Guilty by association

The earthling doesn’t seem to suspect anything as she follows me through a narrowing corridor and into an empty room.
Empty of objects, at least. There is some fixed furniture that Lesie couldn’t remove and the five people waiting for us.
Sölitas and Iuner are sitting on the floor, talking about how scary some rodents are as if they weren’t able to turn really dangerous beasts into dust with a flick of their hands. Bari stands in the middle of the room, resting his weight on his cane, and Sally is… breaking the rules by sitting on a random chair that shouldn’t be here. She takes her eyes from her holographic screen to look at me in boredom, but Gehrujsa, the only non magic wielder in the room, is looking at the earthling with interest for the first time since she joined us for the rescue mission.
I’m considering how to subtly remind Sally that she can’t have a chair here, but there is no need for that, she stands up as the seat disappears. Gehrujsa clears his throat and Iuner sighs. Resigned, she stands too. For some reason, she looks even more childlike that way.
“Qeleb, what are we doing here?” the earthling asks, impatient as usual.
“Well, Cecilia” I say, locking the door with magic as I close it.
“Sou,” she corrects me.
“We are grateful for your help, Sou. We had been wondering though… and, we wanted to ask, before taking you back home—”
“Oh! I see! You are terrible organizing parties,” Cecilia gestures at the room in general, and her voice sounds like a laugh, “but okay. I’ll be your guest.”
“Yeah…” For a second I don’t know what to say, but then I notice that she just gave me an excuse to lead the conversation to what we want to ask. “We don’t oft—”
“Wait!” she interrupts me, louder than usual, hurting my ears and startling Sölitas. She’s back to normal as she explains: “You don’t mean immediately, do you? About taking me home, I mean. I have to wait for my uncle to recover. Actually, he—”
“Yes, of course. Of course.”
“Okay. What’s that thank-you-goodbye-present, then?”
Sally’s amused smile is almost hidden behind her screen—because of course she is still reading—but I can feel it in her magic.
“It’s not a party,” I say. “We have been wondering how did you come here and—”
“Are you for real?” Cecilia snorts. “You brought me here to ask how I traveled from earth to world number nine?”
“Ninth World,” I correct, automatically, while Iuner nods politely and Gehrujsa growls a ‘yes’.
“And don’t bother to lie,” I start to warn, but half of it is drowned under her voice.
“Ángel brought me.”
There is no hint of worry or shame or any kind of feeling in her words, she states the fact as if it was nothing. It shouldn’t be, since we already suspected precisely that, but I need a second to digest the tone.
“What?” she snorts again. “Teresa doesn’t know where this is and my uncle is the person you left to die—again—so who else could have brought me? And you are the smarties of the universe! No wonder I keep finding myself doing the job that should be done by responsible adults.”
“Cecilia, you..."
"Sou."
"...are an adult…” I continue.
“Not a responsible one.”
“... we were going to go and rescue the missing peacekeepers…”
She rolls her eyes. “And get Áled and Iaden murder in the process.”
“... and we know that your… Wait. Why do you think they were going to die?”
Iuner and Gehrujsa answer with her: “Ángel.”
“That’s why he sent me,” she adds, and then, bitterly: “And to save that idiot that almost killed us all last time.”
Eckard. The other fugitive, who was mixed in the situation for some reason I never found out.
“And to aid his escape?” Bari asks.
“Like hell,” she growls, affronted.
Bari apologizes for the accusation, but I remind Cecilia that Ángel is known for his manipulative tactics: “Tactics to which you are particularly vulnerable, because you two are related.”
“Not really,” she shrugs. “He knows I trust him with my life so he simply tells me what to do, but with other people he just pulls other kinds of strings.”
The questioning continues in the same way for over an hour: the more I ask, the more she derails the conversation. While the others were here just in case she lashes out or tries to leave, they all end up asking something, trying to understand her comments.
Only Sally stays quiet, mostly bored but sometimes amused, until she finally makes a gesture to vanish the screen, and says a single sentence: “Sou, what Qeleb wants to know is where your cousin is.”
“Oh. Could have just asked,” Cecilia says. “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell us so you don’t pull our teeth or thoughts. But he asked me to tell you: ‘hope you had fun in the…’ Oh! This is the party!” she lets out a laugh and then says “Worst joke ever, even for his standards.”
She heads to the door nonchalantly. “Sorry, if I had remembered I would have told you earlier. But, man, do you digress!”
Her answer fit what we already knew, and as much as I hate to admit it, Ángel beat us at this game before it even started. I open the door for her and she’s already at the hall when she suddenly stops, as if remembering something.
“You know what?” Her voice is sounding like a laugh again. “Next time you throw a party for me, don’t forget to clean the walls.”
The things we found close to impossible to remove are falling to the ground before I try to understand what she meant.
“See ya!” she chants, skipping down the hall.
Show-off.
“See?” Sölitas says in a told you so tone. “Unlabeled flask.”
“I wonder how she does that…” Sally sighs.

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Written for the Epic Character Challenge organized by LexiCon (WordiGirl).