Shadowland characters

Also known as Suze

Appears from the start

A sixteen-year-old from Brooklyn whose widowed mother has remarried and moved the family to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Suze is a mediator: she can see and speak with the dead, and ghosts with unfinished business seek her out whether she wants them or not. She has kept the ability secret from her mother her whole life, has no intention of mentioning it at her new school, and has learned to settle a difficult haunting with her fists when talking fails, which leaves her with injuries she is constantly having to explain away. Guarded and sarcastic, she arrives in California expecting to hate it.

First appears in chapter 2

The ghost already occupying the bedroom Suze is given in her stepfather's house, a young man in nineteenth-century clothes who died in that room roughly a century and a half earlier. He is calm, courteous and unbothered by his own situation, treats Suze's arrival with amusement rather than resentment, and says almost nothing about why he is still there. He reads over her shoulder, comments on her decisions, and turns up when she is in trouble.

First appears in chapter 4

The ghost of a student who shot herself on the school grounds after her boyfriend ended their relationship, and who has flatly refused to accept that she is dead. She still behaves as though she runs the school, is possessive about the boy who left her, and turns violent the moment she realizes Suze can see her. She grows stronger and less controllable the longer she is opposed.

First appears in chapter 4

The principal of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy, the Carmel school Suze is enrolled in. He is elderly, courteous and unshakably patient, and he is also a mediator, the first Suze has ever met. He has spent decades persuading the dead to move on by listening to them, keeps his ability hidden from the school and the church, and is appalled to discover that Suze's answer to a dangerous ghost is to hit it. He orders her to leave the school's haunting to him.

First appears in chapter 4

A popular senior at the Mission Academy and the boy Heather was seeing before her death. He is friendly and well liked, knows nothing about what haunts the school, and takes an interest in Suze almost immediately, which makes him a target.

First appears in chapter 5

The ghost of Suze's father, who died when she was a child and has never moved on. He turns up when it suits him, usually to tell his daughter she is taking too many risks, and he is the reason she has known since childhood exactly what she is.

Appears from the start

Suze's new stepfather, a building contractor slowly restoring the old Carmel house the family has moved into. Cheerful, well meaning and an enthusiastic cook, he tries hard with his stepdaughter and has no idea what she can do.

Appears from the start

A television journalist, widowed when Suze was small, who has remarried and moved west for a new husband and a new job. She worries about her daughter's bruises and her habit of disappearing at night, and has never suspected the reason for either.

Also known as Sleepy

Appears from the start

The eldest of Suze's three stepbrothers, a high-school senior who works, sleeps and drives, in roughly that order, and takes almost nothing seriously. Suze privately calls him Sleepy.

Also known as Dopey

Appears from the start

The middle stepbrother, in Suze's own year at the Mission Academy, a wrestler who resents her arrival and makes no secret of it. Suze privately calls him Dopey.

Also known as Doc

Appears from the start

The youngest stepbrother, twelve years old, relentlessly academic and full of facts nobody asked for. He is the only one of the three Suze warms to, and she privately calls him Doc.

First appears in chapter 4

A classmate at the Mission Academy who writes for the school paper, has albinism, and knows every piece of local and school gossip worth knowing. She is the first person in California to be straightforwardly friendly to Suze, and her interest in the school's history turns out to be useful.

First appears in chapter 4

CeeCee's inseparable friend, a joker with a car, who adopts Suze into their group at lunch on her first day.

First appears in chapter 4

The Mission Academy's reigning popular student, wealthy and used to being the center of attention, who treats the new girl as competition.