Haunted characters

Also known as Suze

Appears from the start

A sixteen-year-old mediator, back at the Mission Academy for a new school year. She sees and speaks with the dead and helps them finish whatever holds them here, usually the hard way, and her family still knows nothing. She now knows how the ghost in her bedroom died and who killed him, and that he stayed for her, which has made living with him considerably more complicated rather than less.

Also known as Hector de Silva

Appears from the start

The ghost of Hector de Silva, murdered in 1850 in the room that is now Suze's bedroom, where he has remained ever since. His body has been found and buried and his death accounted for, so nothing obliges him to stay; he stayed anyway. Old-fashioned, principled and careful, he keeps a distance from Suze that neither of them is happy with.

Appears from the start

A shifter, as he insists on calling it, who can do everything Suze can and a good deal she has never heard of. Suze met him the previous summer while minding his younger brother, and he left promising to come back. He is wealthy, patient and used to getting his way, and his interest in Suze has not cooled.

Appears from the start

The principal of the Mission Academy and a mediator, elderly, principled and increasingly out of his depth about the wider ability he shares with Suze. He tells her to keep away from Paul Slater, and is not told most of what follows.

First appears in chapter 3

The ghost of a young man who drowned when a boat went down, in an accident his younger brother survived. He is angry, will not accept that he is the one who died, and has settled on the conviction that the wrong brother lived. He attaches himself to Suze as soon as he finds someone who can hear him.

Appears from the start

A bad-tempered orange tomcat Suze took in, who tolerates almost nobody, is devoted to Jesse, and can see the dead perfectly well, which is more than the rest of the household manages.

Appears from the start

Suze's friend and classmate, a school-paper writer with albinism and a reliable instinct for what is actually going on at the Mission Academy. She notices the new student's effect on Suze before Suze admits to it.

Appears from the start

CeeCee's constant companion and Suze's friend, cheerful, unserious and generally the one driving.

Appears from the start

Suze's stepfather, a contractor, still working through the restoration of the family house and still entirely unaware of what his stepdaughter does at night.

Appears from the start

A television journalist, remarried and settled in Carmel, watchful about her daughter's injuries and late nights and no closer to an explanation for either.

Also known as Sleepy

Appears from the start

The eldest stepbrother, whose energies go to his job, his car and sleeping. Suze calls him Sleepy.

Also known as Dopey

Appears from the start

The stepbrother in Suze's year, a wrestler who remains an obstacle to a quiet life. Suze calls him Dopey.

Also known as Doc

Appears from the start

The youngest stepbrother, twelve, academic to a fault and the family member Suze can most nearly stand to talk to. Suze calls him Doc.