Cast of Characters

Dreamers, Dreams & Allies

Ronan Lynch

• a dreamer; the middle Lynch brother
  • dreamer of Matthew, Chainsaw, Opal, Lindenmere, Cabeswater, VEXED TO NIGHTMARE, a magical menagerie, and more
• shaved dark hair; “iceberg, squall, hypothermia, eventual death” blue eyes; “clawed and toothed tattoo” on his back
  • looks “exactly like [his] father” and nothing like his mother
• always wears “funereal” all-black
• in CDTH, he turns 19 (born November 11)
• drives a BMW inherited from his father
• lives at the Barns, inherited from his father
• reckless, belligerent, full of guilt
• Catholic; attends church every Sunday
• gay; worships his boyfriend Adam Parrish every rare chance he gets 
• fiercely loyal to and selective about those he loves: Gansey, Blue, Adam, Declan & Matthew. full stop.

Declan Lynch

• neither dreamer nor dreamed; the eldest Lynch brother
  • legal guardian of his two brothers since they lost their parents
  • fiercely loves and protects his brothers; curses his father for their situation
  • believes he is the son of Mór Ó Corra, not Aurora Lynch
• generically handsome, with his father’s “nose and curled dark hair” and “very blue eyes”
• usually seen in a dull and forgettable suit and tie, but with not-forgettable shoes
• in CDTH, he is 21
• drives a Volvo
• lives at a town house in Alexandria, inherited from his father
• a keeper of secrets; a lying liar who lies; a fantastic storyteller
• very deliberately cultivates a “dull and forgettable” persona
• pursuing “the dullest possible degree in political science”
• political intern for Senator Jim Rankin
  • once wanted to be a senator or congressman himself, but it’s too high-profile and thus dangerous for his family
• known for conversational stylings such as “Here’s the situation,” “Let’s focus on the real action item,” “This is what it’s going to take to close this deal,” “In the interest of clearing the air,” “This created a situation that put me into a difficult place”
• texts with his index finger on one hand and his thumb on the other
• secretly collects art and “beautiful, specific phrases that he would not let himself use in public”
• secretly has “an illuminated, specific smile no one would ever see”
• views Wednesdays as “days of bad news”
  • (his father was murdered on a Wednesday)
• dated three Ashley’s in a row
• is now dating Jordan, for whom he breaks his own rules

Matthew Lynch

• a dream; the youngest Lynch brother
  • has “a forged birth certificate and no fingerprints”; Niall bought his social security number on the black market
  • possibly does not have internal organs
• has curly blond hair
• horrible fashion sense: ugly hats and novelty socks
• in CDTH, he is about a month shy of turning 18
• not interested in driving; failed his driver’s test three times
• lives with Declan in the Alexandria town house
• a student at Thomas Aquinas; an orchestra member; a soccer player
• an absolute sweetheart but “an excruciatingly messy eater, a decidedly lazy student, and not very bright”
• always in motion, always making noise
• loves puns, jokes about Declan, jokes about himself, birthdays and rituals
• like Ronan’s other dreamthings, is inexplicably and unconsciously drawn to Great Falls

★

Hennessy

• a dreamer; the original Jordan Hennessy
  • only dreams copies of herself; gains a flower tattoo on her throat each time she does; believes that the thirteenth copy will kill her
  • constantly resetting her phone alarm for 18 or 20 minutes to prevent herself from dreaming
• an art forger and an artist; prefers to work at night
• has dark skin; “eyes like a miracle and a smile like a nuclear accident”; natural hair; floral tattoos on her neck and fingers; a nose ring; a leather jacket
• has “a face that looked like it was smiling even if she wasn’t smiling”
• has a London accent
• was raised in London by her artist mother then in Pennsylvania by her art collector father
• “would rather bleed out than date a boring white man in last year’s suit” (unlike Jordan)
• believes she was “born to die young”
• drinks as a coping mechanism
• likes dogs
• previously used sex as a coping mechanism
• bi/pan
• Jordan calls her Heloise as a joke

Jordan

• a dream; the first copy of Jordan Hennessy
  • the “most complex” copy, with “over a decade of her own memories and experience”
  • was dreamt shortly after Hennessy’s mother died; went to the funeral in Hennessy’s place
  • to the outside world, all the copies share Hennessy’s identity
  • the only copy to survive the Moderators’ attack in CDTH
• an art forger; doesn’t do originals; prefers to work at night
• drives a Toyota Supra won in a grudge match
• “Jordan didn’t believe in either relaxing or being casual”
• “She was Jordan, and she was the girl who didn’t fall apart.”
• says “Crumbs” in lieu of curse words

June

• a dream; the second copy of Jordan Hennessy
  • the “most complex copy after Jordan”
  • to the outside world, all the copies share Hennessy’s identity
• besides Hennessy and Jordan, the other girls “dabble” in forgery but are “more properly copyists”
• unlike the others, has straightened hair and works at a bank
• hard-working, loyal, practical
• drinks as a coping mechanism (like Hennessy)
• likes dogs (like Hennessy) and also cats (unlike Hennessy)
• is killed during the Moderators’ attack in CDTH

Madox

• a dream; the third copy of Jordan Hennessy
  • to the outside world, all the copies share Hennessy’s identity
• besides Hennessy and Jordan, the other girls “dabble” in forgery but are “more properly copyists”
• angry all the time
• is killed during the Moderators’ attack in CDTH

Brooklyn

• a dream; the sixth copy of Jordan Hennessy
  • to the outside world, all the copies share Hennessy’s identity
• besides Hennessy and Jordan, the other girls “dabble” in forgery but are “more properly copyists”
• hypersexual; bi/pan (like Hennessy)
• is killed during the Moderators’ attack in CDTH

Trinity

• a dream; the ninth copy of Jordan Hennessy
  • to the outside world, all the copies share Hennessy’s identity
• besides Hennessy and Jordan, the other girls “dabble” in forgery but are “more properly copyists”
• pensive, self-deprecating
• is killed during the Moderators’ attack in CDTH

Farrah

• a dream; the fourth copy of Jordan Hennessy
• had an affair with a man who “was, like, forty-five, and married”
• committed suicide by shooting herself, pre-CDTH

Alba

• a dream; the fifth copy of Jordan Hennessy
  • the last copy given her name by Hennessy
• died in a car crash, pre-CDTH

Jay

• a dream; the seventh copy of Jordan Hennessy
• Hennessy hated her for sharing her mother’s name (“sort of”)
• “passed out in the swimming pool and never woke up” after a huge argument with Hennessy, pre-CDTH

Octavia

• a dream; the eighth copy of Jordan Hennessy
• bitter and resentful
• died due to mixing drugs and alcohol, pre-CDTH

[Nameless]

• a dream; the tenth copy of Jordan Hennessy
• after helping Jordan save Hennessy in CDTH, dies before she gets to live

★

Bryde

• a dreamer; initially appears as an omnipresent voice in Ronan’s dreams
• has “intense and clever” eyes and a “hawkish” nose; tawny hair; tall
• notorious (and feared) among Moderators and criminals
• according to Ronan, the way he carries himself makes him look “like a hero”

★

Adam Parrish

• a psychic; a Harvard student; Ronan’s boyfriend
• has a “gaunt” face’ “dusty” hair, “charmingly and unevenly cropped short as if by self-piloted scissors in a bathroom mirror”
• deaf in his left ear
• drives a dreamt motorcycle in CDTH
• wears a dreamt watch which shows “the correct time for wherever Ronan was in the world”
  • gave his old watch to Opal
• a social chameleon, a quick adapter
  • “collects” criers at Harvard (see: The Crying Club)
  • has a Virginia accent but hides it among his peers
  • lies about his family history

Chainsaw

• a dreamt raven; a psychopomp
• is “murder-black”; often found on Ronan’s shoulder like a familiar
• “like Ronan, all the parts that made her interesting were hidden from the casual glance”
• can communicate with Ronan (and Adam)
  • Kerah = Ronan
  • krek = dreamthing
  • krek-krek = Opal
  • snack
  • kreker (cracker)
  • Atom = Adam
• fond of Ronan; despises Opal and other dreamthings
• trash is “the one thing Chainsaw always desperately wanted and was not allowed to have”

Opal

• a dreamt girl; a psychopomp
• looks like “a scrawny, hollow-eyed child” but with “densely furred” goat hooves
• has a “small, breathy child’s voice” and “big black eyes”
• speaks Latin (the Ronan dialect), English, and Chainsaw
  • calls Ronan Kerah
• hangs on to Adam’s watch from “long ago”

Gasoline

• a dream boar, the size of a minivan
• has “small, intelligent eyes and wiry, metallic hair” and no genitalia
• puffs into a cloud of smoke when startled
• its cries sound like a bird’s

Moderators & Visionaries

Carmen Farooq-Lane

• a Moderator; sister to a dreamer
• has long dark hair and long eyelashes; wears a neat linen suit
• a consummate Type A professional, rule-abiding, cool-headed
• a self-described “excellent” cook who “believe[s] in good food treated well”
• lives in Chicago
• “She believed something bad was coming to the world, and she believed she knew where it was coming from, generally. She believed most people didn’t get a chance to make a difference. She believed that she did. She believed that she didn’t know what else she would be doing now if she wasn’t doing this. / She believed deep down inside that wasn’t really enough to believe in, and that made her even angrier.”

Parsifal Bauer

• a Visionary
• “extraordinarily tall and extraordinarily hunched”; shoulder-length blond hair; wears glasses
• has a German accent
• an awkward, antisocial, passive young man
• very picky about his food, very picky about his life (inasmuch as he can control aspects thereof)
• does not have a driver’s license but knows how to drive
• his impossible dying wish was a slice of his mother’s Bienenstich
• dies in CDTH after a vision that leads Farooq-Lane to Liliana

Liliana

• a Visionary
  • “jumps” around her own timeline, as all Visionaries do; will live to be quite old
• has “green-glass eyes and a coral-colored mouth and freckles all across her translucent skin”; long, thick red hair
• has a magnetic, calming presence
• Lock guesses that she wants stability and to keep people safe from herself/ her visions

★

Lock

• the leader of the Moderators
• motivated by “the sense of purpose, […] the acquisition of trust, […] the eventual building of a pyramid of humans who assumed he would get the job done right the first time”
• has a dog

Ramsay

• a Moderator
• Farooq-Lane describes him as “an overgrown frat boy”
• a corporate consultant who speaks “the five different languages most commonly used in the global business market”

Nikolenko

• a Moderator
• “a short, stone-faced woman with short, stone-colored hair”

Bellos

• a Moderator
• loses his arm in the attack on Declan’s town house in CDTH

Boudicca

The New Fenian

• originally a copy of Niall Lynch, but has been an individual for almost 20 years
• looks an awful lot like Ronan, but off in significant ways
  • has chin-length curling dark hair
• has Niall’s memories, so he sees Niall’s sons as his own
• has “a bit of an Irish accent, mostly on the Rs”

Mór Ó Corra

• the subject of The Dark Lady
• Aurora Lynch looks just like her, but softer

Minor & Cameo Characters

Niall Lynch

• a dreamer; the Lynch family patriarch
• “a wild person, more alive than anyone else Ronan had ever met, more awake than anyone else Ronan had ever met”
• a “wild, charming [schemer], [a] wiry, far-eyed [god]”
• from Belfast, Northern Ireland
• had a Northern Irish accent
• sold his dreamthings at the Fairy Market, posing as a collector rather than a dreamer
• deceased pre-CDTH

Aurora Lynch

• a dream; the Lynch family matriarch
• “a golden dream with the borderless sky reflected in her eyes”
• a “dulcet, soft-spoken [friend], patient as buds in spring”
• deceased pre-CDTH 

Richard Campbell Gansey III, aka Gansey

• “the most academic and mythic person [Ronan] knew”
• Ronan’s best friend, “who might not have saved Ronan’s life in high school, but at the very least kept it mostly out of Ronan’s reach so that he could not take it down and break it”
• currently taking a “gap year cross-country road trip” with his girlfriend, Blue

Blue Sargent

• daughter of a psychic
• one of the few people Ronan loves 
• has a “ferocious sense of right and wrong”
• physically small, but fierce
• currently taking a “gap year cross-country road trip” with her boyfriend, Gansey

Mr. Gray

• killed Niall Lynch on Colin Greenmantle’s orders, pre-CDTH
• tries to help the Lynches when he can

★

J.H. Hennessy, aka Jay

• a dreamer; Hennessy’s mother
• a mysterious “troubled genius artist”
• no one ever knew her first name
• an alcoholic
• Hennessy witnessed her suicide ten years pre-CDTH

Bill Dower

• Hennessy’s father
• an art collector; “a race-car driver and kit-car fabricator”
• oblivious to Jay’s and Hennessy’s dreaming
• “Everything he said came out as a race-car metaphor. Before one met Bill Dower, it seemed impossible for everything to eventually tie back into racing, but after one met him, it was hard to forget.”

Cassatt

• Hennessy’s pet ferret, dreamed by her mother
• “Cassatt had been a great pet. He didn’t smell and ate nothing except prescription drugs. / Until Jay died and he fell asleep forever.”

★

Caomhán Browne

• a dreamer
• killed by Moderators just before Chapter 1 of CDTH

Nathan Farooq-Lane

• a dreamer; a serial murderer; Carmen Farooq-Lane’s brother
• he “wanted to see the world burn”
• uses scissors as a personal symbol
• killed by Moderators at the end of Chapter 1 of CDTH

TJ Sharma

• host of the DC McMansion party where we meet Jordan
• technically Jordan’s ex, though their relationship was short and he thought she was Hennessy
  • the previous owner of Jordan’s Supra
• a bank VP, “a slender-boned Peter Pan, a boy in a grown-up world, or vice versa”; a man-child

Breck Myrtle

• Jordan forges his signature at TJ’s party; he subsequently breaks into Hennessy & Jordan’s mansion
• has an invite to sell at the Fairy Market
• fences art “out of a shop in Takoma Park and also on eBay”
• comes from a family of petty criminals
• “All of the Myrtles had long faces with tiny eyes, and even when at their most benevolent, they had the look of something that might creep out of the dark to eat your body after you died.”

Jeff Pick & Jeff Robinson

• break into Hennessy’s place with Breck Myrtle

Bernadette Feinman

• a Fairy Market gatekeeper
• TJ’s “Yoda, [his] mentor”
• has silver hair, rose-tinted round glasses; wears pantsuits
• smokes clove cigarettes

The Crying Club

• Fletcher (he/him), Eliot (they/them), Gillian (she/her), Benjy (he/him)
• a group of Harvard students whom Adam found and “collected”, one by one, when they were crying
• “Adam’s friends were not remotely the same species [as the Aglionbros]. They were not even the same species as each other; they were peculiar, distinct individuals. They were also more openly and gleefully queer than any Aglionby student Ronan had ever met.”

Angie

• an acquaintance of Niall’s, whom Declan & Ronan meet at the Fairy Market

Heydar

• an acquaintance of Niall’s, whom Declan & Ronan meet at the Fairy Market

Rex Busque

• the most recent seller of The Dark Lady
• bears a grudge because he was previously caught trying to sell one of Hennessy’s forgeries, despite her cautions

Shawna Wells

• one of Liliana’s victims, along with her husband Darren
• her kids, Jenson and Taylor, survive the encounter

Mary

• a dreamer with a house full of dreamthings
• an elderly, welcoming lady who offers biscotti to Parsifal and Farooq-Lane
• killed by Moderators towards the end of CDTH

Jason Morgenthaler

• has an encounter with Liliana at his author event
• a “very famous picture-book author” and an entrepreneur
• a child-hating jerk

Lin Draper

• “mother of three” in attendance at Morgenthaler’s 10Fox event
• her daughter India asks to hold Liliana’s hand and is bustled off by Lin

Father O’Hanlon

• priest at St. Eithne, the Lynches’ church
• wears “deep green vestments that seemed so strengthened with body odor that they should’ve been able to stand up even without Father O’Hanlon inside them. Ronan spent most of confession warring over whether or not he should confess how odiferous the process was.”

Senko

• runs a garage and tattoo parlor; does Jordan’s tattoos (to match Hennessy’s)
• of indeterminate age
• a slow driver and a slow worker
• has a dog, “a tiny female Yorkie named Greg”

Eliot, Pratt, Matt

• three of the guys who work at Senko’s shop

Mags Harmonhouse & Olly Harmonhouse

• two of Liliana’s victims
• a pair of elderly sisters who own Rider House, where Liliana and Dabney Pitts were staying

Dabney Pitts

• a resident of Rider House; not a brave man
• finds Mags and Olly’s bodies, shuts Liliana in a freezer

Welt

• (mentioned only; does not appear in CDTH)
• Dabney Pitts’s weed buddy

Wendy

• the waitress at Shenandoah Café

Cormac

• the Visionary who showed Farooq-Lane the end of the world

Table of Contents

Each item number corresponds with that section’s page number.

1. Overview
2. Plot Summary & Content Warnings
3. Cast of Characters
4. Worldbuilding & Vocabulary