Charles Marlow
Marlow's name may be inspired by the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Conrad's father was a translator of William Shakespeare who doubtless would have known of Marlowe's work as well. Some intertextual interpretations of "Heart of Darkness" have suggested that Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" may have influenced Conrad. Charles Marlow describes a character as a "papier-mache Mephistopheles", a reference to the Faust legend. Marlow's and Kurtz's journey up the Congo River in "Heart of Darkness" also has similarities to another work by Marlowe, "Dido, Queen of Carthage", in which Aeneas is stranded on the shore of Libya and meets the African queen Dido.
Night World
Raksha Keller - Keller is the protagonist of the ninth book "Witchlight" and leads Circle Daybreak's best Ops Team. She prefers being called by her last name as her first name means "demon". She is strong and secretive and she never shows her inner feelings to anyone. She is half shapeshifter, half human, and can turn into a panther. She prefers to work hard and repay Circle Daybreak for raising her after she was abandoned. When she was discovered as a baby, she was in human form, but with a panther's ears and tail. Keller has long, black hair with silvery-grey eyes and is the only shapeshifter that has taken a main role in the series. She is the soulmate of the Prince of the Shapeshifters, Galen Drache, and the blood sister of Iliana Dominick-Harman. On the author's website, we learn that she is Rashel Jordan's fraternal twin.