ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  

Many thanks to my friends and family who supported this story from the moment I shared my nightmare about those creepy girls in white dresses. Thank you to Charles Beyer for inspiring me with your brilliant Victorian ghost paintings. And to Gary Graham for not only reading parts of an early manuscript, but for the “million-dollar idea” and the subsequent Nightmarys trading-card illustration.

Thank you also to Nico Medina for being a wonderfully perceptive copy editor and an all-around awesome friend. Thank you to Kathy Gersing and Nick Eliopulos for graciously reading the very long first draft and for not wanting to smack me with it. Thanks to Nic DeStefano for the glamorous photo shoot in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Thank you to Katie Cicatelli, Ellice M. Lee, and everyone else at Random House Children’s Books, especially my editor, R. Schuyler Hooke, who adopted this baby and helped me make her even more disturbed than she already was. It must be stated that Barry Goldblatt is a dream agent; I’m so grateful he’s in my corner. Thank you to David Levithan for all you do.

Thank you to my grandparents, Francis and Wanda Poblocki and Doris and Ray Piehler, for your stories and support. Dad, Maria, Emily, Johnny, Brendan, Amanda, Mom, and Bruce—I love you guys.

And Ethan, you’re just the best.