Literature / Evernight

Evernight Academy, where high school literally sucks. ^note Top-left to top-right: Evernight, and Stargazer; bottom-left to bottom-right: Hourglass and Afterlife. Not pictured is the fifth book and Spin-Off Balthazar

Evernight is a series of young adult Paranormal Romance novels, published between 2008 and 2012. The series was written by Claudia Gray (real name Amy Vincent); Evernight was her debut novel.

The series primarily revolves around Bianca Olivier, a teenage girl attending the mysterious Evernight Academy, where she doesn't seem to fit in with the snooty, predatory students. Bianca falls in love with a fellow outsider named Lucas Ross, but their relationship is threatened when they find themselves caught on opposite sides of a deadly conflict between vampires and the humans that hunt them. Surrounded by enemies on both sides and not knowing who to trust, Bianca and Lucas can only rely on each other to survive and uncover the secrets behind Evernight Academy. The series often draws comparisons to The Twilight Saga, for obvious reasons.

The fifth book, Balthazar, is technically a direct continuation of the series, but focuses on the secondary characters, Balthazar More and Skye Tierney. It revolves around the vampire Balthazar's mission to protect Skye from his evil sire, whilst coming to terms with his dark past and struggling with his growing affection for Skye.

The books, in order, are:

• Evernight (2008)
• Stargazer (2009)
• Hourglass (2010)
• Afterlife (2011)
• Balthazar (2012) - a Spin-Off of the main series

Gray has also written two short stories, "Free" (2008) and "Bloodshed" (2010) set in the Evernight universe, which were published in the anthology series Love Stories With Bite; they are prequels revolving around supporting character Patrice Deveraux.

The character page can be viewed here.

Due to the sheer volume, spoilers for the first book are unmarked.

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Evernight contains examples of:

Tropes A to C

• Academy of Adventure: Evernight Academy is the main setting of three of the five novels and solving the school's mysteries is at the heart of the plot.
• Adults Are Useless: Played with. Most of the adults are either oblivious, unhelpful or outright trying to murder the primarily teenaged protagonists. This isn’t quite as clear-cut as it seems though, as some of the helpful characters look to be in their teens but are actually hundreds of years old due to being vampires.
• Aerith and Bob: On one hand, you get names like Kate, Lucas, Adrian, Bianca, Courtney and Vic. On the other, you have names like Charity, Balthazar, Patrice, and Ranulf. This is justified in that most of the characters with unusual names are vampires, who are hundreds of years old and from different cultures. Bianca actually lampshades Balthazar’s weird name, stating that only he could’ve pulled it off.
• Age-Gap Romance: A slight example between Bianca and Lucas. When they first get together she assumes he's sixteen or nearly seventeen, the same age as her. However, she subsequently learns he's actually "nineteen and change", making him three years older. Three years isn't that big a deal (and she herself doesn't find it to be the most shocking thing he hid from her considering he turns out to be a vampire hunter, while she's part vampire) though they only just qualify for the "half your age plus seven" rule. It's worth noting she's legally over the age of consent for Massachusetts (sixteen years old) and they don't actually have sex until she's nearly eighteen, by which time Lucas is almost twenty-one and the gap isn't so notable anymore (Their First Time happens in the state of Pennsylvania, where the age of consent is sixteen, so they're still legally in the clear as well). Considering Bianca's own parents have centuries between them and her other love interest Balthazar is chronologically around three hundred years older (and physically nineteen), it's unsurprising she doesn't find it that weird, while Lucas himself never got to have much of a childhood/adolescence before meeting Bianca.
• Alien Blood: Wraiths have silver blood. Bianca is actually surprised they have blood at all considering they're ghosts, though if they're injured in a corporeal form they do indeed bleed. Their blood is also usually toxic to vampires, burning them like acid.
• All-Ghouls School: Evernight Academy is a school for vampires to find sanctuary and learn how to fit into modern society (the students look like teenagers or can pass as teenagers, while the teachers are vampires who have managed to keep up with societal changes and can pass on what they know). In the second book, it gets haunted by ghosts as well, though this is a cause for alarm as wraiths and vampires usually avoid each other. Evernight also lets in some human students, though they aren't supposed to find out about the Academy's true nature. Why exactly the headmistress Mrs Bethany has chosen to let humans enter the school after all this time is one of the driving mysteries of the series.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Balthazar's love for Bianca, who is in love with Lucas, forms a subplot in the series. Courtney (along with several other girls) has a crush on Balthazar but he’s only interested in Bianca.
• All Myths Are True: Averted: vampires and ghosts are real, but apparently witches and werewolves are not, or at least no one has ever found proof they exist. Psychic mediums - those who can commune with the dead - are also revealed to exist.
• An Ice Person: Wraiths have cryokinetic-like powers; the temperature drastically lowers when they're around, they can make frost creep along the walls or cover a whole room with ice.
• And the Adventure Continues: Balthazar ends with Balthazar and Skye preparing to ride off into the night to an uncertain future, but glad that the Big Bad is defeated and they can finally be together.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: In Hourglass, this happens to both Lucas, who becomes a vampire and Bianca, who becomes a wraith. Unlike many other instances of this trope, it actually works out okay for them in the end.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Erich, who is staked by Lucas after he realizes he intends to kill Raquel.
  • Balthazar mentions that back when he killed humans, he deliberately chose these kinds of people, though he ultimately still felt bad about it, wondering if it really made him any better.
• Back from the Dead: Lucas (twice). In Hourglass, Charity kills him but he comes back as a vampire. He then gets stabbed by a stake soaked in holy water, leaving him as good as dead, but Bianca uses her wraith powers to resurrect him - permanently, as a human.
• Battle Couple: Several examples, including:
  • Kate and Eduardo, who are a vampire hunting couple. This is implied to have been the case with Kate and her first husband too, the latter of whom was killed by vampires.
  • Raquel and Dana become this after Raquel joins Black Cross, with Dana helping to teach her how to fight.
  • Celia and Adrian work together on a few occasions to fight off Black Cross to protect their daughter and do the same again in Afterlife, though this time it’s against fellow vampires.
  • Lucas and Bianca fight together on a few occasions (though Lucas initially does most of the fighting due to Bianca's lack of experience).
  • Mrs Bethany and her husband Christopher were both members of Black Cross – which was in fact how they met – and went on patrols together.
• The Beautiful Elite: The 'Evernight types'. They're the top of the food chain at Evernight Academy, are extremely beautiful, elegant and otherworldly, and generally leave the other students awed and intimidated - that goes both humans and some of the other vampires (in the latter case it's primarily vampires who have lost touch with the modern world and struggle to fit in).
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Bianca never wanted to be apart from Lucas again, to the point of trying to persuade him to let her turn him into a vampire (which would trigger her own transformation into a full vampire). By the end of the third book, they’ve both died and become what they most feared; Bianca is a wraith and Lucas is a vampire, both of them stuck this way together for eternity.
  • It's revealed that for centuries, Mrs Bethany has desperately wanted to be reunited with her dead husband. She is...moments before they're both permanently killed due to Christopher trying to stop her evil plans.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: A minor example, but Patrice mentions having learnt about wraiths from Marie Leveau, the ‘Voodoo Queen of New Orleans’, back in the 19th century, who was apparently a psychic and supernatural expert in this series.
• Berserk Button: Don’t mention ghosts…or anything to do with the supernatural around Raquel. Justified, seeing as she was sexually abused by a ghost and stalked by a vampire (not that she knew he was a vampire at the time).
• Beta Couple:
  • Raquel and Dana’s romantic relationship forms a minor subplot in Hourglass. Because the books are primarily told from Bianca's perspective, their relationship doesn't get as much focus.
  • Craig and Britnee in Balthazar. The novel is mostly focused on Balthazar and Skye's burgeoning romance, although Craig and Britnee's relationship has an affect on the plot, mostly in the form of causing angst for Skye given she used to date Craig until he dumped her for Britnee.
• Better as Friends: Bianca and Balthazar decide this in Stargazer; while Bianca has some attraction to him and cares for him deeply, she just doesn't love him romantically. Balthazar isn't exactly thrilled by this, but he respects that Bianca is staying true to herself rather than choosing the easy option and eventually stops thinking of her as a potential romantic partner.
• Betty and Veronica: Gender-swapped version with Lucas as Veronica and Balthazar as Betty for Bianca. Even before it’s revealed that Lucas is a member of Black Cross, he’s regarded as a troublemaker who never fit in at Evernight and Balthazar is regarded as the more sensible, safer choice. Bianca ends up choosing Lucas, especially as she never actually loved Balthazar as anything more than a friend.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Black Cross (or some of them at least), the wraiths, Charity, and Mrs Bethany are all major antagonists for most of the series, and they generally all have their own goals or are directly in opposition to each other. On some occasions, one antagonist is willing to help the protagonists (or does something that inadvertently helps them) purely to screw over another antagonist, such as the wraiths rescuing Bianca and Lucas from Charity's tribe in Hourglass.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Madison, sort of. She was always clearly bitchy, but it takes Skye (and by extension, the reader) a while to realise just how bad she is, especially when she turns her animosity on Skye.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Evernight ends with Bianca and Lucas being forced to part ways for their own safety, but they vow to always love one another and find a way to be together. They both hold onto the hope that they will see each other again.
  • At the end of Stargazer Bianca runs away from Evernight to be with Lucas; they're happy to be together but it's tainted by the fact Bianca has to leave her family and friends behind (and didn't have a chance to reconcile with her parents beforehand), she and Lucas are currently stuck with a Black Cross cell who will likely kill her if they figure out she's a vampire, plus ghosts are still coming after her.
  • Afterlife: Lucas' humanity is restored, Bianca and Lucas can finally be together openly and with her parents' acceptance, Mrs Bethany has been defeated, and the vampires, wraiths and humans of Evernight are saved. It's not a straight Happily Ever After though, due to a few factors: Lucas will inevitably die someday though he says that living on in Bianca is fine by him, Balthazar is still all alone (though this is resolved in the Spin-Off when he falls in love with Skye), Lucas will probably never see his mother again and Black Cross will be hunting them.
  • The fifth book's ending. The main bitterness comes from the fact Skye and Balthazar will have to face the constant threat of vampires coming after Skye for her blood, and her parents are still in denial about their son's death and will now lose their daughter too. However Redgrave has finally gotten his comeuppance for all his atrocities, there's a possibility Charity and Balthazar could repair their relationship, Skye comes to terms with Dakota's death and her powers, and she and Balthazar are happy together.
• Blessed with Suck: Skye, following Afterlife; her psychic abilities give her terrifying visions of people suffering sudden or violent deaths every time she happens across the place where they died, she actually physically experiences their last moments, she has no way to turn it off and dangerous vampires are now constantly out to get her because of them. It gets better when she starts to learn to cope with them more effectively.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Black Cross helps protect innocent mortals from dangerous vampires, but they don't discriminate between the evil vampires and the ones that are actually good people. Most of the Evernight vampires don't kill people and simply want to live in peace, and so view Black Cross as nothing but murderers; however, they also tend to overlook the fact there are many vampires out there murdering humans left and right with no actual consequences.
• Blood Magic: How baby vampires are created and vampires are turned human again. It's a bit vague in the former case, although it seems to involve a blood exchange between a vampire and wraith, which temporarily enables vampires to conceive a child. In the latter case, stabbing or slashing a wraith and vampire with the same blade and allowing their blood to mingle can result in a wraith being drawn into a vampire, which is implied to destroy the wraith while restoring the vampire to a living state. In the climax of Afterlife, Bianca also figures out a way to heal and resurrect Lucas as a human by exchanging blood with him in a way that harms neither of them; it's implied it only worked because Bianca is still part vampire even now she's a wraith and had previously drank Lucas' blood, with Balthazar further speculating that it only worked because of The Power of Love.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: The main plot of the series involves Lucas, a human, falling in love with Bianca, a half vampire and later wraith).
• Broken Bird:
  • Raquel. Being neglected, mocked and marginalized by her parents who clearly favour her sister, terrorised by a ghost only she can see since childhood and forced to attend a creepy, snobby boarding school where she gets bullied and stalked has made her very cynical and snarky.
  • Skye. Her older brother was killed in a freak accident, causing her parents to withdraw into themselves, never talking about it, constantly working away from home and leaving Skye to deal with her grief alone. Her boyfriend dumped her for another girl shortly after sleeping with her for the first time, and she survived a vampire war/ghost apocalypse only to be stuck with powers that cause her to see traumatic visions of people dying, which also makes her a target for evil vampires who seek to enslave her.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Celia and Adrian towards Mrs Bethany, when they learn she intends to sacrifice their daughter to make herself mortal and had been planning this all along.
  • Bianca temporarily towards her parents in Stargazer, though she eventually gets over it after realizing that, although they lied to her, they truly love her.
  • Mrs Bethany towards Black Cross in her backstory.
• Burger Fool: In Hourglass, Bianca takes a waitress job at Hamburger Rodeo, a tacky cowboy-themed fast-food restaurant where you have to call the food by the restaurant's silly names (e.g. they're not cheese fries, they're Cheesy Wranglers) and the manager is a controlling jerk whose only concern when Bianca faints is whether she could potentially sue the workplace over it.
• The Bus Came Back: Patrice returns in Afterlife, after being absent from the last two books.
• But Not Too Black: Patrice, who's of mixed ancestry, was born in the South of America prior to the Civil War and was 'black enough' to be enslaved, but 'white enough' to be considered 'attractive' and groomed for prostitution. Bianca is understandably disgusted and horrified when Patrice recounts this. Luckily, after Patrice became a vampire, she "didn't have to put up with that anymore".
• Calling the Old Man Out: Bianca does this to both her father and her mother when she finds out they have been lying to her about the circumstances of her birth since she was born.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Bianca was dead right about Mrs Bethany being bad news.
  • Lucas turns out to be right about Bianca's parents lying to her (just not quite in the same way he initially thought), about Charity being a nutcase and about Mrs Bethany having an ulterior motive for inviting human students into Evernight for the first time.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Bianca’s brooch and bracelet, both gifts from Lucas. After becoming a wraith, she discovers she can use them to create a corporeal form for herself and 'fast travel' to their location, as they were objects she had a strong attachment to in life. They're even more potent as they're both made of materials that were once living (like Bianca herself); her brooch is jet and her bracelet is coral).
  • Stakes soaked in holy water. They're brought up a few tine in Afterlife as one of the most effective, and feared, methods if killing a vampire. Lucas is stabbed with such a stake in the climax, forcing Bianca to exchange blood with him to save him.
• Cool Old Guy: Mr Watanabe, an elderly vampire hunter.

Tropes D to L

• Dances and Balls: Evernight Academy holds an annual event called the Autumn Ball; it's essentially a more formal version of prom night and is the biggest social event of the year. However, things do have a tendency to go sideways. In Evernight, Bianca accidentally bites Lucas while they're kissing, revealing she's a vampire. In Stargazer, some wraiths crash the party and cause giant icicles to fall on the dancefloor. In Afterlife, they kick it up a notch and possess several people to deliver a warning to Mrs Bethany.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Bianca's parents are not very impressed by Lucas, though they tolerate him in the first book. Things rapidly go downhill after he turns out to be a member of Black Cross, the sworn enemy of vampires. However, by the end of the series, they seem to grudgingly accept the relationship, given that he genuinely makes their daughter happy and is devoted to her.
• Daywalking Vampire: Sunlight only kills vampires if they haven't fed for a while; other than that, it doesn't really seem to bother them, though their eyes can be more sensitive to bright light.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Lucas dies in Bianca's arms after having his throat torn out by Charity. He gets better.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: A downplayed and deconstructed version with Balthazar and Bianca. She bears a strong resemblance to his Lost Lenore Jane, and Bianca explicitly states that Balthazar "Wants me [Bianca] to be her [Jane]". Unfortunately for Balthazar, Bianca isn't Jane and is already in love with someone else. Eventually, Balthazar realises this and decides to stop pursuing Bianca, settling to just be friends with her.
• Driving Question: The overarching driving question of the series is "Why did Mrs Bethany admit human students to Evernight?"
• Elaborate University High: Evernight Academy, which is situated in the grounds of an old, Gothic-style country manor first built in the 1700's. Justified, in that it's actually a sanctuary for vampires, so it makes sense it'll be more spacious than the average school.
• Emergency Transformation: Adrian turned Celia into a vampire after she was mortally wounded in the Great Fire of London. It turned out pretty well for them, as they’ve been happily married for centuries.
• Et Tu, Brute?:
  • Bianca is horrified when her best friend Raquel betrays her to Black Cross. Raquel wasn’t being deliberately malicious though and later regrets it.
  • Christopher was betrayed, robbed and murdered by his friends.
• Evil All Along: Mrs Bethany. Bianca always thought she was shifty and some of her actions certainly weren’t benevolent, but they were understandable from a pragmatic point of view. However, it becomes blatantly obvious by the fourth book that Bianca was right to suspect her.
• Evil Has Standards: Mrs Bethany always upholds the rules and traditions of Evernight Academy, even if it means giving sanctuary to people she despises.
• Face–Heel Turn: Mrs Bethany pulled one in her backstory, going from vampire hunter to human-hunting vampire, after her husband was murdered and the killers went free.
• Fantastic Racism: Vampires and humans are pretty prejudiced against each other and everybody hates and fears ghosts (the feeling's generally mutual).
• Faux Affably Evil: Redgrave comes across as this; even when committing heinous acts, he still remains pretty calm and well-mannered. However, the moment things don't go his way, his true nature comes out. By the end of Balthazar, he's not even trying to be charming anymore.
• Fingore: In Afterlife, Lucas punches a tree until his skin is shredded and his finger bones are exposed. Being a vampire, he heals quickly, but it's still horrific.
• Fire and Ice Love Triangle: Lucas is fire (passionate and bold, with a Hair-Trigger Temper) and Balthazar is ice (somewhat aloof and detached, calm and levelheaded) for Bianca ( she picks Lucas). Ironically enough, Lucas starts out being rather cold to Bianca whilst Balthazar is warm and friendly to her, though their personalities generally fit the opposite.
• First Guy Wins: Lucas, the first love interest Bianca meets, is the one she sticks with through to the end of the series.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Balthazar's sister Charity isn't revealed to be alive (well, undead) and a vampire until Stargazer, but there's one moment in Evernight that foreshadows this; when Balthazar tells Bianca that if he had the choice, he'd go back and "die with [his] parents" he only mentions his parents being dead, not his sister.
  • Mrs Bethany's name provides deceptively-obvious foreshadowing as to her backstory and motives: Mrs indicates she was married at some point but what happened to her husband?.
• From Bad to Worse: Hourglass is essentially From Bad To Worse: The Novel. It ends with both main protagonists dead, though they get better.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: Charity is one of the standout examples. She thinks the whole concept of Evernight Academy to teach vampires to blend in and live peacefully alongside humans is utterly ridiculous and that not hunting and killing people is denying their true natures. Redgrave, likewise, revels in being a vampire, as do most of his tribe (save for Balthazar).
• Garden of Love: In the first book, Bianca and Lucas have their first kiss in a gazebo on the grounds of Evernight Academy, which is also Bianca's first ever kiss. The romantic moment is ruined when Bianca loses control of her vampire nature and bites Lucas, causing him to be knocked unconscious, though it still results in a Relationship Upgrade. Later in Stargazer, the two meet and reconcile at the same gazebo after they temporarily broke up.
• Ghostly Chill: A surefire sign there are wraiths about is the room suddenly getting much colder than normal.
• Good All Along:
  • Christopher. Yes, he was trying to kill Bianca, but it's only because he believes (rightly) that she was born to be a wraith and that, as a wraith, she would be able to help many people, whilst as a vampire, she would merely “be one of many”. He saves Bianca and Lucas from vampires on a number of occasions, attempts to communicate with her to explain his actions, offers her helpful advice and support and later sacrifices himself to save her.
  • Britnee. She was never actually evil, rather coming across as selfish and insensitive, but turns out to actually be quite nice.
• Gothic Horror: Has some of the trappings of this genre, such as Haunted Heroines (both literally and figuratively), a fancy but eerie Old School Building with a secret past (and ghosts!) as the main setting, forbidden love, brooding love interests with Dark and Troubled Pasts, a reasonable amount of Angst, vampires and more than a few Dark Secrets dragged to light. It's even set primarily in Lovecraft Country.
• Grew a Spine:
  • Bianca, with it being a major part of her Character Development.
  • To a lesser extent, Lucas, as well - he already tended to speak his mind and make his own decisions, but learns to do what he believes is right or what he wants to do instead of blindly following orders.
• Happily Married:
  • Celia and Adrian. Which is really saying something, considering they've been married for around four centuries.
  • Mrs Bethany and Christopher were happily married until he was murdered and she went mad from grief.
  • Kate and Eduardo seem pretty happy despite the conflict between Eduardo and Kate's son from her first marriage. She's distraught when he gets killed.
  • Mr Watanabe implies he and his wife Noriko were very happy when she was alive.
• Haunted Fetter: Wraiths are drawn to objects they had a strong emotional attachment to in life, such as gifts from a loved one, which can help them use or amplify their abilities. They can use these objects to take on a corporeal form and teleport to the location of the object. Objects made of materials that were once alive too are even more potent, such as jet (wood) and coral. After becoming a wraith, Bianca has a jet brooch given to her by Lucas, which she regards as a symbol of their love for other, as one of her anchors to the mortal world.
• Haunted Heroine: Skye grew up in a haunted house, is traumatised by the sudden death of her brother and then becomes a psychic.
• Heroic BSoD: Lucas goes through one after Bianca dies. It gets him killed.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Bianca attempts one in Hourglass, agreeing to let Charity turn her into a vampire to save Lucas, but a group of wraiths attack allowing them to escape.
  • Christopher sacrifices himself at the end of Afterlife to save Bianca and Maxy.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Black Cross can be this, especially the New York cell, using very brutal methods, refusing to even consider the possibility not all vampires are savage murderers, and being willing to turn on humans who try to defend vampires.
• Horror Hunger: Vampires suffer this if deprived of blood, especially if they're newly made. Lucas gets hit with it especially hard in Afterlife, suffering a case of Warm Blood Bags Are Everywhere.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Balthazar whenever Charity is involved. This can be partly justified by his Big Brother Instinct and feelings of guilt over turning Charity into a vampire, but you would've thought after nearly four centuries, he would've twigged that Charity both hates him and isn't exactly sane. He eventually wises up, but if he'd done so earlier he could've avoided a lot of drama and suffering for everyone.
  • Skye - a girl who receives vivid and traumatic visions of people's deaths when she enters the place where they died - thinks it's a good idea to take a shortcut through a place called Battlefield Gorge.
  • Bianca has a habit of picking this one up. Examples include trusting a random vampire she has just met and going to his apartment, leading her into a trap set up by Charity, even though she knows by now that not all vampires are friendly or trustworthy, and in the same book, sending her parents an email from an internet café even after Lucas told her they could track it and thus find her. It's partly justified by her being very sheltered by her parents and she gets smarter about situations by the end.
  • Lucas, on two occasions. In the first book, telling Bianca his great-great grandfather went to Evernight, when in actual fact no humans had been admitted to Evernight before. In fairness, at the time he believed Bianca was just an ordinary human student, but she could still have mentioned it to her parents or one of the vampire students and aroused their suspicion. Also, jumping in front of Bianca when the vampire hunters try to spray her with holy water. True, he didn’t want his girlfriend being harmed, but in doing so he reveals he himself is part vampire due to allowing Bianca to feed from him, thus destroying any chance he had of negotiating with Black Cross.
  • Bianca’s parents probably take the cake for stupid decisions. If they’d just been honest with Bianca about what she was, they could’ve avoided so much drama and trouble. Granted, they wanted her to have a normal life, but lying to her and keeping her wrapped in cotton wool backfires in spectacular fashion by the second book.
• Immediate Sequel: Afterlife begins just a few hours after Hourglass ended, with dawn breaking and Lucas waking as a vampire. The characters didn't do anything but wait in the interim, as all of them were too tired and grief-stricken.
• In-Universe Nickname:
  • Vic is fond of giving people these. Notably, he calls Bianca 'Binks' and Balthazar 'Balty'.
  • Maxine is called Maxie by just about everyone, with only Christopher calling her by her full name.
• Interspecies Friendship: Vic, a human, and Ranulf, a vampire. Also counts as a Mayfly–December Friendship, as Vic in his teens whilst Ranulf is close to a thousand years old. Vic figures out that Ranulf is a vampire and it doesn't change his opinion of him at all (albeit it explains a lot about some Ranulf's mannerisms), with Ranulf feeling relieved and touched that he can be himself around Vic.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Between Lucas (human, later a vampire, then human again) and Bianca (half vampire, later a wraith).
  • Between Balthazar (a vampire) and Skye (a human). He's initially reluctant to pursue a romance with her for this reason, believing he's too dangerous, although Skye disagrees.
• It's Personal:
  • Lucas reveals that vampires killed his father when he was young, which is part of the reason he hunts vampires.
  • Kate in Hourglass due to the vampires killing both her husbands and trying to kill her son.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Balthazar graciously steps aside to allow Bianca to be Lucas in the first book and again in the second book, seeing that he's the one she truly wants to be with. He also tries this with Skye, due to his rule not to fall in love with humans as it might get them killed (and because of the obvious impracticalities of a vampire dating a human) but Skye’s having none of it and they end up together anyway.
• Jerk Jock:
  • Popular yet loutish Evernight student Erich comes across as this. It turns out he’s much, much worse than that when he begins stalking Raquel, with the intention of murdering her even though it's forbidden.
  • Subverted by well-liked star basketball player Craig. He initially comes across as one, though this is because we mostly see him from Skye's point of view: he dumped her shortly after sleeping with her for the first time for another girl, whilst she was grieving for her dead brother. However, Craig himself admits he made a mistake and that he had been intending to end things with Skye sooner, but put it off due to Dakota's death. He dumped Skye rather than cheat on her and clearly regrets his crappy timing. He also makes a huge effort to help Skye when she gets kidnapped by vampires.
• Kick the Dog: Charity killing Courtney and Lucas, Redgrave killing Jane. They have no motivation to do this beyond tormenting their loved ones and personal amusement.
• Kiss of the Vampire:
  • If the person being bitten is willing, it can be an extremely pleasurable experience, as shown with Lucas and Bianca, and Bianca and Balthazar. It's all but stated that Bianca's parents bite each other during sex, but they were embarrassed and evasive when child Bianca asked if they ever shared blood.
  • Deconstructed somewhat in Afterlife; after Lucas becomes a vampire, he attempts to bite Bianca as part of their usual foreplay, only because she's now a wraith, her blood burns him, putting a bit of a damper on things. Fortunately, as Lucas later becomes human again, this is presumably no longer an issue.
• Knight Templar: Some of the Black Cross cells qualify as this, especially the New York cell; appropriately enough, the organization dates back to when the actual Templars were around. They believe their quest to hunt down vampires is a noble cause and while they do save some innocent humans from vampires, they utterly refuse to contemplate that some vampires aren't a danger to humans and are in fact good people. They don't even regard vampires as people at all and have few qualms about torturing and brutally killing them. They also don't take kindly to humans who sympathize with vampires. This attitude forces Bianca to hide her own vampiric nature from Black Cross; even though she's a relatively harmless teenage girl who has never killed anyone, she and Lucas are both afraid Black Cross would turn on her in an instant if they knew what she was which is exactly what happens in ''Hourglass.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: Ranulf becomes more laid-back and cheerful in comparison with his very stiff, serious earlier self, after befriending wacky Vic.
• Lovecraft Country: Evernight Academy, the primary setting of the series, is a boarding school for vampires and a haunting ground for wraiths located in the hills of Massachusetts. Balthazar is set in Darby Glen, a fictional small town in rural upstate New York, which is threatened to be overrun by vampires and has been the site of some grisly deaths over the centuries.
• Love Makes You Evil: Mrs Bethany did a Face-Heel Turn to get vengeance for her murdered husband and then did a lot of other very immoral things to try and be reunited with him.
• Love Triangle:
  • Bianca, Lucas and Balthazar are in a love triangle in the first two books. Lucas and Balthazar are both in love with Bianca; she wants to be with Lucas, although she does develop an attraction to Balthazar in Stargazer. Even after breaking up with Lucas, Bianca decides she and Balthazar are ill-suited because she doesn't feel the same. Balthazar is accepting of this and of her eventual decision to get back with Lucas.
  • Courtney and Bianca are both rivals for Balthazar's affections...well, at least Courtney thinks so. Bianca is never really all that interested in Balthazar romantically and Balthazar makes it pretty clear that he dislikes Courtney (though he's usually polite to her unless she's bullying other students), not that it’ll deter her.

Tropes M to P

• The Masquerade: Most humans are unaware of the existence of vampires (save for the hunters of Black Cross and those that assist them). The vampires generally prefer to keep it that way for their own peace of mind and safety. Black Cross specifically mentions this as being a problem for their mission; centuries ago when people widely believed in the supernatural, Black Cross were highly respected and well-funded, but these days they struggle to get by and have to operate in secret because hardly anyone seriously believes in vampires anymore.
• Matchmaker Failure: In the first book, Bianca and Lucas subtly try setting up Bianca's friend Raquel with Lucas' friend and roommate Vic, including the four of them going out to lunch together. While Raquel and Vic don't dislike each other, it's clear they're ill-suited as a potential couple, having little in common. Raquel later playfully mocks Bianca's attempt to set her up with Vic; it also comes out that Raquel is a lesbian (with Raquel being surprised Bianca didn't figure it out sooner), so that just adds to the failed matchmaking.
• Mayfly–December Friendship:
  • It's common for vampires to develop these, befriending people who are centuries older than them.
  • Ranulf is over a thousand years old and becomes close friends with Vic, a teenager. Being friends with Vic helps Ranulf understand and integrate with modern society more easily, and Vic doesn't care in the slightest about Ranulf's oddities.
  • Bianca and Patrice manage to develop a friendship despite their apparent differences; Bianca is in her late teens while Patrice was born in the 19th century.
• Mayfly–December Romance:
  • Balthazar was born in the early 1600s and falls in love with Bianca, who is 16. However, she doesn't reciprocate his feelings.
  • Between Skye and Balthazar – when they first develop feelings for each other, she's nearly 18 while he's close to 400 but looks 19.
  • Between Celia and Adrian, as Adrian is mentioned as being nearly a thousand, whilst Celia was born in the 1600's, meaning he was already around 650 years older than her when they got together (he turned her into a vampire after she was mortally wounded in the Great Fire of London, after which they became a couple).
• Missing Reflection: If vampires don't feed on blood for a while, their reflections begin to fade. Well-fed vampires show up in mirrors just fine, while a starving vampire would be invisible.
• Moment Killer: Bianca really doesn't have the best luck when it comes to these kinds of things...
  • Bianca and Lucas are making out and Bianca accidentally bites him and knocks him unconscious.
  • They’re making out again and Bianca thinks Lucas wants her to turn him into a vampire – turns out he was actually talking about sex and abhors the idea of being a vampire, which immediately ends the make-out session.
  • Bianca and Balthazar nearly have sex, but are interrupted when they notice ice forming on the walls...
• Monster/Slayer Romance: The plot revolves around Bianca, a half-vampire raised by loving vampire parents, falling in love with Lucas, a vampire hunter who was raised in Black Cross (an ancient order of vampire hunters). Their romance leads them to discover Both Sides Have a Point; Lucas realizes that Black Cross is wrong about all vampires being evil monsters, while Bianca realizes her parents have sheltered her from the darker side of the vampire world.
• Mood Whiplash: At the Autumn Ball in Evernight, Bianca and Lucas are making out one minute, the next minute Bianca is biting him in the neck and freaking out over it. It goes from romantic and titillating to pure horror in a few sentences.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Bianca has one of these moments when she realises that sending her parents an email when Lucas told her not to resulted in vampires attacking her vampire hunter friends, resulting in several deaths and one of her vampire friends getting tortured.
• My Greatest Failure: Balthazar regards turning his sister into a vampire and letting Charity run away from Evernight as this...other characters argue that Charity made her own choices and is pretty much a psychopath to boot.
• Named After First Installment: The series is named after the first book, Evernight, which also refers to Evernight Academy, the main setting of most of the novels.
• The New '10s / Turn of the Millennium: There are a number of obvious signs the books are set in the late 2000s and early 2010s. In the first book Mr Yee demonstrates an iPod which doesn’t have wireless internet connection, though he states later models probably will have this built-in within a few years. A vampire character mentions being a fan of Justin Bieber in an attempt to fit in with human teens. Bianca is considered a bit weird for listening to records, liking old movies and frequenting antique stores (the hipster subculture hadn’t yet risen to popularity, where such things became regarded as cool again). Characters do have mobile phones (not so much at Evernight Academy, seeing as there’s no reception and many of the vampire students struggle to grasp such modern technology), but they’re not hugely ingrained in society yet and iPhones are only briefly referenced as a new and upcoming type of phone (they were first launched in 2007, the year before the first Evernight book was published); social media isn’t really mentioned that much either as it hadn’t quite yet become as dominant within Western culture as it did later in the 2010s. Balthazar, published in 2012, makes more references to things like texting and Facebook (especially as it's set at a normal high school).
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Balthazar More is polite, gentlemanly and well-spoken (noble), whilst Lucas Ross is a hot-headed rebel who often gets into fights (roguish).
• Non-Human Lover Reveal: Partway through Evernight, Lucas finds out his girlfriend Bianca is a vampire (though the reader finds out sooner). He initially doesn’t take it too well, but he eventually comes around.
• No Periods, Period: Initially played straight, then averted in the fourth novel. A vampire boy makes some icky comments about a human girl being "on the rag". Bianca, having not really thought about the fact vampires could smell when a girl is on her period, is instantly mortified by the implication that every vampire she's spent time around always knew when she was menstruating.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Hourglass completely shakes up the main plot by having Bianca become a wraith and Lucas become a vampire.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • Balthazar. In terms of content and tone, it's the same as the other books, but it stands out due to being the only book in the series to be written in third person, rather than first person, as well as the only book to not focus on Bianca. It also has many interludes or flashbacks to Balthazar's past, which has never happened in the series before (though to be fair, Bianca doesn't have nearly four centuries of life experience).
  • Discounting the spin-off, Hourglass could be seen as a minor example, as it's the only novel in the main series to not be set in or prominently feature Evernight Academy, instead revolving around Bianca and Lucas running around New York and Philadelphia. Afterlife returned to the formula of the previous books.
• Odd Friendship: Vic and Ranulf. Vic’s a laid-back high-schooler with a love for all things quirky who wears Hawaiian shirts beneath his blazer, Ranulf is a thousand-year-old vampire raised by Viking warriors who thinks iPods are powered by spirits.
• Official Couple:
  • Bianca and Lucas' romance and their struggle to be together is one of the main plotlines of the series.
  • In Balthazar, Balthazar and Skye's romance is a major focus of the plot.
• Offing the Offspring: Of the ‘Bad Seed’ variety, at least from Kate’s point of view. Kate attempts to murder Lucas after he becomes a vampire, believing he’s a soulless monster and that it’s the only way to ‘give him peace’. Never mind that Lucas is exactly the same as he was before (just paler with a thirst for human blood) and is pleading with his mother to listen to reason.
• One True Love: Lucas and Bianca are heavily implied to be this for each other.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Subverted for both Lucas and Bianca. In Evernight they’re both initially set up as being relatively normal American teenagers, neither of whom fit in at Evernight Academy. However, part way through the first book Bianca is revealed to be a vampire, while in the third act Lucas turns out to be a vampire hunter.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts, or rather wraiths as they're often called here, have the power of cryokinesis, can create a corporeal form for themselves, can usually only be created by murder or deaths involving a betrayal and can restore a vampire's humanity and create half-vampire babies via Blood Magic. They are often drawn to places, people and objects they had a strong connection to in life; most wraiths are bound to a certain location, though some older and more powerful wraiths can learn to 'fast travel' between places and people. Some materials can also harm and weaken wraiths, especially those found in human blood, such as iron and copper; obsidian weakens them as well. Other materials, usually those from a source that was once alive as they were, can strengthen them, such as coral and jet.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires can have children (although it's extremely rare) and staking doesn’t kill them, but renders them unconscious. Sunlight only kills them if they haven’t fed for a while; other than that, it doesn’t really seem to bother them. They retain some classic vampire traits such as feeling uncomfortable on consecrated ground and having difficulty crossing running water.
• Parental Neglect: Skye’s parents, who spend most of their time lobbying and leave their daughter to her own devices, though they’re not nearly as malicious as Raquel’s parents and it's sort of justified in that they’re grieving for their dead son.
• Parent-Preferred Suitor: Bianca's parents are sympathetic when her first date with Lucas doesn't work out, but can barely hide their excitement when she agrees to go to the Autumn Ball with Balthazar, feeling he's a much better choice of boyfriend as he's more strait-laced and mature than troublemaking Lucas; it's also because he's a vampire and so could become a long-term partner for Bianca (who is destined to become a vampire herself). Bianca feels both guilty and frustrated because while she thinks Balthazar is nice, she would prefer to be with Lucas. Celia and Adrian are accepting of Bianca dating Lucas again...until he's revealed to be a vampire hunter, after which Bianca has to keep her romance with him a secret. When she pretends to be dating Balthazar, Bianca feels uncomfortable over how happy her parents are about this because none of it is real, and increasingly sees their attempts to push her towards Balthazar as a sign of them being controlling.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The ritual that turns vampires human again requires the forced bonding of a wraith and vampire via a blood exchange (along with a Latin incantation). It’s implied that this destroys the wraith in the process whilst the only vampire who had it done to them is driven mad from shock (although he wasn't a willing test subject). It’s implied to be quite painful, too. As it turns out Mrs Bethany intends to use Bianca to try and turn herself and dozens of other vampires human, even if this kills her permanently, due to the fact she is a ‘pure’ wraith and so is far more powerful than the average wraith). When some of the other vampire characters learn of the ritual, most of them outright reject it on a moral basis, even if they desire to be human again (Balthazar bluntly states he'd jump at the chance if the method wasn't so horrible).
• The Power of Love: Lucas decides his love for Bianca is stronger than his indoctrinated prejudice towards vampires, effectively kick-starting most of the events in the series. In the fourth book, Bianca uses her wraith blood to turn Lucas human again and Balthazar believes it only worked because of the connection between Lucas and Bianca.
• Pregnancy Scare: Briefly comes up in Hourglass after Bianca starts to get sick, even though she and Lucas always use protection. It turns out she's not pregnant...just dying.

Tropes R to Y

• "Ray of Hope" Ending: Hourglass, which ends with Lucas being killed by Charity just moments after realizing Bianca (who had died earlier in the story) had returned as a wraith. The only thing that stops it from slipping into Downer Ending territory is the fact that Lucas will rise again as a vampire; Bianca is uncertain because being a vampire was Lucas' worst nightmare, but she clings to the hope things will work out, reasoning that even though they’re both dead they are still together.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Lucas and Bianca both give each other this speech in Stargazer; Bianca accuses Lucas of treating all vampires like monsters and merely tolerating her own nature as a vampire, while he states she’s naïve to the point of being denial. They end up breaking up because of it, but eventually reconcile while acknowledging they both had a point.
  • Britnee gives a pretty spectacular one to Madison after she betrays Skye, stating she’s just jealous of her because she had a crush on Balthazar, that now no one in Darby Glen High likes her because she’s revealed her true colors and that her slut-shaming comments are anti-feminist.
• Redheads Are Uncool:
  • Bianca has very obvious red hair and is considered a geeky, socially awkward, bookworm. It's implied that she could be 'cool' if she really tried, but she figures out early on she'd prefer to stay a loser than change herself to fit in with the 'Evernight types' (probably not a bad thing seeing how most of them are snobs and assholes who bully outcast students). It also doesn't stop the heroes from wanting her.
  • Averted by Adrian, Bianca's dad, a biology teacher who is seen as a Cool Teacher (although he's said to have very dark red hair that looks almost black)
• The Reveal: Each novel usually has at least one big reveal.
  • Evernight: Bianca is half vampire and the biological child of two vampires, and Lucas is a member of a vampire hunter organization called Black Cross.
  • Stargazer: Bianca was conceived with the wraiths' help and now they want her to become one of them as payment, and Balthazar was the one who turned his sister Charity into a vampire.
  • Hourglass: If Bianca doesn't become a full vampire, she will inevitably become a wraith and a very powerful one at that.
  • Afterlife: The wraiths’ leader Christopher is Mrs Bethany's husband, Mrs Bethany has been intentionally luring wraiths to the school to trap them and wraiths can restore a vampire back to life.
  • Balthazar: Skye's blood can make vampires vividly relive their memories.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • Many scenes in the first half of Evernight, after The Reveal that it's a school for vampires and Bianca's one too, most of which are quite subtle. This includes scenes where Bianca goes to eat dinner with her parents (if you pay attention, she's the only one ever mentioned being served food and eating), Patrice spending ages looking at her reflection in the weeks leading up to the Autumn Ball (she cuts down on blood to 'look her best', which causes her reflection to begin fading), Patrice making a rude sound in response to Celia mentioning slavery (her reaction isn't just because she's biracial, but because she was a slave), Mrs Bethany having strict rules about students 'running wild' which could result in "tragedy" (it's not just hyperbole; the vampire students really could seriously hurt humans and/or risk the vampires' safety if they were to reveal their true nature to the outside world) and so on.
  • And again when Lucas turns out to be a member of Black Cross. He thinks Bianca is being chased when they first meet because he knows he's in a school full of vampires; he's surprised and uncomfortable to meet Bianca's parents not just because they're his girlfriend's parents, but because he realizes they're vampires (he doesn't yet know Bianca isn't fully human) etc.
• Rich Bitch: A fair few of the Evernight types could be accurately described as such, given their snobbery and elitism. Raquel at one point literally refers to them as "rich bitches".
• Secret Relationship: Bianca and Lucas have one in the second book (well, his family and friends know about it, but hers don't; Lucas' family also aren't aware Bianca is half vampire). The constant sneaking about and deception takes a toll on the couple to the point it plays a factor in their break-up. After they reconcile, Bianca decides to run away with Lucas, saying she’s sick of lies.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Bianca's parents do little to hide the fact they ship her with Balthazar. It's extremely awkward for everyone involved, as Bianca does not reciprocate Balthazar's feelings (at first) and prefers Lucas, whom her parents despise.
  • Milder examples with Dana and Vic, who clearly want Bianca and Lucas to be together.
• Ship Sinking:
  • Bianca and Balthazar nearly hook up in Stargazer but are interrupted by a wraith attack. Bianca then flat out tells Balthazar that whilst she wouldn’t have regretted it, it will never happen again and that she simply can’t force herself to love him; Balthazar agrees and Bianca ends up with Lucas, whilst Balthazar eventually gets with Skye.
  • Bianca and Lucas briefly tried setting Raquel and Vic up in Evernight but they never seem to click. Raquel, as it turns out, is actually a lesbian, pretty much nuking any possibility of shipping between the pair.
  • Bianca suggests Patrice should date Balthazar, but she makes it plain in the fourth book that whilst she doesn't mind him as a friend, Balthazar is "not her type".
• Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: Bianca and Lucas' views on vampires are initially at the two extremes. Bianca - who is half-vampire, was raised by loving vampire parents and attends a vampire school that encourages integration with human society - thinks most vampires are good people who want to live in peace and are unfairly persecuted. Lucas - who was raised to be a vampire hunter, lost his father to a vampire attack and regularly deals with vampires hunting and killing people - thinks all vampires are cold-blooded monsters and is skeptical at best of the Evernight vampires' claims of not harming humans. When they meet and fall in love, both their views on vampires are challenged. Ultimately, vampires in Evernight sit somewhere in the middle, with some being good, some evil and some inbetween.
• Spirit Advisor: Two of the friendlier wraiths, Maxie and Christopher, become this to Bianca in particular showing her how to be a wraith and use her new abilities.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Bianca and Lucas play this very straight, complete with references to Romeo and Juliet; she's half vampire, he's a vampire hunter, and they have everything in the world working against them. It works out okay for them in the end.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In Hourglass, our young starcrossed-lovers Bianca and Lucas finally run away together in defiance of their families. But their troubles are far from over. Neither of them have high school diplomas or certifications of any kind, they've never had steady jobs or had to support themselves before, they're completely broke because they had to leave in a hurry, and due to their strained relationship with their families they can't get help from them. They're able to borrow money from their wealthy friends and crash in Vic's wine cellar, but it's only a temporary solution. Lucas has to get a job at a chop shop that pays him under the table because while he has skill working with cars, no legit mechanic would hire him without qualifications; Bianca has to get a job at a crappy fast-food joint (and is quickly fired because she sucks at it). Because neither of them know how to cook they mostly eat microwave meals. Bianca is also shocked at how expensive even cheap apartments are.
• Teacher/Student Romance: A weird example in Balthazar. Balthazar is posing as a teacher to protect Skye and they end up in a relationship; however, Skye knows he's not a real teacher and already liked him beforehand. However, the ethical problems that accompany this trope do cause some drama for the couple eventually, seeing as "I'm not really a teacher; just her vampire bodyguard!" isn't exactly going to work as a defense.
• Their First Time:
  • Lucas and Bianca finally consummate their relationship in Hourglass. Though it isn't clear if it's Lucas' first time ever, it's the first time he's been intimate with Bianca (who was a virgin prior to this).
  • Skye and Craig had their first time off-page some time before the fourth book. It wasn't ideal due to the fact Skye was grieving for her dead brother at the time, plus Craig was thinking of ending things and slept with her out of pity. Then he dumps her soon after to go out with another girl, which deeply hurt Skye.
• Took a Level in Badass: Bianca – starts out as naïve and dependent on her parents, becomes a powerful, ass-kicking ghost. Skye also becomes more badass between Afterlife and Balthazar.
• Tragic Ice Character: Wraiths are closely associated with ice and the cold (including having cryokinetic powers) and every single one of them died under tragic and occasionally downright horrifying circumstances. It's mentioned that usually only people who die violent deaths and/or deaths involving a betrayal can become wraiths. The physical and emotional suffering they went through causes them to linger on earth after death, able to observe the living world but not truly being part of it. It's not surprising that a lot of wraiths go insane or become bitterly resentful towards humans.
• Tyke Bomb: Lucas and Dana were both raised to hunt vampires from childhood.
• Undercover as Lovers: Bianca and Balthazar utilize this in Stargazer, to find his missing sister; if they’re believed to be dating it offers an explanation for why they’re together so much and gives Balthazar an excuse to take Bianca off-campus. It's made extra awkward by the fact Balthazar is actually in love with Bianca, but she doesn't feel the same way.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Raquel is clearly second best to her sister Frida, as far as their parents are concerned.
  • Skye feels this way in her family. Her parents don't necessarily prefer her brother over her, but after Dakota dies, they tend to neglect Skye, mostly leaving her to her own devices, though this is out of grief rather than lack of love.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension:
  • Between Bianca and Balthazar in Stargazer. Balthazar clearly likes Bianca more than she likes him; she mostly thinks of him as a friend but does start to find him attractive as they spend more time together. However, she only gives in to her attraction to him out of loneliness after she and Lucas break up, only for them to be interrupted by the wraiths. Ultimately nothing comes of it, as Bianca realizes that while she does find Balthazar attractive, she's not in love with him the way she is with Lucas.
  • Skye and Balthazar in the fifth book, which is mostly Balthazar's fault due to his rule against not being with humans. They eventually resolve it.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: Many vampires are described as alluring and attractive to some degree.
• Vampire Bites Suck: If you're an unwilling victim. Particularly in Hourglass, where poor Lucas literally has his throat torn out.
• Vampire Dance: Evernight Academy (a school for vampires) holds a formal dance, the Autumn Ball, once a year; it's their equivalent of prom though much fancier, and a throwback to when such events were a lot more common.
• Vampire Procreation Limit: Only people who have been bitten multiple times before by a vampire can themselves become vampires, and even then this is only true if the last bite is fatal. Vampires can produce children sexually but this is an extremely rare occurrence, only happening about three or four times a century; it's further revealed in Stargazer that it's impossible for vampires to conceive unless they partake in a ritual with wraiths, and wraiths and vampires don't get along much.
• Vegetarian Vampire: Zig-zagged. Most of the friendlier vampires live primarily on animal blood; however even they occasionally drink human blood. Adrian and Celia keep human blood from blood banks in their apartment as "treats", whilst Bianca frequently feeds off Lucas, who actually rather enjoys this. Bianca makes a point of stating that being a 'veggie vamp' is easier for most vampires, because humans have a tendency to to scream and fight back (she likens it to trying to eat a hamburger that can punch you in the face). However, Balthazar states that all vampires need to consume human blood at some point, as animal blood alone doesn't cut it and could result in some Sanity Slippage. The nicer vampires prefer using blood banks or willing donors than just jumping on people.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Lucas towards Bianca when he learns she inadvertently lead the Evernight vampires to the Black Cross cell.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Bianca comes to realize that many vampires feel this way about their undead status; growing up the only vampires she regularly interacted with were her parents, who are the exception rather than the rule given they've had each other for love and support over the centuries and have been able to keep up with society as it changes. Many other vampires aren't so lucky, leading lonely, melancholy existences and struggling to fit in anywhere. Although they can learn new things and go through Character Development, it's also stated that vampires tend to remain not just physically but mentally frozen at the age they were when they died to some extent. This isn't so bad for adults, but it kind of sucks for vampires who were adolescents when they were changed - this applies to almost every vampire at Evernight and explains why some of them act like teenagers despite being potentially centuries' old; they're literally stuck in perpetual teenage angst on top of all the other issues. Balthazar tells Bianca that one of the reasons the Evernight types bully the human students is jealousy because they're truly alive and can change; some vampires regard vampirism as being just a pale imitation of life, though this isn't a universal view.
• Willing Channeler: Skye willingly allows Bianca to possess her to save the inhabitants of Evernight (both living and undead).It's implied Bianca's temporary possession awoke Skye's psychic abilities.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
  • Mrs Bethany – her beloved husband was betrayed and murdered by people he considered friends, and the organisation she risked her life for and served loyally for years basically said "Oh sorry, nothing we can do" when they got off scot free, so she becomes the creature she hates most to avenge him and then spends the next several centuries trying to find a way to be reunited with him in the afterlife.
  • Charity. Her parents were murdered by vampires in front of her and her older brother attacked her and turned her into a vampire to 'save' her, trapping her in a fourteen-year-old's body. The trauma also left her severely unhinged.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: In the first book, Bianca briefly mentions that her parents were together for "nearly 350 years" until they had her; in the first book Bianca is sixteen and based on the assumption Evernight takes place in 2008 (the year it was published), she was likely born in 1992. However, in the second book it's established that Celia and Adrian first got together after he turned her into a vampire following the Great Fire of London, which took place in 1666, 326 years before Bianca was born (if it was 350 years later, Bianca would've been born in 2016). It's possible that it was just Bianca exaggerating or getting it slightly wrong (over three hundred years of marriage is still impressive either way).

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