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. “It's the old boy meets girl story, if the boy is a wry, self-destructive ghost-hunter bent on avenging his father and the girl is a homicidal ghost trapped in a house full of everyone she's ever murdered. Needless to say, Cas and Anna are my new favorite twosome. When I got to the last page, I flipped back to the first.” ― Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author of Red Glove “ Anna Dressed in Blood is a dark and intricate tale, with a hero who kills the dead but is half in love with death himself. By the end of the book, you will be too. Spellbinding and romantic.” ― Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mortal Instruments series “Abundantly original, marvelously inventive and enormous fun, this can stand alongside the best horror fiction out there. We demand sequels.” ― Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “Cinematic and compelling. Blake's smooth combination of gore and romance should have little problem attracting the Twilight crowd.” ― Booklist Kendare Blake  holds an MA in creative writing from Middlesex University in northern London. She is the critically acclaimed author of Anna Dressed in Blood, Girl of Nightmares , and Antigoddess. She lives and writes in Lynnwood, Washington. Anna Dressed in Blood By Kendare Blake Tor Teen Copyright © 2011 Kendare Blake All right reserved. ISBN: 9780765328656 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 h