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it is placed on our flesh, it changes us. It is a visceral and visual acknowledgement that “this is my body and I choose it to be beautiful, but according to my rules.” As we wait to see what Zoey’s future holds in store, we can rest assured that as she discovers more about herself and her destiny, her Marks will continue to be a compelling and meaningful part of that journey.
JANA OLIVER has the perfect job—she listens to the voices in her head and then writes their stories. Her latest creation is the young adult Demon Trappers series (St. Martin’s Press) set in a dystopian 2018 Atlanta and populated by Hellspawn, Deaders, and scheming necromancers.
JANA’S FORAY into time travel and alternate history resulted in the multi-award winning Time Rovers series (Dragon Moon Press). Based in 1888 London, the series deftly blends time travel, shape-shifters, and Jack the Ripper. Visitors are always welcome at her website: www.JanaOliver.com.

{ The Divine Cat }

    Ellen Steiber
    I MIGHT as well admit my prejudice up front: I’ve been crazy about cats for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been lucky enough to live with them for most of my life. So one of the things that immediately drew me into the House of Night series was the cats. Cats everywhere, roaming freely, and always welcome in the dorms, cafeteria, stables, and even the classrooms—basically my idea of the perfect school. Then I was completely charmed by Nala, the sneezey, often grumpy, little cat who chooses Zoey for her own. P.C. and Kristin Cast clearly know and love their cats, and it’s a delight to see how they use them in these books. Not only do they create very real felines—sweet, moody, comforting, and impossible to predict or control—but they make creative use of some of the mythic and mystical lore that has been part of feline history for the last 5,000 years. Though the House of Night cats are not, on their own, magical in the traditional sense, they draw on a rich history of cat mythology and folklore.
    Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, “The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” Cats are incredibly well-designed, beautiful little predators who can live with or without us. With their lithe, muscular bodies, they’re capable of leaping, running, climbing to great heights, and moving almost silently. Compared to humans, they have heightened senses of smell, hearing, vision, and balance. They can sense seismic vibrations long before we do, and they sense magnetic and meteorological changes far more keenly. They clearly know things that we don’t. When provoked or when courting, they are capable of making the most dreadful sounds; listening to one or more cats caterwauling can raise the hair on the back of your neck.
    Although domestic cats are fairly small animals who live with us quite peaceably, they’re not all that far removed from their larger cousins, the wild cats. Much like vampyres, cats retain a fierce, savage nature beneath a civilized surface. As the writer Carl Van Vechten put it in the title of his book, the cat is The Tiger in the House. All felines, from house cats to lions, share the same basic body structure, the same supple movements, the same hunting instincts, and a wild, independent nature that never completely disappears no matter how long or closely they live with us.
    They’re resilient creatures with a knack for survival that includes an uncanny ability to land on their feet, even when falling from great heights, due to the cat’s agile spine and tail (the tail can whip around and turn the body so that the cat lands feetfirst). Cats have also been known to travel great distances to return to their homes, and to survive many natural disasters, contributing to the belief that cats have nine lives.
    Naturally nocturnal, they’re wired to hunt at night. Although cats can’t see in complete darkness, their pupils change size and shape, allowing them to see with very little light. A layer of cells in the cat’s retina,