In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds 3)

My silence must have been confirmation enough.

“That’s fantastic news.” His voice was so genuine, so excited. “You’re better off without them. Is the plan still to attack the camps? Did you find the information on Thurmond?”

There it was again. He kept dropping the same little bomb, waiting for me to pick it up, to agonize over it. I crossed my arms over my chest to hide the way my hands couldn’t seem to stop trembling. What about it? What’s happening?

“Clancy. You really want to pretend we’re on the same team?”

“Aren’t I basically the mascot?” he said, his mouth curving in an imitation of a smile. “Try to avoid insulting me if you’re coming in here looking for me to do you a favor. Don’t think for a second I don’t know that you need me to help you track down more kids for your adorable little brigade. If you want the information, you’ll have to retrieve it yourself.”

My patience had been worn down to the width of dental floss in the span of two minutes. Clancy Gray got off on driving people to the edge and watching them throw themselves over, though, so I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. “Where did you leave the files? Colorado? Back in Virginia?”

“Not files, and closer than you think,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Come on, don’t play dumb. You know exactly what I mean.”

I did.

“You really are sick in the head,” I told him. “You’re just going to block me out. Is that how you’re going to make yourself feel better about all of this? By watching me embarrass myself?”

“You seemed to manage breaking into my memories just fine in Colorado. And in that Los Angeles rathole you called HQ. Why no confidence now?” he taunted. I knew him better than he thought I did—I’m bored, is what he was really saying. Entertain me.

“I’m surprised you have confidence left,” I said, “considering what happened in Los Angeles. I really loved seeing all of those precious memories of you and your mom. You were kind of a crybaby, weren’t you?”

His brows drew together, assessing. For a moment, I wished I hadn’t brought up Lillian Gray; it was too early to signal to him that I had an interest in her, too early to so much as hint she was on my mind. I needed a strategy if I was going to try to suss out her location and what, precisely, her son had done to her.

I kept my expression neutral, my breathing even. You’ve done it before, Ruby. It was always easier to slide into someone’s mind after I’d already created a path there. But both times, I’d had to catch him by surprise to do it—I’d been so damn furious in each case that if my hit had been physical and not mental, I was half-convinced I could have taken out a cement wall.

He blinked and I let the invisible hands unfurl at the back of my mind; by the time his dark, thick lashes were rising again and his gaze met mine, their nails had turned to hooks, waiting to latch on—

The block from Clancy felt like I’d slammed face-first into the glass wall between us. I cringed, fighting with everything I had not to bring a hand up to rub at the center of the pain right between my eyes. A dull headache flared to an outright, piercing throb.

“You’re rusty,” he said, surprised. “That was borderline pathetic. When was the last time you tried this?”

Shut up, I thought, trying to keep my pride in check.

Would you rather we talked like this? His voice bled through my mind, his lips never so much as twitching. He’d done this to me once before, at East River, as a friendly challenge—the sensation of it was exactly the same. It felt like there were a thousand moths trapped beneath my skin, their wings brushing and beating until I had the urge to scratch them out by force.

I was rusty, but there was a difference between being down and being out. Clancy had to constantly feed his confidence with moments like this in order to support the weight of his ego. I’d been counting on that trademark smugness, his unwillingness to accept that he was anything less than the most powerful person in the room. Come on, ass**le....

I wanted him to really believe, even for a moment, that my abilities weren’t just like a muscle I hadn’t flexed in weeks—I wanted him to think I was hopeless.

I shook my head, forcing what I hoped was a frustrated, upset expression onto my face. I had the advantage of him already assuming that his blow would be lethal to my own pride. I could see it in his face: he thought he was torturing me by forcing me to use my abilities, and he was enjoying the struggle, relishing the sight of me trying and failing.

That was one way to feel powerful while locked up behind three inches of bulletproof glass, I guess.

My abilities were practically purring inside my skull in anticipation. It took strength I didn’t know I had not to laugh, to hold that look of fury and annoyance. I just needed a single moment of him being thrown off balance. Just one, but it was like finding a way to land a hit on a guy standing behind a cinder-block wall. As with any fistfight, though, however unfairly stacked it was in one corner, there were tricks. Dirty cheats.

I wasn’t above it. Not by a long shot.

“Sorry, couldn’t resist. Ready to go again?” Clancy crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at me from behind the glass. “My only request is that you actually pretend to try.”

When he smiled again, I smiled right back.

This time I threw my abilities at him like a fist, aiming for the blank white curtain he threw up again to guard his thoughts. I slowed my assault, letting him sweep that same curtain forward to maneuver me right back out of his headspace. His own power brushed against mine like the soft stroke of knuckles against a cheek.