Darcella "Darcy" Lanier

His parents did not have children in the hopes of raising adults that could thrive in the world—they wanted testaments to their pedigree, their status, their efficiency as parents. Darcy's earliest memories revolve around the cold shoulder of his mother and the gentle hand of his father on his cheek as he was told how he'd be unable to compare to his brother. It wasn't his fault, really, women simply had tendencies that left them struggling in the world his father had built from the family business—the mass media company and media conglomerate, Viacast. Which left his brother to be under their father's wing, the center of their father's attention, and seemingly the only one worthy of so much as a good word.

When he was twelve, his mother passed in a tragic car accident, and while the only memories he had of her could be chalked up to her treating Darcy as no more than a pet to tout around to parties or to bombard the nanny with, the death of his mother started the crumble of the family's already shaky foundation. The absent man that was his father slowly shifted into the unpredictable, cruel constant Darcy came to know as he grew older. The worst of it all... Darcy favored his father that way, who always riddled by a guilty conscious in the brief periods following his outbursts. As a result, Darcy could always count on being compensated for his endurance of the cruelty, verbal and physical, almost always through monetary means. However, it was during this that he learned, too, that he wore a black eye quite well and could take a punch exceptionally well.

At the age of sixteen, Darcy was referred to a psychatrist who had no qualm signing the prescription to just about any drug you could give her a reason to prescribe, no matter how little. He was hooked on Valium, Adderall, and Ativan by seventeen.

By the time he was twenty-five, Darcy had a reputation in the media for being the wayward daughter of a respectable CEO who was oh so trying to help him in his addiction recovery and, sure, maybe his father was trying to do that—but to be frank, all the help he could offer was only useful to the child he cared little about in any way that mattered.

Darcy's father removed him from his will and, in no uncertain terms, disowned him not too long after his sixth stint in rehab that ended in Darcy being removed for improper conduct with some of the employees (though, how improper was it really when they were as enthusiastic about it all as he was). In the same year as this disownment, Darcy drove his car into the wall of the parking garage at his apartment building. To his chagrin, he did not die, and was instead saved in the nick of time.

When he woke in the hospital, it was to the voice of a woman who paced at the foot of his bed donning a blue hospital gown, talking about the fact it was so, so bizarre that they could bring someone back from the dead like that. Darcy balked and snorted and cussed the woman out until she opted to sit in the chair at his bedside, to which he reluctantly accepted until a nurse entered.

It was considered a side effect of his concussion but he didn't think he needed any degree in neurology to understand seeing the woman who fucking flatlined in the room next to him was probably not the fucking average side effect.

Ever since, Darcy has been plagued by ghosts who cling to him once they realize he can not only see them but converse actively with them. Worst of all? He has a knack for attracting ghosts who need their murders solved. Just his fucking luck!