I was only doing this because Atticus said I should.

I wasn't looking for a friend, much less a friend like Matias, who had already managed to make himself look like a fool in front of everyone.

Okay, it was harsh on my part. Or, at least, that's what Atticus said when I told him.

But I just couldn't understand why people would lie about childhood experiences. I've had it bad too, and I acknowledged it. I guessed it made me uneasy to think about somebody who was capable of turning something bad into something good, especially if the outcome wasn't real.

But at the same time... I could only imagine what it was like to be bought and sold like that because of your Skills.

And, speaking of Skills, Courage was a pretty cool one to have. Maybe that's why Matias was able to lie with such convinction. Maybe he wasn't afraid to get caught.

Either way, he had done something to me when he had picked me as "friend material", and now I couldn't stop thinking about him. I must have been lonelier than I thought, because I couldn't get him out of my head.

That's why I thought having friends was such a waste of time. Honestly, I wasn't even sure I could manage to show him my powers, if I got lost in his big brown eyes.

"I'm going to show you my powers once," I told him the first night we managed to sneak out of our dormitory, and walk through the school unattended. "Just because you've been nice to me, and Atticus told me that the right thing to do is to be nice in return. Then we can stop being nice to each other, and everything will go back to normal."

I said the last part hopefully. The night before, I had dreamt about Matias with his warrior make-up on. This strange friendship/obsession thing had to be stopped, once and for all.

To my surprise, he just laughed.

"What do you mean, go back to normal?" he said. "I thought... well, not that we were friends, exactly. But that we were getting there."

"That just doesn't happen to me," I said. "Making friends."

"Why? Is it because you are a Speaker?"

"It's because I don't like people," I said, suddenly uncomfortable. It was one thing to think about it, another thing entirely to tell it to an actual person. I actually felt a little snobbish.

"I'm not people," he said, suddenly sure of himself. "You're going to like me."

It sounded like a threat. One that I feared could possibly become true.

We decided to go to the basement. I wasn't sure performing my powers during the night, outside of the classroom, without the teachers' permission was strictly against the rules, but I was willing to bet it was. And I was generally good at betting.

I spread my Board on the floor. The size and texture reminded a bit of a beach towel, but it was nothing to be trifled with. It was full of esoteric symbols I didn't know the meaning of (I was getting there, Minx had told me to study them, but I always took a long time to get familiar with new concepts.)

Of course, the symbols weren't just aesthetically pleasing to see, I told Matias. The Board was magical, and its magic run through the symbols.

"So what are you without the Board?" Matias asked me.

"A Vessel for magic and spirits. What are you without the Blood and the training? If you had never found out your Skill?"

I saw his eyes falter, and I immediately used that moment of weakness against him.

I grinned like I was about to make a joke, and then I hit him where it hurt.

"You'd be just a pathological liar, I guess," I shrugged.

Matias blushed violently, and I suddenly felt really sick.

Who was I to say this kind of things to people? If I didn't try harder to be a good boy, I'd never be able to face Atticus again.

"Sorry," I immediately said, before he had time to react. "That was incredibly mean of me. I guess I just wanted... to drive you away, you know? It's easier for me. Letting people close is the hardest part. And, also, I think it might help you to know I'm nothing like Atticus. If you want a friend, I'm not the right person. I'm so incredibly..."

Fucked up? Cruel? Insecure?

"Selfish?" Matias asked. He looked like he was thinking about it.

"I don't think you are," he decided. "But I fear you might think it's true. Now, unless I'm wrong, weren't you supposed to show me something?"

I turned every shade of red in existence, even though I must have looked like my usual pale self, maybe blue-ish.

Matias didn't look like he got the pun.

I spread the Board, and sat on it, suddenly incredibly aware of my long legs, and how hard it was for me to cross them properly without getting them ungracefully tangled.

I looked sadly at my shoes, but immediately stopped. My feet looked big and I didn't know what to do with them. At the moment, that is.

I took a small bag from my pocket.

"I'm always supposed to carry two bags around with me," I explained to Matias. "One contains the herbs that enhance my powers, the other is a... trap for Spirits?" Minx had told me the exact word, but I couldn't concentrate hard enough to remember it.

"Basically, if I need to, I can trap a Spirit there," I added, unhelpfully. "I can then carry it around in the bag for as long as I need to... study it, or whatever."

I hadn't gotten to the why I did the things I did yet. Minx and Mira seemed to find them important, and that was enough for me.

"Cool," Matias seemed to agree with my unspoken thoughts.

"First," I said. "I need to chew on the herbs. They're pretty strong," I somehow felt the need to brag. "It's a good thing Minx and Mira started training me earlier than the others, because now I'm much more prepared for it. The first time I chewed the herbs, my eyes watered, and I got sick."

The first few times, actually, but he didn't need to know the details. To tell the truth, I never really got used to them. I still took them stoically, though. Showing off, I guessed.

"We got that in common," Matias said, so quietly I could barely make out the words.

"We both started training early."

"How do you know the Spirits really exist, and they're not something you're seeing because you're drugged?" he asked me, a bit lazily, after a while.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It bothered me, that a Speaker work could be questioned in ways Blood Drinkers' couldn't. But I blamed it on the fact that he looked a bit sleepy.

"Because of the things they say to me," I replied truthfully. "I'm not clever enough to make them up."

"Anyway," I added. "I should be able to trap one on the Board temporarily. If it happens, you'll be able to see it, too. You could even interact with it."

Matias suddenly looked much more interested. I liked that look on him. He looked alive. I found myself wishing he could always look at me like that, like I had said the most interesting thing in the room.

Or at least in circumstances like this one, where we were the only two people in it.

I tried to find a Spirit my weak powers could summon to the Board. I was still too unexperienced for most of them, but it wasn't for lack of choice. Between the Spirits still trapped on Earth, and the ones in the first layer of their realm, where I could occasionally tap with my magic, every room was haunted beyond belief.

I tried not to think about that, normally. The way all those Spirits and ghosts existed. They way they were all tied to me. It was too much to think about. And I prefered the world of the living, at least until I still belonged with them. And I planned to keep it that way for a really long time.

"When I was a child, it took me a while to know what I was," I spoke slowly, mostly to myself. "The Spirits would call, to attract my attention. They do that sometimes, to young Speakers. Most of them are trapped. They want to be used. When I channel their essence into me, it lays them to rest, or something along those lines, I think."

I cleared my voice.

"They just want to be heard," I added, voice fading. "Sometimes I feel invisible. I can relate to that."

"How did they call you?" Matias asked me, and it certainly seemed, judging by the look in his eyes, that this was the most interesting thing anybody had ever told him.

Well, except for lies, maybe. I didn't necessarily think Matias would have picked up the habit from someone, but who knows. All kind of things can run in the families, even if not connected by blood.

"It was like screaming in my head," I cringed a little. "Sometimes it would go away for months, other times it seemed like it happened all the time. As I got older, I started being able to understand some words among all the screaming. They gave away my identity, but I had never been really sure, until Minx and Mira confirmed it for me."

In the meantime, the Spirits were coming closer to me. It happened sometimes. They couldn't hurt me -- couldn't touch me, really. But I knew what I must have looked like to Matias. Their presence surrounded my body, creating a faint blue-ish glow that my new friend, as he liked to think of himself, could probably see by now.

"I think I finally found something!" I said, excited.

The Spirit didn't look like anything I'd ever encountered before. That kind of scared me, but it gave me an adrenaline rush at the same time. What if it meant that my powers were stronger, and I was able to connect to other kind of ghosts?

To be fair, I didn't feel like trapping that particular spirit on my Board. All the other Spirits kind of looked like people, like translucent versions of them. This one reminded me more of a Creature, it was hard to see what it looked like, it was like watching static, except that this kind of static tried to take some resemblance of a form.

"Where is it?" Matias asked, jumping around. Then, he immediately stopped. "I didn't scare them, did I?" he asked. "Can they be scared by noise?"

"No, don't worry," I replied. I was trying to call the strange apparition to me, muttering some words I had learned. I was so concentrated my eyes were barely open, slits on my hollow face.

The Spirit approached. First slowly, and then, before I knew it, it took place on the Board.

"I see it! I see it!" Matias squealed. Then, more sober, "Are they supposed to look like that?"

The short answer was, no they weren't. Now the Spirit had took a form, and it was nothing human-like. It looked black, in the sense of void of all color and light, and it was shaped like a miniature tornado.

"No," I managed to say. "I do not know what this is!"

"Shouldn't you be able to make it go away, or something?" Matias asked, suddenly panicked.

I was trying to. I knew some words that would do the trick, but this was different than anything else I'd ever seen.

It was moving fast in my direction, and before I knew it, I felt like I was burning up from the inside. I felt something coming out of my eyes that felt like blood. Even blinded to everything that was in front of me, I couldn't see nor feel the thing anymore.

By the time I realized what had happened, it was already too late. The Spirit had possessed me! And it wasn't the possession I was used to -- the kind where they gave me power in exchange for eternal rest. No, it was something hurtful, and wrong, and binding.

It was something twisted. Something I had no control over.

"Matias!" I screamed. "Do something! Do anything!"

My own voice sounded strange to my ears, like I was speaking through static. And I felt something coming out of my mouth. I hoped it wasn't more blood, even though it felt like it.

I fell down, hard. My vision cleared, and I saw what had happened. Matias had thrown me off the Board. Quite literally. He must have picked me up to hurl me away like that.

I was so thankful for his Courage in that moment, I might have kissed him on the cheek. Was that something that people do? I decided not to try my luck.

"What happened?" I asked, hating how my voice was still shaking. Speakers, like Blood Drinkers, were meant to be brave. Not in the way people with the Courage Skill were, but our lifestyle was a hard one. We had to have a thick skin. While I, despite how hard I tried, was still too easily affected by every little thing that happened to me.

"Your eyes were completely white," Matias said, and I could feel that he sounded scared too. That made me feel a little less alone. "They were bleeding black. When you talked, your mouth was bleeding black, too."

Right when he said it, I felt a sudden urge to puke my guts out. I doubled over, and vomited a bunch of other black stuff.

"Is this supposed to happen?" Matias asked shyly.

"Yeah, that's definitely supposed to happen," I couldn't help but being sarcastic. I noticed I wasn't sure he got the joke, though.

"It's not," I said, more kindly this time. "I should be able to control Spirits. To work with them. Even when they... possess... me, we need to find a way to make it work for the both of us. And it's something temporary, that helps them release their power, which I take from them."

Matias looked impressed, but I wasn't sure how much of my explanation had really gotten through to him. It wasn't his fault -- I was very bad at reading people.

"Look at it this way," I said, trying to smile. "Normally, the Spirits and I... we kind of... have a deal. This dude, however, it's like he cornered me in a dark alley and punched my lights out, trying to steal my money."

"It didn't look like it was your money it wanted to steal," Matias commented dryly.

I coughed, somehow embarrassed.

"Good thinking," I added then. "It worked. Without the Board, I may be a potential Vessel, but we lost our main link of connection."

"Was it even a Spirit?" Matias raised one of his eyebrow. "Like you said, it acted too strangely."

"I think it must have been some kind of Creature," I said.

"But Creatures are metaphorical," Matias complained.

"There is one thing that is in between a Spirit and a Creature," I grunted. "But they're usually serious business, and if one of them is hunting the school, then everybody should know. Well, maybe not everybody, but we need to tell at least Minx and Mira."

"What do you mean?"

"It could be a Demon," I suggested through gritted teeth.

"We should go to sleep," Matias suggested. "We're both very tired, and the more we stay up, the more we risk people finding us here. I don't want to be kicked out. I like this school, and Athanasios... well, let's just say he wouldn't take it well."

"Okay," I said. "I'll tell Minx sometime tomorrow. I don't know if you noticed, but we're kind of friends," I bragged.

Matias surprised me.

He took my hand and squeezed it.

"Please, don't," he said.

"What do you mean? Mira and Minx have to know about it!"

"And they will," Matias promised me. "Just not tomorrow, okay? Let's take a little time to do some research. I want to be able to tell them exactly what we saw."

"Why?" I just couldn't understand. "It's not like they'll think we lied."

"I wouldn't be so sure, and I have been taught one shouldn't lie. Liars get punished."

Matias looked deadly serious. I decided we could do a little research. After all, he wasn't asking for much. And he must have been scarred by something in his past that made it harder for him to trust the adults around him.

I could relate to that. Thankfully, Mira and Minx were between the very few people who had my complete affection. Especially Minx, in a way, because he was a little strange himself.

"I just don't get one thing," I couldn't help but ask. "If you've been told liars get punished, why do you lie?"

He looked at me like I'd just hurt him. "I never lie," he said. "Or at least, I try not to."

"What about your first lunch here?" I couldn't help but say. I didn't want to make him feel bad, just trying to see where he was coming from.

He scoffed.

"That was just a story, Roman. Grow up, will you?"

He stalked off, and left me alone to collect my things.

When I was going back to the dormitory (I had waited long enough not to be seen walking right behind Matias), I met Minx Morris.

My first thought was to tell him everything straightaway. But something in his eyes stopped me.

He looked really worn out, and sad, like he had too much baggage already.

"I couldn't sleep," I shrugged before he could ask me anything.

"I figured," he simply said. "You've never been much for sleeping, have you? Even when you were little. Too many nightmares. I remember you used to tell Mira about them. They were very detailed," he grimaced, as if to say my nightmares had probably given him nightmares.

"Yeah, nightmares all right," I confirmed, a little too cheerfully. "Do you want to hear about it?"

Thankfully, he didn't want to. That was what I was counting on, but I wasn't the smartest tool in the shed.

"You should go back to sleep," he told me, tracing my cheek with his thumb. "And I should do it, too."

He was already walking away, when I noticed his fingertip was stained black from where he touched my skin.