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Anna Dressed in Blood
Anna Dressed in Blood
Anna Dressed in Blood
Ebook396 pages6 hours

Anna Dressed in Blood

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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From Kendare Blake, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Dark Crowns, a beautiful and haunting ghost story

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.

Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed in Blood is a 2011 Kirkus Best Teen Books of the Year title.
One of NPR's Top 5 Young Adult Novels of 2011.


At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 30, 2011
ISBN9781429982818
Anna Dressed in Blood
Author

Kendare Blake

Kendare Blake is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series. She holds an MA in creative writing from Middlesex University in northern London. She is also the author of Anna Dressed in Blood, a Cybils Awards finalist; Girl of Nightmares; Antigoddess; Mortal Gods; and Ungodly. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages, have been featured on multiple best-of-year lists, and have received many regional and librarian awards. Kendare lives and writes in Gig Harbor, Washington. Visit her online at www.kendareblake.com.

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Reviews for Anna Dressed in Blood

Rating: 3.898206818565401 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this for a writing class I was taking. I feel like it taught me quite a bit about voice.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Oh yes, this was a pretty scary one, especially when I was reading it at 2am and had to go to the kitchen for a snack break. I turned on all the lights on my way there. Hheee.

    Anna Dressed in Blood had magic, dark magic mostly I should say, voodoo, and obeah. Obeah? Color me surprised, never in my life have I read anything about Obeah. You see, I was born in the Caribbean, and I grew up hearing about Obeah, Obeahmen and Obeahwomen. I couldn't believe it, would never have expected to find such a familiar dark topic in a paranormal book. I actually laughed and had to do a double take when I saw the word. It's not something I would want to reminisce about but it brought back some memories. I was pretty young when I would hear stories about the dark craft growing up. I would hear some pretty scary stories and was also told that it only affects you if you believe in it. There was some contradiction to that advice, because I can remember some poor soul having a difficult time in their life and my Grandmother saying that someone put Obeah on them.

    Okay, I should get back to the story. Haven't read much ghost stories and this is the best one I've read so far. I think it could also be described as an horror story as well as a story of friendship and living. After Cas' father died on a de-ghosting case, it was left up to him to continue the legacy of ridding the world of the evil feinds. All Cas knows is ghosts and more ghost, he's been a loner his entire life and wishes to keep it that way, he doesn't want to be responsible for the lives of others and he doesn't know how to be with the living anyway. When he was sent a tip about a ghost who needs vanquishing (Cas wouldn't like that term it being a ghostbuster one, lol) called Anna Dressed in Blood he can feel that this one is going to be different.

    Everything on this job was different for Cas, first his barrier of not letting anyone in was broken through by new friends Thomas and Carmel. Inexperienced at ghost hunting but brave enough to fight side by side with Cas. And second, Cas doesn't hesitate to send the ghost he's hunting to wherever it belongs, but Anna was a different story. He can't find it in himself to send her away. Anyone who dares enters Anna's domain doesn't leave with their life, but when Cas unwittingly finds himself in her house unprepared, instead of ripping him to shreds she allows him to leave. Let's not forget the Obeahman. The Obeahman's existence brings up questions for Cas, mostly about his Athame. The same Athame his father and ancestors used to re-kill ghosts and send them away. Where do the ghosts actually go? Is the Athame good or bad?

    Cas has never been in love, or was never drawn to a human girl. I think it was unfortunate that he was born into such a destiny and to be thrown into to it at such a young age. All Cas knows is ghosts, so no wonder the first time he feels drawn to a girl she turns out to be a ghosts. Anna and Cas's affection towards each other was a little strange for me but I accepted that his mostly secluded life from the living made it inevitable.

    Cool and creepy story, really enjoyed it. Can't wait to see where it goes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very unique premise and a lovable main character make this book a must read on my list. I loved that the main character, ghosthunter Cas Lowood, is a boy! So many YA book have female protagonists. Cas is nothing the reader would expect from a boy his age. He is clearly good looking and could fall into the "popular" crowd but he's not a jock and he gravitates towards the nerdy outcasts. He also doesn't stay at any high school for more than a few months. He can't, he has to hunt down spooks who are causing serious problems (we are talking about deaths here) and set them free.That's where the book starts. He arrives in Canada (yay!) to investigate a troublesome haunting. But soon he finds himself making friends and ... developing feelings for the ghost? This is clearly different from his other "jobs."I couldn't put this book down. Blake has done an excellent job. Highly recommend checking it out.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    How had I not read this amazing ghost story, filled with blood and a touch of romance before now? Spurred on by the fact the author Kendare Blake will be here in town for a signing, and me just knowing by looking at the cover that I was going to love the book (and therefore read it at my usual breakneck speed), I had to read this at last. I know Blake has new books out but it's easy to see why this has become the sort of book that people recommend when you ask ' do you know of any good YA ghost stories?'. Well, yes, I do.This is a 'new' classic: there's the chilling haunted house, the handsome ghost hunter Cas, the terrifying, beautiful ghost of Anna, and a tale that doesn't let up until the very last page. It's gory, funny, romantic, vivid, and just a brilliant piece of writing. It's also heartbreaking, and not just a fluffy piece of young adult literature. The best part of waiting a few years before getting to a book is that the second one has already been written! Nothing but good things to say about a very dark and chilling but fantastic novel. Instant favorite.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Just another to-pass-the-time book. To be fair, it was scary and had me at the edge of my bed at times. The graphic detail is amazing, as well as the history behind all that spook.

    But I didn't dig it much, I guess because this genre isn't my favorite. And I find it weird that you can fall in love with a ghost??? It was hard to put down, though! I liked it enough to read it in one sitting. :)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Scary and romantic
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story...


    Warning: This book will most likely scare the crap out of you.

    Anna Dressed in Blood isn't scary at all. If you're not afraid of ghost, evil voodoo monsters living in your basement, and occasional ghostly hitchhikers that want to kill you. But if you should so happen to be afraid of these things (Like me) then you definetly want to read this one with the lights on because it was pretty creepy.
    I mean it was just really strange. And there were some things I didn't really understand. Like how the heck do you fall in love with a ghost that likes to disembowel people and/or children. Maybe I could understand if she was a pretty ghost, but half the time Anna was all black soul less eyes, Medusa hair, and black veins crawling all over her face. That sounds pretty unattractive to me but Cas just kept coming back for more. And the antagonist, evil dude, with the missing pieces of flesh and eyes sew shut kind of reminded me of the boogeyman on, like, ten times worse.
    Even this book really freaked me out, it was really good. I read it all in about four hours. The characters were a bit strange but Ms. Black kept me intrested in what was going to happen to them. Anna's background story was very tragic and I felt sympathetic towards her (despite her unfavorable hobbies) and I thought Cas was a pretty good guy. The romance between Anna and Cas was nice, not overdone and not underdeveloped, but just right.
    So, overall, I liked it and I recomend to anyone who like a scary book with descriptive blood and gore and guts and rotted flesh and...( you get the idea right?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    ...I like that Blake uses aspects of real-life witchcraft and voodoo practices in tandem with her imagination to create the paranormal elements in Anna Dressed in Blood; Cas himself is skeptical about the realness and practicality of such practices, but I feel like he's one of the last people who should turn up his nose at such things......Quite frankly, I didn't much care for Cas in general. He's a broody, pretentious douchebag. His usual method of learning about ghosts from the locals is to go straight to the popular girls at whatever school he's enrolled in, because they know all the gossip and he's So Good-Looking they of course cannot resist his charms...But he has no time for girls (#sorrynotsorry for stringing you all along), or anyone else, for that matter, except his mom and the ghosts he's hunting down, so when we meet Cas, he's just a loner who fancies himself some kind of antihero, except he's really just kind of a self-important dick......The one main element to this book that I could have really done without was the Cas/Anna romance; I don't think it added anything at all to the story, apart from being the reason Blake uses for why Anna doesn't kill Cas outright, like she killed everyone else who went inside her house. There were other options that would have served much better: maybe she doesn't kill him because she can sense how he is different from typical humans. But no: again, these are high school characters, with all the angst and insta-love geometry that is so popular in books and movies featuring teenagers, so we get this shallow, thrown-together, star-crossed lovers trope.I did appreciate how Blake doesn't shy away from getting graphic with the gory bits, and Anna herself was, appropriately, the most well-developed character in the book. Honestly, she is the only well-developed character in the book. I'll probably pick up the second book in this series eventually, but since it sounds like it's still Cas-centric but with even more brooding and star-crossed insta-love angst, I'm not expecting to like it much better. I wish the title character were the main character, but it is what it is...(For the complete review, you can visit me at Here Be Bookwyrms on Blogger)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cas Lowood has a unique life. Most kids his age are worried about dates, passing classes, and where they're going to college. He moves from town to town with his mom carrying on the legacy of his father killing ghosts. These ghosts are not at rest and harm other unsuspecting people so Cas is actually doing others a favor. But his lifestyle means that he is never really in one place too long and he doesn't make connections since he knows he will be leaving when his work is done. His mom (a good witch) makes potions and other items that she sells in the towns they move to. In Thunder Bay is a ghost that Cas has been told about. She is Anna and she was killed years ago on her way to a school dance. If anyone comes to Anna's house they end up dead. When Cas moves to Thunder Bay he meets the high school social leader, Carmel. He wants to get information on how to find Anna and he feels Carmel will have the most connections. At the beginning of the year party, Carmel and her ex-boyfriend decide to take Cas to Anna's house. They have no idea what's in store for them. When they knock Cas out and push him into the house, Anna is awakened. But instead of killing Cas, she kills Carmel's ex-boyfriend Mike. Cas is intrigued by Anna letting him live and has to investigate. Carmel gets involved as does another witch by the name of Thomas. Together they start to unravel the truth. Along with the truth comes the ghost that murdered Cas' father and now he wants Anna & Cas. Suspense and action ensue. Quick read and very exciting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Quick, interesting, a bit gory
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book definitely goes in my favorites folder. I loved it from start to finish. I want to thank Molly Looby for recommending this book to me. Cas was a great character, sometimes a little over confident, but yet very likable and had me rooting for him the entire book. The ending was a total surprise I didn't see it coming. I'm so looking forward to reading the second book in this series. Kendare Blake, you knocked this out of the park. 5 of 5 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cas is a ghost hunter, traveling all over North America to take down murderous ghosts with his special weapon; the athame. While still a high school student, hopping from one school to another does not exactly provide time and availability for long-term friends his own age. He is seeking to avenge his father's death while saving the lives of the unsuspecting victims of the ghosts he kills. Until he meets the one ghost he doesn't want to kill. Anna.Anna is famously called "Anna Dressed In Blood" in the small Canadian town of Thunder Bay. She haunts the house she died in decades ago and brutally murders anyone who dare step foot in it. Until Cas finds himself inside her house and lives to tell the tale.I was very surprised at how much I loved this book. It was a Halloween themed pick for this month for a book club that I am in; it is perfect! It is equally haunting and humane. The best example of this is with the ghost of Anna. Her acts of violence are graphically gory, yet her backstory encourages sympathy. The story was fast-paced and smooth, told in Cas' perspective. The scenes are so well described that it the gore was discomforting, as it should be. It is kind of like a blend of the tv show Supernatural and the YA book Six of Crows. I recently read Six of Crows and so I kept thinking that Cas in this book was misspelling Kaz. In truth, it was the scene in the basement with Cas that reminded me of the scene on the corpse boat with Kaz. The story itself is distinctive, however, in how the story concludes. Therefore, I would certainly recommend this book for fans of Six of Crows and Supernatural. Conversely, I would not recommend this book for those who may be offended or triggered by parental death, graphic violence, heavy foul language, domestic violence, murder, bullying, witchcraft, ghosts, or VooDoo.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have been getting tired of all of the young adult books out, and I've been pretty much avoiding them. When amazon.com put this e-book on hella-sale, I decided to grab it, because I did like the cover (I'm a cover-whore) and I liked the write ups on tor.com.

    I decided to read it because I wanted a quick read in-between my longer books, and instead of just reading this on the bus (my plan), I wolfed it down. I read it on breaks, I read it at home and I pretty much loved it.

    It's a young adult, but not annoying. Cas is a ghost hunter, following the family tradition. He has an interesting adventure (and meets some cool peeps) when he goes after the ghost of Anna Korlov, Anna Dressed in Blood.

    It was a good adventure. It was fun, the writing was quick and funny. It was an actual thriller with scary scenes and page flipping action. It did not end like I thought it would. Dealing with the ghosts was a little out of the ordinary and more original than I expected. Unfortunately, it does delve a bit into teen romance, but thankfully not a love triangle (gods, I hate those).

    Unfortunately (barely spoilers here, but read at your own risk), the sequel seems to deal mostly with the romance fall out, and I am not interested in continuing the series (unless I do manage to get it on jumbo .99 sale). I was hoping that Cas would just spend the series vanquishing ghosts... maybe a little romantic fallout, but meh... if any reviews can entice me to read furhter, I might, but I"m sure not spending full price..

    Great book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Positively outstanding!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Outstanding.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The main character is Cas who goes around killing the dead. Cas has to change schools a lot because of his 'ghost killing business'. He and his mom who, is referred to as a 'kitchen witch' in the book, and their ghost sniffing cat are a team when it comes to killing ghosts. Cas hears about a famous ghost called "Anna Dressed In Blood" and he and his mom move to the city/town/place-thing where she 'lives' to kill her. Cas assumes that she is just another ghost but he was SO wrong in assuming that. Anna will destroy any living, breathing being that comes into her abandoned house and will not go down easy.I really liked this book because it was a little of everything i love. The book had action, horror, and little bit of romance and some really funny jokes. BE WARNED this book has swearing and rude jokes on almost every page so if you're not into that kind of stuff DO NOT read this book. I really liked all of the characters and I hated all of the characters that were supposed to be hated. I really liked the way this book was written too. If you like scary movies/books, action, some swearing.........., and humor this book was meant for you.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I love YA-books from time to time. And I like ghost stories. But this book was dissapointing.

    First of all - I felt reminded of one of my favourite TV-shows: Supernatural. But the protagonist of this book was dry, boring, one-dimensional and uninteresting. Gimme the Winchester brothers instead, thank you!

    The whole first scene felt like a retelling of the pilot - just with a teenager ghost hunter.

    The other characters were not better - stereotypes found in so many books or films, interchangeable and easily forgotten. The love stories in the book? No, I don't buy them either.

    There were countless holes in the story: a murder which is never mentioned again, missing teenagers everybody seems to forget - trust me, I used to live in a small town, a murder was talk of the town for years, a missing teenager would have not been forgotten for years - let alone 27 of them in half a century.

    I won't read the rest of the trilogy and I cannot recommend it.

    Two stars because of the ghost, Anna, the only lively character in the book - although she died fifty years ago ;-)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In the beginning of this book the author introduce the main male character by describing his job. He created the scene of the main character trying to kill a hitchhiker's ghost. This introduction is fantastic because it grabs the reader's attention and create a powerful background of Cas. The author introduce the female main character by sending her name written in blood on a piece of scratch paper to Cas asking to kill the ghost. This makes the reader feel creepy and build a anticipation for the appearance of Anna. Once Cas got in town he meet Thomas a shy boy who got bullied in school by the popular jocks and he could read people's mind. Cas originally dislike Thomas because he thinks it make him more vulnerable when Thomas could hear his mind. However Cas grew to like Thomas after he saved him and they became best friends over time. Cas value this friendship over everything because Thomas is his first real friend since he always stay away from people. Cas hates to grew attach to a place, person or a thing since he know that he is going to chase after another ghost right after he kill this ghost.Carmel is the queen bee of the north thorm high school. Unlike any other queen bee she know that people only talk to her and befriend her to get more popularly. When Cas first come to school she know exactly why he followed her around but she play along because she think that he is very interesting. Later in the book Carmel discover that she is stronger than she think and even though she said she will stay out of trouble she will always go in to save her friends. Anna was killed when she was only a teenager she got her head decapitated and blood was spilled all across her white dress. Ever since then she wear her bloody white dress and she would brutally kill anyone who dares to walk into her front door. When Cas first walked into her front door she spared his life for some unknown reason even thought she could take his life in one blow. Cas was surprised by Anna's naiveness and her look of innocent so he decided to find out more about Anna. Later in the stories Cas, Thomas, and Carmel find out the reason Anna is bounded to the house and why she seems to have two personality, one innocent teenager and one horrifying murderer.Although this book absolutely no literary masterpiece but it is certainly is a page turner. It grabs the reader's attention in the beginning and won't let go until the end. I constantly have nightmares several nights after I read the book it is absolutely a great Halloween reads. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants a good ghost story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Cas. Anna. Dean. Ghost hunter following in father's footsteps. Should be listed as supernatural fanfic.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Anna Dressed in Blood

    this was an amazing,captivating and entertaining thriller of a book !! i couldn't stop reading it !!
    and the times that i needed to stop because reality was calling .. i still couldn't get myself from thinking about what will happen next !!

    You have got to understand that i am a die hard supernatural (tv show ) fan and well lets just say this book is the next best thing !!

    i really enjoy the characters in the story they were very entertaining and extremely scary at times !!

    oh and another thing that got me hook and scared the shit of out me is that this book touch on the subject of "Obeah" I am from the Caribbeans so i know the stories about "Obeah" and well it just made this book that much more interesting and pleasure to read !!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amazing! It was written very well! I couldn't put it down! Finished it in a day! It's hard to find novels nowadays that has the horror I'm looking for and.... just a little bit of romance. But I found one! Can't wait to read the send one one!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I did not expect it to be a teen trilogy sort of thing. Things were all a bit too convenient and/or easily fixed. It's very mary-sueish. A decent and quick read, though, will read the next in the series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wow, it's been a while since I read a good ghost story. I guess the last one was The Woman in Black last fall. Guess fall is the time for ghost stories, isn't it? This was a good one. Cas is a good main character. Blake does an excellent job telling the story from a male point of view. I like the way that Cas ends up with a Scooby Doo type gang. I liked that Blake gave Cas a strong, honest relationship with his mother. And I loved the turn that things took with Anna.

    I highly recommend this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Read at Parnassus Reads Kendar Blake’s duology, Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares is a paranormal romance dressed up as a bloody horror story. Fortunately told from a male perspective, the novels are a mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural. Regardless of their obvious influences, the novels are a refreshing break from typical teen romance tropes and mores. Cas, short for Thessius Cassio Lowood, isn’t just any boy; he’s a prety kick-ass ghost hunting boy, akin to Dean from the CW’s Supernatural, complete with some daddy issues. Aside from that, he’s human and fairly likable. The titular girl, Anna, is dead. She haunts an old victorian house in the boonies just outside of Thunder Bay, where the novels are mostly set. In Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas goes there on a mission to kill her (again), since she is a murderous ghost. Things get…complicated, and those complications form the meat of the first novel. Without revealing too much here, Girl of Nightmares complicates those complications. Anna seems to be back and is playing out gruesome scenes of torture for Cas, whose decent conscious demands that he take action to stop whatever is happening to Anna, where ever she is and no matter what the cost. But these books are also the story of a lonely boy finally finding a place to belong.Part of what makes these novels so enjoyable is a well-rounded secondary cast. This is where the Buffy comparisons come in. Thomas, Cas’s first friend in Thunder Bay, is a psychic witch whose character is a cross between Willow and Xander from Buffy, witchy powers included, though his stem from voodoo. Carmel is the extremely popular blonde unwittingly drawn in to Cas’s and Thomas’s world of death, ghosts, and witchcraft. However, she’s a hell of a lot nicer and immediately more likable than Cordelia, her pop-culture predecesor (and of course there’s a love-thing to be resolved between Thomas and Carmel, just as in Buffy). There’s even a stuffy british know-it-all, Gideon. Blake could have at least been more creative with the names here. Cas has a living mother, and thankfully she’s in on the whole gig (in fact, she even cleans the magic, ghost-slaying knife her son wields).In the first novel, the main focus is on Anna herself and the relationship that forms between her and Cas. As her story unravels, so do pieces of Cas’s past, until they become inexorably entwined and Anna’s fate will determine Cas’s as well. The novel ends well, without major cliffhangers; Anna Dressed in Blood could easily have been a stand-alone. The meat of Girl of Nightmares is less Anna herself and more the relationships Cas has formed with Thomas and Carmel. Some familiar baddies show up to play in the dramatic conclusion, but there are also some new characters, including the vaguely sinister Order of the Black Knife (a druidic order hanging out in a resort complex in the Scottish highlands, black Armani suits and hooded robes included). One new character puts me in mind of Faith from Buffy, though again, more likable. Overall, the first book is the better of the two, but it was nice to see more of Cas and his friends. I’m just glad Blake didn’t submit to blockbuster-trilogy pressure.And that’s the thing, for me. While these novels are fairly original in what they do, reading them felt like watching old episodes of Buffy or Supernatural. They were familiar in that they fit within accepted paramaters set by these shows, so it was more like watching a new episode of either. This isn’t in itself a bad thing; I love both shows. But it can become problematic when those references and paramaters are too comfortable and familiar, or when they show as badly as they do in the Anna books. I am in no way accusing Blake of plagiarism or of being unoriginal, nor am I saying that I dislike the books. All I’m suggesting is that she be a little less obvious with her influences. My final verdict is that these are enjoyable, quick reads with likable characters and better plotting than a lot of current paranormal teen romances. I would recommend these over a host of others currently out there.One final, nagging note. In Girl of Nightmares, Cas and the gang have to pass a test put to them by the Order. This test is to survive the “Suicide Forest” in the highlands of Scotland. There is a real suicide forest, Aokigahara Forest, and it’s in Japan. Much of what Blake describes in this scene seems to come straight out of a 20 minute video on Aokigahara that circulated in 2010. This annoyed me greatly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Originally posted at: A Girl that likes Books Well this one certainly went fast! I bought this book on my trip last week-end and I was quite eager to start it. Not only because it could make part of my R.I.P challenge, but also because I had read good reviews about this one.I really liked this book, like White Cat and Red Glove it touches the supernatural, without falling into the amazingly vast compendium of books who go for the vampire-is-the-only-supernatural-being. Don’t get me wrong, I like vampire books, I do, but when that’s all you see…well it just gets boring. Back to the book. I really liked all the main characters, Cass, even though he is a little bit too much into this I –can-do-everything-on-my-own thing, finally let’s people in and his new “group” is as different as entertaining. Something I like to note is that Kendare presents teens that, yeah, they are teens, but they also know how to talk, how to interact properly with each other, a subject that Naiche mentioned in a recent post.The other thing that I liked about this YA book, is that even though there is a little bit of romance behind (little, as subtle) there is a fairly healthy relationship (I mean as healthy as it can get with a ghost), not only between Cas and Anna, but also the way the Carmel and Thomas interact with each other and others.I have to say, I did not see it coming, the way it ended, and this is good! Often with YA the end of the book is a bit predictable and even though this doesn’t mean that the book is bad, it means that you are not necessarily eager to finish it, because…well, you already know what’s coming. For this one however, there was a lot happening at the end, and when I finished I went immediately online to make sure that there is a second part (there is, but for now only hardcover).I actually was expecting to be satisfied with the book, the premise was good, the reviews where good with some splashes of disappointing towards the end. But I was more than satisfied, it gave me some twists and turns where I wasn’t expecting it and I like that. Is different enough not to be too far fetch without falling into a cookie cutter!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4.5 stars for Anna Dressed in Blood.

    If you ever wanted to know how to write a decent and great ghost story, this is it! I had high hopes for this book, and it didn't disappoint.

    However, I was expecting it to be a bit more scary, but I didn't find it scary at all. I wouldn't consider it as a horror book. Paranormal ghost story, yes.

    I loved, loved, loved the character of Anna. I loved her so much, in fact, that I was wishing that she actually did exist so we could be friends.

    I also loved the fact that it had swearing in it that wasn't OTT like a lot of older teen books. The way Cas swears made him feel more like a real teenage boy. What 17 year old boy doesn't swear!?!

    The plot was quite good although, when it came to the story line of how Anna died and why she was the way she was, it was quite predictable...This is what made me give the book 4.5 stars instead of 5...well, that and it wasn't scary which I was hoping for.

    Overall, this is definitely a good read! I can't wait to read Girl of Nightmares to find out more about (hopefully) Anna, Cas, Carmel, and Thomas.

    This is a book not to be missed!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The concept was clever, but the writing felt too rushed and over-simplistic. Not my preference stylistically for a well-told story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book. I loved it from the start to the finish. I love everything about it. I loved Cas. I loved Anna, even when I wasn't supposed to, and I loved the cover art. I mean, come on, look at it, how can you not want to read it after looking at that?This story is amazing and completely engaging. It starts in action and ends it action. There's something going on in every chapter, every second, and it all means something. There are characters that you'll love and character that you'll have. But I guarantee it'll be one or the other. There's not one that I feel just faintly one way about.At first, I thought this was going to be like Supernatural. The first five seasons of which was amazing, so I figured I'd like this book. That Cas was going to be a mini Dean Winchester but it's not really. The story is its own and fantastic.Blake is an amazing writer. She tells a fair share, but that's just what happens when a story is first person POV. It's present tense, which is perfect, because it's full of urgent-action-filled-moments. I didn't notice a lot of unneeded adverbs or adjectives. And I love her for showing that fiction, particularly YA, can be filled with semi-colons and that there isn't anything wrong with that. I'm in total agreement; semi-colons are amazing.I never knew what was coming. I really didn't. I thought I did a couple of times but I was always wrong. And the ending... I just can't wait to read the next book. More of my reviews can be found at my site
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was the most cheerfully gruesome ghost story I'd ever listened to. The narrator sounded young despite all the f-bombs and was not good at all the voices. It was like an episode of Supernatural, which I also find fluffily entertaining. Points for location - Thunder Bay Ontario.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There were some things that I liked about Anna Dressed in Blood. It had an interesting concept and a well-developed plot. The characters were better than most young adult novels that I have read, which often suffer from poor characterization. But it also had some serious pitfalls which took away from my enjoyment of this novel. The first is the use of first person, present tense point of view. It’s the dumbest possible way to tell a story, and it is illogical since stories are things that have happened. Otherwise, it’s like you’re giving a running commentary of events and actions as they happen. Unfortunately, it’s all the rage these days, and I’m hoping like most fads, it dies away.The other thing that aggravated me was the same issue that plagues most young adult novels that I read, and that is having characters acting in ways and doing things that are unrealistic, all because of the need to have young characters as the leads in the story. What they do and how they act often doesn’t jive with reality, and this book is no different.For the most part, this novel was entertaining. It wasn’t dull and didn’t go through any slow spots. In the end, I thought it was just okay but it could have been more.Carl Alves – author of The Invocation

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Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake

Cover: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare BlakeAnna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

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CHAPTER ONE

The grease-slicked hair is a dead giveaway—no pun intended.

So is the loose and faded leather coat, though not as much that as the sideburns. And the way he keeps nodding and flicking his Zippo open and closed in rhythm with his head. He belongs in a chorus line of dancing Jets and Sharks.

Then again, I have an eye for these things. I know what to look for, because I’ve seen just about every variety of spook and specter you can imagine.

The hitchhiker haunts a stretch of winding North Carolina road, bordered by unpainted split-rail fences and a whole lot of nothing. Unsuspecting drivers probably pick him up out of boredom, thinking he’s just some college kid who reads too much Kerouac.

My gal, she’s waiting for me, he says now in an excited voice, like he’s going to see her the minute we crest the next hill. He taps the lighter hard on the dash, twice, and I glance over to make sure he hasn’t left a ding in the panel. This isn’t my car. And I’ve suffered through eight weeks of lawn work for Mr. Dean, the retired army colonel who lives down the block, just so I could borrow it. For a seventy-year-old man he’s got the straightest back I’ve ever seen. If I had more time, I could’ve spent a summer listening to interesting stories about Vietnam. Instead I cleared shrubs and tilled an eight-by-ten plot for new rosebushes while he watched me with a surly eye, making sure his baby would be safe with this seventeen-year-old kid in an old Rolling Stones t-shirt and his mother’s gardening gloves.

To tell the truth, knowing what I was going to use the car for, I felt a little guilty. It’s a dusk blue 1969 Camaro Rally Sport, mint condition. Drives smooth as silk and growls around curves. I can’t believe he let me take it, yard work or no. But thank god he did, because without it I would have been sunk. It was something the hitchhiker would go for—something worth the trouble of crawling out of the ground.

She must be pretty nice, I say without much interest.

Yeah, man, yeah, he says and, for the hundredth time since I picked him up five miles ago, I wonder how anyone could possibly not know that he’s dead. He sounds like a James Dean movie. And then there’s the smell. Not quite rotten but definitely mossy, hanging around him like a fog. How has anyone mistaken him for the living? How has anyone kept him in the car for the ten miles it takes to get to the Lowren’s Bridge, where he inevitably grabs the wheel and takes both car and driver into the river? Most likely they were creeped out by his clothes and his voice, and by the smell of bones—that smell they seem to know even though they’ve probably never smelled it. But by then it’s always too late. They’d made the decision to pick up a hitchhiker, and they weren’t about to let themselves be scared into going back on it. They rationalized their fears away. People shouldn’t do that.

In the passenger seat, the hitchhiker is still talking in this faraway voice about his girl back home, somebody named Lisa, and how she’s got the shiniest blond hair and the prettiest red smile, and how they’re going to run off and get married as soon as he gets back hitching from Florida. He was working part of a summer down there for his uncle at a car dealership: the best opportunity to save up for their wedding, even if it did mean they wouldn’t see each other for months.

It must’ve been hard, being away from home so long, I say, and there’s actually a little bit of pity in my voice. But I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you.

Yeah, man. That’s what I’m talking about. I’ve got everything we need, right in my jacket pocket. We’ll get married and move out to the coast. I’ve got a pal out there, Robby. We can stay with him until I get a job working on cars.

Sure, I say. The hitchhiker has this sadly optimistic look on his face, lit up by the moon and the glowing dashlights. He never saw Robby, of course. He never saw his girl Lisa, either. Because two miles up the road in the summer of 1970, he got into a car, probably a lot like this one. And he told whoever was driving that he had a way to start an entire life in his coat pocket.

The locals say that they beat him up pretty good by the bridge and then dragged him back into the trees, where they stabbed him a couple of times and then cut his throat. They pushed his body down an embankment and into one of the tributary streams. That’s where a farmer found it, nearly six months later, wound around with vines, the jaw hanging open in surprise, like he still couldn’t believe that he was stuck there.

And now he doesn’t know that he’s stuck here. None of them ever seem to know. Right now the hitchhiker is whistling and bobbing along to nonexistent music. He probably still hears whatever they were playing the night they killed him.

He’s perfectly pleasant. A nice guy to ride with. But when we get to that bridge, he’ll be as angry and ugly as anyone you’ve ever seen. It’s reported that his ghost, dubbed unoriginally as the County 12 Hiker, has killed at least a dozen people and injured another eight. But I can’t really blame him. He never made it home to see his girl, and now he doesn’t want anyone else to get home either.

We pass mile marker twenty-three—the bridge is less than two minutes away. I’ve driven this road almost every night since we moved here in the hopes that I would catch his thumb in my headlights, but I had no luck. Not until I got behind the wheel of this Rally Sport. Before this it was just half a summer of the same damn road, the same damn blade tucked under my leg. I hate it when it’s like that, like some kind of horribly extended fishing trip. But I don’t give up on them. They always come around in the end.

I let my foot ease up on the gas.

Something wrong, friend? he asks me.

I shake my head. Only that this isn’t my car, and I don’t have the cash to fix it if you decide to try to take me off the bridge.

The hitchhiker laughs, just a little too loudly to be normal. I think you’ve been drinking or something tonight, pal. Maybe you ought to just let me off here.

I realize too late that I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t let him out. It’d be my luck that he’d step out and disappear. I’m going to have to kill him while the car is moving or I’ll have to do this all over again, and I doubt that Mr. Dean is willing to let the car go for too many more nights. Besides, I’m moving to Thunder Bay in three days.

There’s also the thought that I’m doing this to this poor bastard all over again. But that thought is fleeting. He’s already dead.

I try to keep the speedometer over fifty—too fast for him to really consider jumping out, but with ghosts you can never be sure. I’ll have to work fast.

It’s when I reach down to take my blade out from under the leg of my jeans that I see the silhouette of the bridge in the moonlight. Right on cue, the hitchhiker grabs the wheel and yanks it to the left. I try to jerk it back right and slam my foot on the brake. I hear the sound of angry rubber on asphalt and out of the corner of my eye I can see that the hitchhiker’s face is gone. No more easy Joe, no slicked hair and eager smile. He’s just a mask of rotten skin and bare, black holes, with teeth like dull stones. It looks like he’s grinning, but it might just be the effect of his lips peeling off.

Even as the car is fishtailing and trying to stop, I don’t have any flashes of my life before my eyes. What would that even be like? A highlight reel of murdered ghosts. Instead I see a series of quick, ordered images of my dead body: one with the steering wheel through my chest, another with my head gone as the rest of me hangs out the missing window.

A tree comes up out of nowhere, aimed right for my driver’s side door. I don’t have time to swear, just to jerk the wheel and hit the gas, and the tree is behind me. What I don’t want to do is make it to the bridge. The car is all over the shoulder and the bridge doesn’t have one. It’s narrow, and wooden, and outdated.

It’s not so bad, being dead, the hitchhiker says to me, clawing at my arm, trying to get me off the wheel.

What about the smell? I hiss. Through all of this I haven’t lost my grip on my knife handle. Don’t ask me how; my wrist feels like the bones are going to separate in about ten seconds, and I’ve been pulled off my seat so that I’m hovering over the stick shift. I throw the car into neutral with my hip (should have done that earlier) and pull my blade out fast.

What happens next is kind of a surprise: the skin comes back onto the hitchhiker’s face, and the green comes back into his eyes. He’s just a kid, staring at my knife. I get the car back under control and hit the brakes.

The jolt from the stop makes him blink. He looks at me.

I worked all summer for this money, he says softly. My girl will kill me if I lose it.

My heart is pounding from the effort of controlling the lurching car. I don’t want to say anything. I just want to get it over with. But instead I hear my voice.

Your girl will forgive you. I promise. The knife, my father’s athame, is light in my hand.

I don’t want to do this again, the hitchhiker whispers.

This is the last time, I say, and then I strike, drawing the blade across his throat, opening a yawning black line. The hitchhiker’s fingers come up to his neck. They try to press the skin back together, but something as dark and thick as oil floods out of the wound and covers him, bleeding not only down over his vintage-era jacket but also up over his face and eyes, into his hair. The hitchhiker doesn’t scream as he shrivels, but maybe he can’t: his throat was cut and the black fluid has worked its way into his mouth. In less than a minute he’s gone, leaving not a trace behind.

I pass my hand over the seat. It’s dry. Then I get out of the car and do a walk-around as best I can in the dark, looking for scratches. The tire tread is still smoking and melted. I can hear Mr. Dean’s teeth grinding. I’m leaving town in three days, and now I’ll be spending at least one of them putting on a new set of Goodyears. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t take the car back until the new tires are on.

CHAPTER TWO

It’s after midnight when I park the Rally Sport in our driveway. Mr. Dean’s probably still up, wiry and full of black coffee as he is, watching me cruise carefully down the street. But he doesn’t expect the car back until morning. If I get up early enough, I can take it down to the shop and replace the tires before he knows any different.

As the headlights cut through the yard and splash onto the face of the house, I see two green dots: the eyes of my mom’s cat. When I get to the front door, it’s gone from the window. It’ll tell her that I’m home. Tybalt is the cat’s name. It’s an unruly thing, and it doesn’t much care for me. I don’t care much for it either. It has a weird habit of pulling all the hair off its tail, leaving little tufts of black all over the house. But my mom likes to have a cat around. Like most children, they can see and hear things that are already dead. A handy trick, when you live with us.

I go inside, take my shoes off, and climb the stairs by two. I’m dying for a shower—want to get that mossy, rotten feeling off my wrist and shoulder. And I want to check my dad’s athame and rinse off whatever black stuff might be on the edge.

At the top of the stairs, I stumble against a box and say, Shit! a little too loudly. I should know better. My life is lived in a maze of packed boxes. My mom and I are professional packers; we don’t mess around with castoff cardboard from the grocery or liquor stores. We have high-grade, industrial-strength, reinforced boxes with permanent labels. Even in the dark I can see that I just tripped over the Kitchen Utensils (2).

I tiptoe into the bathroom and pull my knife out of my leather backpack. After I finished off the hitchhiker I wrapped it up in a black velvet cloth, but not neatly. I was in a hurry. I didn’t want to be on the road anymore, or anywhere near the bridge. Seeing the hitchhiker disintegrate didn’t scare me. I’ve seen worse. But it isn’t the kind of thing you get used to.

Cas?

I look up into the mirror and see the sleepy reflection of my mom, holding the black cat in her arms. I put the athame down on the counter.

Hey, Mom. Sorry to wake you.

You know I like to be up when you come in anyway. You should always wake me, so I can sleep.

I don’t tell her how dumb that sounds; I just turn on the faucet and start to run the blade under the cold water.

I’ll do it, she says, and touches my arm. Then of course she grabs my wrist, because she can see the bruises that are starting to purple up all along my forearm.

I expect her to say something motherly; I expect her to quack around like a worried duck for a few minutes and go to the kitchen to get ice and a wet towel, even though the bruises are by no means the worst mark I’ve ever gotten. But this time she doesn’t. Maybe because it’s late, and she’s tired. Or maybe because after three years she’s finally starting to figure out that I’m not going to quit.

Give it to me, she says, and I do, because I’ve gotten the worst of the black stuff off already. She takes it and leaves. I know that she’s off to do what she does every time, which is to boil the blade and then stab it into a big jar of salt, where it will sit under the light of the moon for three days. When she takes it out she’ll wipe it down with cinnamon oil and call it good as new.

She used to do the same thing for my dad. He’d come home from killing something that was already dead and she’d kiss him on the cheek and take away the athame, as casually as any wife might carry in a briefcase. He and I used to stare at the thing while it sat in its jar of salt, our arms crossed over our chests, conveying to each other that we both thought it was ridiculous. It always seemed to me like an exercise in make-believe. Like it was Excalibur in the rock.

But my dad let her do it. He knew what he was getting into when he met and married her, a pretty, auburn-haired Wiccan girl with a strand of white flowers braided around her neck. He’d lied back then and called himself Wiccan too, for lack of a better word. But really, Dad wasn’t much of anything.

He just loved the legends. He loved a good story, tales about the world that made it seem cooler than it really was. He went crazy over Greek mythology, which is where I got my name.

They compromised on it, because my mom loved Shakespeare, and I ended up called Theseus Cassio. Theseus for the slayer of the Minotaur, and Cassio for Othello’s doomed lieutenant. I think it sounds straight-up stupid. Theseus Cassio Lowood. Everyone just calls me Cas. I suppose I should be glad—my dad also loved Norse mythology, so I might have wound up being called Thor, which would have been basically unbearable.

I exhale and look in the mirror. There are no marks on my face, or on my gray dress button-up, just like there were no marks on the Rally Sport’s upholstery (thank god). I look ridiculous. I’m in slacks and sleeves like I’m out on a big date, because that’s what I told Mr. Dean I needed the car for. When I left the house tonight my hair was combed back, and there was a little bit of gel in it, but after that fucking kerfuffle it’s hanging across my forehead in dark streaks.

You should hurry up and get to bed, sweetheart. It’s late and we’ve got more packing to do.

My mom is done with the knife. She’s floated back up against the doorjamb and her black cat is twisting around her ankles like a bored fish around a plastic castle.

I just want to jump in the shower, I say. She sighs and turns away.

You did get him, didn’t you? she says over her shoulder, almost like an afterthought.

Yeah. I got him.

She smiles at me. Her mouth looks sad and wistful. It was close this time. You thought you’d have him finished before the end of July. Now it’s August.

He was a tougher hunt, I say, pulling a towel down off the shelf. I don’t think she’s going to say anything else, but she stops and turns back.

Would you have stayed here, if you hadn’t gotten him? Would you have pushed her back?

I only think for a few seconds, just a natural pause in the conversation, because I knew the answer before she finished asking the question.

No.

As my mom leaves, I drop the bomb. Hey, can I borrow some cash for a new set of tires?

Theseus Cassio, she moans, and I grimace, but her exhausted sigh tells me that I’m good to go in the morning.


Thunder Bay, Ontario, is our destination. I’m going there to kill her. Anna. Anna Korlov. Anna Dressed in Blood.

This one has you worried, doesn’t it, Cas, my mom says from behind the wheel of the U-Haul van. I keep telling her we should just buy our own moving truck, instead of renting. God knows we move often enough, following the ghosts.

Why would you say that? I ask, and she nods at my hand. I hadn’t realized it was tapping against my leather bag, which is where Dad’s athame is. With a focused effort, I don’t take it away. I just keep tapping like it doesn’t matter, like she’s overanalyzing and reading into things.

I killed Peter Carver when I was fourteen, Mom, I say. I’ve been doing it ever since. Nothing much surprises me anymore.

There’s a tightening in her face. You shouldn’t say it like that. You didn’t ‘kill’ Peter Carver. You were attacked by Peter Carver and he was already dead.

It amazes me sometimes how she can change a thing just by using the right words. If her occult supply shop ever goes under, she’s got a good future in branding.

I was attacked by Peter Carver, she says. Yeah. I was attacked. But only after I broke into the Carver family’s abandoned house. It had been my first job. I did it without my mom’s permission, which is actually an understatement. I did it against my mom’s screaming protests and had to pick the lock on my bedroom window to get out of the house. But I did it. I took my father’s knife and broke in. I waited until two a.m. in the room where Peter Carver shot his wife with a .44 caliber pistol and then hung himself with his own belt in the closet. I waited in the same room where his ghost had murdered a real estate agent trying to sell the house two years later, and then a property surveyor a year after that.

Thinking about it now, I remember my shaking hands and a stomach close to heaving. I remember the desperation to do it, to do what I was supposed to do, like my father had. When the ghosts finally showed up (yes, ghosts plural—turns out that Peter and his wife had reconciled, found a common interest in killing) I think I almost passed out. One came out of the closet with his neck so purple and bent it looked like it was on sideways, and the other bled up through the floor like a paper towel commercial in reverse. She hardly made it out of the boards, I’m proud to say. Instinct took over and I tacked her back down before she could make a move. Carver tackled me though, while I was trying to pull my knife out of the wood that was coated with the stain that used to be his wife. He almost threw me out the window before I scrambled back to the athame, mewling like a kitten. Stabbing him was almost an accident. The knife just sort of ran into him when he wrapped the end of his rope around my throat and spun me around. I never told my mom that part.

You know better than that, Mom, I say. It’s only other people who think you can’t kill what’s already dead. I want to say that Dad knew too, but I don’t. She doesn’t like to talk about him, and I know that she hasn’t been the same since he died. She’s not quite here anymore; there’s something missing in all of her smiles, like a blurry spot or a camera lens out of focus. Part of her followed him, wherever it was that he went. I know it’s not that she doesn’t love me. But I don’t think she ever figured on raising a son by herself. Her family was supposed to form a circle. Now we walk around like a photograph that my dad’s been cut out of.

I’ll be in and out like that, I say, snapping my fingers and redirecting the subject. I might not even spend the whole school year in Thunder Bay.

She leans forward over the steering wheel and shakes her head. You should think about staying longer. I’ve heard it’s a nice place.

I roll my eyes. She knows better. Our life isn’t quiet. It isn’t like other lives, where there are roots and routines. We’re a traveling circus. And she can’t even blame it on my dad being killed, because we traveled with him too, though admittedly not as much. It’s the reason that she works the way she does, doing tarot card readings and aura cleansing over the phone, and selling occult supplies online. My mother the mobile witch. She makes a surprisingly good living at it. Even without my dad’s trust accounts, we’d probably be just fine.

Right now we’re driving north on some winding road that follows the shore of Lake Superior. I was glad to get out of North Carolina, away from iced tea and accents and hospitality that didn’t suit me. Being on the road I feel free, when I’m on my way from here to there, and it won’t be until I put my feet down on Thunder Bay pavement that I’ll feel like I’m back to work. For now I can enjoy the stacks of pines and the layers of sedimentary rock along the roadside, weeping groundwater like a constant regret. Lake Superior is bluer than blue and greener than green, and the clear light coming through the windows makes me squint behind my sunglasses.

What are you going to do about college?

Mom, I moan. Frustration bubbles out of me all of a sudden. She’s doing her half-and-half routine. Half accepting what I am, half insisting that I be a normal kid. I wonder if she did it to my dad too. I don’t think so.

Cas, she moans back. Superheroes go to college too.

I’m not a superhero, I say. It’s an awful tag. It’s egotistical, and it doesn’t fit. I don’t parade around in spandex. I don’t do what I do and receive accolades and keys to cities. I work in the dark, killing what should have stayed dead. If people knew what I was up to, they’d probably try to stop me. The idiots would take Casper’s side, and then I’d have to kill Casper and them after Casper bit their throats out. I’m no superhero. If anything I’m Rorschach from Watchmen. I’m Grendel. I’m the survivor in Silent Hill.

If you’re so set on doing this during college, there are plenty of cities that could keep you busy for four years. She turns the U-Haul into a gas station, the last one on the U.S. side. What about Birmingham? That place is so haunted you could take two a month and still probably have enough to make it through grad school.

Yeah, but then I’d have to go to college in fucking Birmingham, I say, and she shoots me a look. I mutter an apology. She might be the most liberal-minded of mothers, letting her teenage son roam the night hunting down the remains of murderers, but she still doesn’t like hearing the f-bomb fall out of my mouth.

She pulls up to the pumps and takes a deep breath. You’ve avenged him five times over, you know. Before I can say that I haven’t, she gets out and shuts the door.

CHAPTER THREE

The scenery changed fast once we crossed over into Canada, and I’m looking out the window at miles of rolling hills covered in forest. My mother says it’s something called boreal forest. Recently, since we really started moving around, she’s developed this hobby of intensely researching each new place we live. She says it makes it feel more like a vacation, to know places where she wants to eat and things that she wants to do when we get there. I think it makes her feel like it’s more of a home.

She’s let Tybalt out of his pet carrier and he’s perched on her shoulder with his tail wrapped around her neck. He doesn’t spare a glance for me. He’s half Siamese and has that breed’s trait of choosing one person to adore and saying screw off to all the rest. Not that I care. I like it when he hisses and bats at me, and the only thing he’s good for is occasionally seeing ghosts before I do.

My mom is staring up at the clouds, humming something that isn’t a real song. She’s wearing the same smile as her cat.

Why the good mood? I ask. Isn’t your butt asleep yet?

Been asleep for hours, she replies. But I think I’m going to like Thunder Bay. And from the looks of these clouds, I’m going to get to enjoy it for quite some time.

I glance up. The clouds are enormous and perfectly white. They sit deadly still in the sky as we drive into them. I watch without blinking until my eyes dry out. They don’t move or change in any way.

Driving into unmoving clouds, she whispers. Things are going to take longer than you expect.

I want to tell her that she’s being superstitious, that clouds not moving don’t mean anything, and besides, if you watch them long enough they have to move—but that would make a hypocrite of me, this guy who lets her cleanse his knife in salt under moonlight.

The stagnant clouds make me motion-sick for some reason, so I go back to looking at the forest, a blanket of pines in colors of green, brown, and rust, struck through with birch trunks sticking up like bones. I’m usually in a better mood on these trips. The excitement of somewhere new, a new ghost to hunt, new things to see … the prospects usually keep my brain sunny for at least the duration of the drive. Maybe it’s just that I’m tired. I don’t sleep much, and when I do, there’s usually some kind of nightmare involved. But I’m not complaining. I’ve had them off and on since I started using the athame. Occupational hazard, I guess, my subconscious letting out all the fear I should be feeling when I walk into places where there are murderous ghosts. Still, I should try to get some rest. The dreams are particularly bad the night after a successful hunt, and they haven’t really calmed down since I took out the hitchhiker.

An hour or so later, after many attempts at sleep, Thunder Bay comes up in our windshield, a sprawling, urban-esque city of over a hundred thousand living. We drive through the commercial and business districts and I am unimpressed. Walmart is a convenient place for the breathing, but I have never seen a ghost comparing prices on motor oil or trying to jimmy his way into the Xbox 360 game case. It’s only as we get into the heart of the city—the older part of the city that rests above the harbor—that I see what I’m looking for.

Nestled in between refurbished family homes are houses cut out at bad angles, their coats of paint peeling in scabs and their shutters hanging crooked on their windows so they look like wounded eyes. I barely notice the nicer houses. I blink as we pass and they’re gone, boring and inconsequential.

Over the course of my life I’ve been to lots of places. Shadowed places where things have gone wrong. Sinister places where things still are. I always hate the sunlit towns, full of newly built developments with double-car garages in shades

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