Character Sketch: Joseph Bradford

A first-year student at Sunhaven, Joseph Bradford -- Joey -- is a vampire (living, not undead) with an affinity for rats. His focus is a familiar rat named Whisper, and he can take a variety of rat-based shapes including a regular rat, a terrifyingly large rat, and a rat-person crossbreed. He is Dominic Chaddock's cousin, and one of his closest friends. (This is mainly because the two of them give each other permission to be perfectly horrible to anyone they don't like, or anyone who they think deserves it, or just anyone who happens to be around when they're in the mood to be cruel.) He is tall (though not quite as tall as Chaddock), with dark hair and eyes and an unusually pale complexion. Joey is not above using his familiar or his shapeshifting to spy on other students, and is perfectly willing to use whatever he learns for embarrassment, leverage, or outright blackmail. He stays in Chaddock's shadow because it keeps people from realizing just how much of Chaddock's cruelty originates with him.