Erica Solomon was by no means an admirable character. In fact, if you took a poll amongst the people she saw on a day to day, you might find out that she was rather difficult to comprehend. Most considered her to be obstinate, domineering, and haughty. Unfortunately for her, however, she was Elena's only hope.

Perhaps this is all because Erica found herself most comfortable in positions such as these, as she squatted beside an antique wooden cabinet, tracing her fingers along its sleek surface in hopes of luring out the spirit haunting the elderly Marsha Jones' home.

"I know you're in there," she muttered under her breath, craning her neck as if to peep inside of the notably solid piece of furniture. She knew if she threw it open and allowed too much light to spill in, the spirit would frustratingly disappear.

"Go away," it snarled in response, voice howling to sound more powerful than it truly was. Erica gave the spirit a moment to sit in its false bravado, waiting for what she knew was certain to come next. Right on cue, the tone switched to that of a child's, mimicking, "I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I'm just so lost."

"I don't care," Erica returned simply, rolling her eyes. They constantly pulled the same tired antics with her. "You're scaring the sweet old lady that lives here. And I won't get paid unless you leave."

"But this is my house!" The ghost threw back, forgoing bravado and sweetness to instead reveal its true self- which turned out to be a rotten brat who began rattling the cabinet and causing it to thump against the wall with a resounding crash of silverware.

"No, it really isn't," Erica retorted, tilting her head to the side with a wry grin. "You honestly didn't even live here..." She paused to squint at the name on the news article she had printed out in preparation, ever the professional. "Brian Powers," She stifled a chuckle at the name, how painfully stereotypical. "This was your friend's house which you died in after a night of binge drinking."

The rattling stopped and the door slowly creaked open as Brian revealed himself, long and lean and positively translucent.

"We had just won the state championship, okay?" he hissed at her, long, black tendrils of smoke billowing out of the cabinet behind him, filling his ghostly pallor to a gruesome gray. "It was a one-time thing! Christ, I ended up dying. Haven't I suffered enough?" He whined out, betraying just how young he truly had been, always would be. Erica almost feels a pang of something, but she tucks it neatly away and gets back to work.

"Look," Erica began, running a hand through her hair. "I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm just asking you kindly to haunt another place. Marsha's too old to handle this kind of stuff so, please, just, I don't know, find somewhere else."

"Like where?" he prompted.

"I don't know! There's a sorority house a couple of houses down," Erica informed him, shrugging. "I'm sure you'd be interested in that."

The dark puffs of smoke melted away to reveal a boy around Erica's age, squatting before the cabinet as he seemed to seriously contemplate her offer.

She sighed as she made her way to the kitchen where Marsha and her daughter were huddling in anticipation of Erica's diagnosis of the house.

"The spirit won't be bothering you anymore," Erica announced as she slipped past the doors. "I've sent him to a better place."

*

            Erica poked her pasta salad with a fork, attempting to remove all the olives.

            "It makes me feel like such a scammer," she finally answered Sol and looked up to witness him scarfing down a slice of pizza with oil dripping down his chin. "They think it's some huge, spiritual ceremony but I just tell the ghost to piss off."

            "Well," Sol murmured, mouth full of food. "It's not technically scamming if you actually have psychic abilities."

            "I guess," Erica returned, slumping slightly in her seat as she gave up entirely on the pasta and pushed it aside. "It's just not how I thought it would be, you know?"

             "Yeah," he replied, shaking his head with that same blank look in his eye that he gave her whenever she talked about any of this. "People don't usually envision spending their youth talking to the dead."

            "Not just that...," she began, pausing as she glanced over Sol's shoulder and caught sight of a blonde girl sitting across from her friend and opening a water bottle. Her eyes lingered on the duo for a moment as a sensation washed over her as if the girl's name was on the tip of her tongue, but she simply could not spit it out. C-Ce...

            Sol examined her for a moment before following her line of vision and catching sight of the girl, too, remarking, "It's sad, isn't it?"

            "What?" Erica blinked rapidly as if leaving a trance.

            "She has no friends to sit with her," he pointed out, jutting his bottom lip out. "That's how I felt my freshman year of high school. It sucks in college, though."

            "What are you talking..." She paused, realizing far later than she should have that Sol couldn't see the other girl sitting because she was a ghost. "Oh."

            "What?" Sol inquired, hastily glancing over his shoulder once more. "Do you see someone with her?"

            "Yeah," she admitted, watching as the beautiful, dark-haired girl fidgeted in her seat and watched her friend chew ed on a granola bar absentmindedly. She seemed squeamish as if she could feel both pairs of eyes on them.

            When  the blond girl pushed her seat back and got up to throw her trash out in one fluid movement, the other girl seemed to be knocked out of her daze as she, too, scurried up from her seat and followed in her path, tracing her footsteps as a shadow would.

            "That's odd," Erica found herself remarking before she could help herself. She pulled her thumbnail out of her mouth as she realized she had given into that nasty habit yet again. "I've never seen a ghost trail a person before. I've only seen haunted places, not people."

            "I know her," Sol admitted nonchalantly, chewing on the crust of his pizza. "She's a freshman in my chem class which is weird because it's one of the advanced ones."

            "She must be incredibly smart," Erica commented, eyes glued to the spot where the girl once sat. "There's something peculiar about her, but I can't quite put my finger on it."

*

            People called Erica many things. A liar, a scammer, a con artist. They weren't wrong, necessarily. It wasn't the name calling that bothered her, but the insinuation that because she fit into those categories, she somehow worked less than others.

            Anyone who said illusions aren't difficult to maintain had never seen the amount of paperwork Erica had to push to get the chess club up and running. Of course, no one in their club played chess, but it wasn't like the student council would ever allow her a portion of the school funding to go ghost hunting.

            So, she set out to design a club that very few people would want to join and decided chess was the perfect option. Under the guise of a chess club, she could garner the school's money to pay for her supplies and utilize one of the school's club offices as a storage space.

            The plan seemed perfect until she realized the student council wanted her to at least pretend to be intrigued with chess. Otherwise, they threatened to diminish her funds.

            "Where is James?" Erica inquired of the boy with the buzzcut sitting across from her at the table.

            He simply shrugged in response to Erica's question. Zip, James's roommate, was called that because of his most prominent characteristic of hardly ever speaking. His jade eyes seemed to widen in surprise at being addressed, but Erica didn't mind his silence considering he was one of the club's few useful members.

            Though Zip could not see or hear any of these spirits, he, himself, could act as a vessel to them as he rolled his eyes back into his head and cracked his lips open just the slightest bit like a gramophone spewing out music. Something about him just allowed spirits to possess him with incredible ease.

            When it came to any personal knowledge about the boy, however, Erica knew nothing. Most of that was because, well, Zip just simply didn't speak most of the time, but Erica began to read his body language. She noticed the way his shoulders grew rigid whenever they were in a constricted space such as an elevator. There was also the fact that his eyes would wander to the closest exit any time they entered a room. Erica couldn't place her finger on why, but she sensed a tempest brewing within Zip's head as darkness loomed over him. She wanted to tell him of the shade surrounding him but felt he already knew of its presence.

             "I saw him earlier today," Sol informed her, doodling absentmindedly on their attendance sheet. "He probably has football practice or something."

            Zip reach ed out to Erica their freshman year when rumors of her odd abilities spread from student to student like a disease Erica couldn't escape affliction from. He wrote to her on their school's messaging system, informing her that all his life he'd been susceptible to spirits taking control of him and might be of use to her. meeting.

She, Sol, and Zip were the first members of the club, and Zip's roommate, James, only joined because they needed a fourth member to be considered official. James himself was a skeptic and rolled his eyes whenever Erica and Zip engaged in their business.

            So, Erica wasn't surprised at all to see James not taking this seriously as he walked into their meeting fifteen minutes late, clutching a sandwich between his large fingers as he struggled to hold the door open.

            "Hey!" he exclaimed, squeezing in, and shimmying his backpack off his shoulders as he settled into the seat next to Zip. "Sorry I'm late. The line at the cafeteria was crazy."

She shuffled a large stack of papers in front of her before murmuring, "chess Look, we all know none of us play chess. But we should at least put on a show for the student council at this Monday's club fair. Also, we need a new member this year for funding because, as we all know, Tanner quit the club."

            "He finally gave up on trying to make us play chess?" James inquired, picking a tomato out from his sandwich, and placing it on the wrapper while wrinkling his nose. knew would

            "Yeah, well, he didn't take too kindly to me using club fu buy ghost-hunting equipment instead of an actual chess set," Erica muttered, scratching at the back of her head.

            "You should've been honest with him from the beginning," Sol whispered to himself, gaining an irritated glare from Erica in response.

            "Look, I do what I have to," Erica threw back to reassure herself. "We needed six members. That's beside the point. Just find us a new member. I don't care who it is anymore."

            "Is that all?" James inquired.

            "Yes," Erica returned, bobbing her head. "Meeting adjourned. Now let's go to the liquor store."