Chapter 16

Chapter 16

          Ellie sat in the little cafeteria, sipping at a glass of juice, not believing that she was sitting here amongst her neighbors and no one was noticing her, or at least noticing who she was. Loqi said they could go somewhere for breakfast if she absolutely promised not to use her manipulation on him. His illusions broke if she tried to override them, and while that absolutely was something she would taken advantage of one day, at this time she did admit the need to eat was outweighing her need to escape General Loqi at this point.

          “You aren’t going to take me where you were staying, and we are not going back to the manor,” Loqi said, “so what would your suggestion be?”

          Ellie had not thought of a suggestion yet. She was bone tired and hungry. Fighting Loqi had been exhausting, and then the vision he had shown her had rubbed her nerves raw. Her body ached in ways that should have been physically impossible, and still there it was, causing her to burn. She refused to let him know how much he hurt her, though. If she told Loqi about that he might try to do more than just kiss her. He got off on her pain, and she would have been more disgusted if she was not ready to start eating the little sugar packets if they did not bring her food soon.

          “I don’t have one yet,” she admitted.

          “You’re stalling,” he said.

          “A bit,” she admitted. “I really am useless right now, though. I’m starving and I can’t think when I’m hungry. You’re paying for this, though, right?”

          Loqi shrugged and said, “If you insist, as long as you don’t manipulate me into doing so.”

          “You don’t use an illusion on me, and I won’t use manipulation on you. On purpose.”

          “Fair enough.”

          The waitress brought them their food and the two began eating in silence. What she really needed was sleep, but she was not going to fall asleep in front of Loqi. They had stayed up through the night, watching one another, waiting for the other to do something that the other would have to fight. They had not left the site of her parents’ death.

          When the sun rose, her stomach had grumbled, and she asked him if he could cause them to not be seen. He brushed it off as if it was the easiest thing in the world to him. She did not believe she could have concentrated to do anything while exhaustion took her over, and yet he did not look as if he had just spent the night wide awake with her. He looked well rested.

          “Did you sleep and just use illusion to make me think you were awake?” Ellie asked accusingly.

          Loqi barked out a laugh. “Darling, no.” Ellie narrowed his eyes and he held his hands up in surrender. “I swear to you, I have not gotten any sleep behind your back. I simply can go longer than you can without sleep. It happens.”

          Ellie doubted him, but she was too tired to keep arguing.

          “It’s a side effect,” he explained. “How tired you are. You were actually trying to use your gift last night, in large amounts, and then I was in your head, your body is having a hard time coping because it’s not used to doing that amount of work. It just takes getting used to.”

          “Like you? You don’t even get tired,” she said to him.

          “Illusion is second nature to me now,” he said. “But I’ve had a long time to practice.”

          “You’re… not the age you look, are you?” Ellie asked him.

          Loqi smiled and drank from his cup of coffee. “Not even close,” he said. “But don’t let that bother you, I still act like I did when I was your age.”

          “I can tell,” she retorted. Loqi did not look upset by her comment, he simply smiled and let it roll off of him. She was sure he was saving it up for later, though. She had yet to figure out a way to slip him to go back to the cavern and Baye. She was not trying to make her friend worry, she had just needed to clear her head after learning about her parents. Instead of clearing her head it was full of fog and she could not grasp a handle on any one thought for long. The food was helping, but if she did not sleep soon she would collapse at an inopportune moment.

          “You must have questions you want to ask me,” Loqi said, finishing his small meal of toast and eggs and just cradling his mug of coffee.

          “No,” Ellie said flatly and struggling to cut into the thick sausage on her plate with her fork.

          “Are you afraid of the answers?” Loqi asked her.

          “Yes,” Ellie admitted. Her fork poked through the sausage forcefully enough that the end she was cutting off shot off of her plate and across the small café. She looked to see where it went to and gasped when Baye walked into the café. Baye’s eyes were searching, and Ellie knew she was searching for her. She had likely gone to the burn site and seen that Ellie was not there and came looking for her in town, wondering if she would be stupid enough to go have breakfast. Well, she was right, Ellie was stupid enough.

          Ellie opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. She wanted Baye to come over, to protect her from being alone with the general any longer. At the same time she did not know what he would do to Baye if she did come over. She had seen how cold he had been watching David tear his own eye out of his face, why would he care about someone he had never met before.

          Loqi caught her watching the other lady and leaned back in his seat. “Your friend?”

          Ellie winced and turned away. “I know her, yes.” There was no use in lying. He would see right through it and if she tried to manipulate him she would fail. Even if she managed to start to he would be alerted and it would become a battle of wills again. At this point in time he was stronger than she was, he might always be, but she was determined to try to not let him win.

          Baye spotted them, her eyes widening. She did not hesitate to rush forward and join them at their table, sitting next to Ellie and across from Loqi. “What are you doing here?” she was asking Ellie, reaching out and wrapping her arms around her friend.

          Ellie eyed Loqi. He had dropped the illusion, or at least allowed Baye into it with them. He gave nothing away other than a simple shrug to show he had done what Ellie knew he did. They why was a mystery that he may never try to explain.

          “Eating,” Ellie said.

          “If you’re seen word will get back to the president where you are,” Baye huffed. Ellie pointed her fork at Loqi, who was still dressed in the uniform of a decorated general. Baye reacted as if she had just noticed him and startled at him.

          Loqi, in usual extravagant fashion, offered Baye his hand across the table and introduced himself as, “General Loqi Quarant, Illusionist, and Eleanore’s boyfriend.”

          Baye’s look could not have gone anymore astonished as she looked to Ellie, shaking the man’s hand. “He’s lying,” Ellie said. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of me, or you, I don’t even know who he is picking on at the moment.

          “Neither of you,” Loqi said with a pout. “Eleanore, I simply want to be by your side, have I not made that clear to you yet?”

          “So, you’re like, in love with her?” Baye asked.

“I do not love her, I am obsessed with her. She’s an addiction,” Loqi admitted with his usual blasé attitude about everything. “But I will love her, and she will love me, even if it is all illusion. For now, I just need to be near her, be with her. So, as long as she is here and on your side, I am as well.” It was a glimmer of pure honesty from him. Ellie was surprised at his confession, not the obsession with her, she was not a moron, she had picked up on that when he had found her at the burned down house, but that he was willing to swear a loyalty to her.

“I-“ Baye was cut off.

“I assume you are  part of Rafe’s rebellion,” Loqi said to her.

“How did you-“

“I know many things,” Loqi said. “What good would I be as a spy if I didn’t?”

“You just don’t report back as much as you know,” Ellie said.

“I am out for myself,” Loqi admitted. “Revealing my entire hand might have me on the experiment table next. Bastian knows enough to know I’m worth every penny and keeping around, and no more than that. If I’m better than he gives me credit for, I might be worth the experiment table.

“Which is why I can’t let them know I found Eleanore,” he said to Baye. “She will go to the experiment table.”

“What about Rhapsody?” Ellie asked. “I haven’t thought about her, but if he used David, why wouldn’t he use Rhapsody in the same way?”

“David agreed to his position to protect Rhapsody years ago,” Loqi said. “I don’t think Bastian needs more than one healer, unless he loses David, and then she’s free game. But he doesn’t have someone like you.”

          “And we can’t let him have her,” Baye agreed. “Which is why she needs to come back to the cave with me.”

“To do what exactly?” Loqi asked.

“Not get caught,” Baye explained.

“Amazing life that would be,” Loqi said. “Why don’t we try something different?”

“Like?” Baye asked.

“Finding out if we can manipulate a president.”

“You just said you would be on her side,” Baye argued.

“And I am. And her side is rebelling, the same as yours I assume, and I also assume you are a reason for that, but just sitting on the sidelines is going to get us nowhere.”

Baye sat back in her seat. Ellie watched her, hoping, though she was not sure what she was hoping for. Loqi cocked his head at Ellie and said, “You could force her.”

“Not if I can help it,” Ellie said. “Every time I do it I feel this pressing guilt.”

Loqi was not demanding she change Baye’s mind, it was an inquiry into her decisions. They exchanged a look while Baye was pondering, and Ellie felt her cheeks turn pink again. The last thing she wanted was to fall for someone like Loqi, even if it was just a rush of having someone who liked her. Loqi was a twisted mind she did not have any interest in looking deeper into.

“How do we get her close to the president to try it?” Baye asked. “Because he obviously can’t see her. Once he does he’ll have some sort of defense up. I don’t know all of Bastian’s powers, but I know enough to fear him.”

“He’s  good at keeping what he does a secret,” Loqi agreed. “I am in his entourage of trusted acquaintances and I only know a few things.”

“Like?”

“No, I do not think I will be telling you that quite yet,” Loqi said to Baye.

“You said you were on her side,” Baye argued.

“I can be on her side and not show all of my cards to her friend that I do not know.”

“You barely know her.”

“When you have been inside someone’s mind you know more about them than they will ever admit to themselves.”

“Wait, is that true?” Ellie interrupted. “When you showed me that vision, you didn’t…” Loqi gave her that honest smile and she blanched. “What did you see?” she asked, horrified.

          “So much,” he said. “I know enough to know that kiss with me was not your first, but it was your first with someone you enjoyed it with.”

          “That’s easy stuff,” she sneered.

          “You admit you enjoyed kissing me?” he asked, having trapped her into an admission she was not enjoying.

          “Can we focus?” Baye asked. “I’m glad you had a night of intimacy that I have no desire to hear about,” Ellie slammed her glass on the table in a show of displeasure, but Baye barreled over it, her anger obvious but for what reason not as much, “but we need an actual plan, not just ideas.”

          “We need to get one of his experiments out to play,” Loqi said. “He’s been itching to use one on someone. Every experiment has a bit of Bastian’s blood. If you can manipulate one of those experiments, we might have an idea if we can manipulate the president himself.”

          “How do we get him to release an experiment?” Baye asked.

          “Let me go back to Rafe,” Loqi said. “I can still come and go as I please. If I refuse to go to the manor the president will just assume I am failing and brush me off for a time. I have some freedom left.”

          “What if he doesn’t?” Ellie asked.

          Loqi did not look bothered with the possibility. “It just means that my time will be over sooner than I was hoping for.”

          “You’re so casual about death,” Baye said.

          “Bastian will never suspect that I am working with the people he’s fighting,” Loqi said honestly. “I have been on his size without question for far longer than I would like to mention.”

          “And for Ellie, someone you’ve known a minute, you are willing to throw that away?” Baye asked doubtfully. Ellie wasn’t sure if she should be offended by that or not. “Ellie, I say we murder him and cut our losses.”

          Ellie turned to Loqi and said, “Don’t fight it.”

Loqi let out a sigh or resignation and said, “Don’t forget my payment afterward,” before closing his eyes.

Ellie thinned her lips in exasperation before saying, “Loqi, be honest, are you on our side?”

“I am on your side, Eleanore,” Loqi said. “Only your side, whatever side you are on.”

“Why?”

“You are just using this to abate your own curiosity now,” Loqi pointed out.

“Why?” she asked again, putting more force behind the question.

Loqi winced, he had been fighting it, but he let it go and said, “I already told your friend why. You intrigue me, and once I saw in your head I wanted no more than to be by your side, in any capacity.”

Ellie released him and slumped in her seat. She had been too tired to do that. “I need rest,” she admitted like a child.

Loqi stood and said, “Let me get you two somewhere safe, and then I will go. Unless, Baye, you have an objection to me getting help from Rafe.”

“I’m afraid he’s going to get caught and this will all go wrong,” Baye admitted.

Ellie’s head was growing foggy. She was having a hard time staying sitting up. Loqi reached across the table and lifted her like she weighed no more than a child, throwing her over his shoulder. “Come on, let’s walk. She needs to sleep. If you want to go to your home in town and not show me where the base is, I respect that. Eleanore was trying to keep me from it as well, so in case you are mad at her, thinking she betrayed you, she has been on your side this entire time.”

“I’m still awake,” Ellie mumbled into Loqi’s shoulder.

She was aware of their chuckling, and the conversation continuing even after she closed her eyes. She was sure she fell asleep in Loqi’s arms because the next time she was aware of she was being tucked onto a couch and wrapped into an old blanket. She opened her eyes and recognized Baye’s home, the one in the city she had been to several times over the last two years. She was comfortable here, but afraid with Loqi gone she would be caught.

“I will put up an illusion,” Loqi told her. “It will last a few hours so you can sleep. I can’t make it last much longer than that, though. When you awaken you will need to be vigilant, but you should be safe since you are inside.”

“Be safe,” Ellie told him, still drowsy.

“I knew you cared.” He leaned forward and kissed her, but this kiss was gentle, almost sweet. She was surprised until he bit her bottom lip, making it bleed. She reached up and touched the swollen lip and he said, “You’re too tired to truly torture you, it would be no fun.”

Baye took his spot on the couch and he left the house. Ellie watched him through the haze. “I hope he doesn’t betray us,” Baye said.

“He’s lying about something,” Ellie told her friend. “Not about being on our side, I believe him, but there’s something he’s lying about, I’m just too tired to find out what it is. I couldn’t search.”

“Ellie, get some sleep, we’ll talk when you wake up.” Baye squeezed her friends hand and said, “I’m sorry, again, about your parents.” Ellie saw the vision Loqi had given her, of two bullet holes in their heads. She had forgotten it, or pushed it aside, in the hours since Loqi had joined by her side. She believed a lot of that was his illusions. She had no doubt he had been using illusions on her. The weaker she had become the more susceptible to his gift she had become. It was no longer a war, it was not even a battle. She had felt the illusions close in on her and she had let them, especially at breakfast.

She could not dwell on the lies he told, because she knew there was no sense. She was too tired to figure it out. She closed her eyes one last time before falling asleep squeezing her friend’s hand.