pa!

From Hesiod's poem to Nyx, the Greek personification of night:

"There also stands the gloomy house of Night;

ghastly clouds shroud it in darkness.

Before it Atlas stands erect and on his head

and unwearying arms firmly supports the broad sky,

where Night and Day cross a bronze threshold

and then come close and greet each other."

(Hesiod, Theogony, 744 ff. )

Just when I thought my day couldn't get any worse I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker. Kayla was talking nonstop in her usual K-babble, and she didn't even notice him. At first. Actually, now that I think about it, no one else noticed him until he spoke, which is, tragically, more evidence of my freakish inability to fit in.