Acknowledgments

This novel is very much a book of my heart. So much love and hard work and inspiration went into it, and as such there are a lot of people whose own love, hard work, and ability to inspire allowed me to make this book what it is.

First I must thank Washington Irving, for giving our young country some of its first great literature and one of my very favorite stories. Obviously, this novel would never have come to be without his work. If his ghost is out there somewhere, I hope he likes Katrina’s story.

Enormous thanks and my boundless gratitude, as always, to Lindsay Fowler, the kind of friend who would ride out with you at dawn to break up a duel if you asked her. As always, your notes and critiques have made this book better than it was before you read it. I don’t know what I’d do without your close reads and your patience with me when I get excited about a new project and can’t stop talking about it. Life is easier, and more fun, knowing you’re always just a text away.

This is a book very much about friendship, particularly female friendship, and so I must thank—forever and always—my dear circle of friends. I am so, so fortunate to count among my friends some strong, resilient, and amazing women, whose love and support inspired me to try to fully depict the power of female friendship on the page. To my Pumas: Amanda Beck, Andrea Heuer Bieniek, Alex Dockstader, and Jen Hark-Hameister, I love you all and am so incredibly lucky to have you. I’d face down a headless ghost for you all any day, and I know you’d do the same for me. I can’t wait for all of our crazy adventures to come.

Special thanks to Jen and Amanda for road-tripping to Sleepy Hollow with me and letting me drag them to all the historical sites. I think that road trip has become our own personal legend! And thank you for all the Halloweens past, present, and future.

Extra thanks to Jen for taking my author photo for this book, and for creating AMAZING promotional graphics for this novel. You are so talented I can’t even handle it. And if anyone loves this book as much as I do, I know it’s you.

My eternal gratitude to my agent, Brianne Johnson, who is so wonderful I’m pretty sure she is magic, and whom you all can blame for letting me write books where people’s heads are chopped off! Thank you for loving this witchy book so much, for your unflagging support of me and my work, and for your excellent notes and inspiring advice. I am such a better writer now than when we first started working together, and much of that is due to your guidance.

All of the thanks to that most fabulous of editors, Vicki Lame. I am so, so lucky to get to work with you. This is our best book yet! Thanks for all of your tireless work, for answering my email questions at the speed of light, and for all the Tom Mison GIFs!

Thank you to the art department at St. Martin’s Griffin for creating a cover that perfectly captures the vibe of this book. I love it and will never be tired of looking at it!

Thank you to the publicity and marketing teams at St. Martin’s for the great job they do spreading the word about my books, especially Staci Burt and Jordan Hanley. Thanks to the foreign rights team for getting my books into the hands of readers all over the world.

My deepest gratitude to my fellow authors who have lent their words of support to this novel: Greer Macallister, Erin Lindsay McCabe, Cat Winters, and Gwendolyn Womack. I am so incredibly honored by your kind words about my work, especially as I am such a fan of each and every one of you!

Thanks to my Canisius Alumni Writers for reading various parts of this manuscript. You guys always make me see my work from a new angle, usually while making me laugh as well.

Thanks to my Wednesday night writing group, in whose presence much of this novel was written. Thanks as well to Public Espresso, my favorite coffee shop, where much of this novel was also written (and revised, and revised again).

My sincerest thanks and appreciation to the Canisius College Creative Writing department for their continued support of me and my work. A special thanks to Dr. Jennifer Desidero, professor of American literature at Canisius, for letting me write a ten-page paper on Washington Irving’s famous short story as well as Tim Burton’s version. To this day, that’s my favorite college paper.

All my gratitude to Talking Leaves Books, for all you’ve done for me and my books and for all you do for so many authors and for our community as a whole. Buffalo is lucky to have you.

Music is what fuels my writing (and revising, and editing) day in and day out, so thanks as always to the musicians whose work inspired me as I wrote this novel: Delain, Nightwish, Autumn, Lacuna Coil, Kamelot, Xandria, Sirenia, Garbage, Stream of Passion, The Murder of My Sweet, Auri, and Danny Elfman. Special thanks and shout-out to Phantasma, whose album The Deviant Hearts very much became the soundtrack of this novel.

Thank you to Lin-Manuel Miranda, for writing Hamilton and making me fall back in love with the history of my country.

All my gratitude and love to my family, Mike and Kathy Zimmerman, and Tom and Mary Zimmerman, for your support and relentless promotion of my books! I am so lucky to have you all.

Thanks and love to my brother, Matt Palombo, for being so proud of me. And, hey! This book has a duel! FINALLY!! See, I told you I’d get there eventually!

Thanks to Fenway the silky terrier, for inspiring me to add a dog to this novel. You may be a lot smaller than Nox, but you are no less ferocious.

I have the best, most supportive parents anyone could ask for. Thank you to my dad, Tony Palombo, fellow Headless Horseman aficionado, who loves Halloween as much as I do. Thanks for always encouraging my love of all things dark, creepy, and spooky. And for encouraging my love of history. It all came together in this book! Thank you to my mom, Debbie Palombo, who loves me even with my Goth side, and who is, I think, better at selling my books than I am. I love you both and could do none of this without you.

To all the friends and family members I haven’t mentioned by name, thank you for your continued support and love and enthusiasm.

Last but certainly not least, thank you to my readers. It still surprises and thrills me that people read my books, love my books, connect with my books, and want to read more of my books. It means the world to me that my books mean something to others. It is because of you that I am able to continue doing what I love. I am so, so fortunate to have my dreams come true.