Heartless (The Heartless Series) (19 page)

I
DON'T HESITATE.
I
GO TO
my contacts and scroll down until I find Lucien's number. I punch the button and put the phone to my ear as I run toward Madison's dorm.

He answers on the third ring. "Gracen?"

"He's got Sam!" I yell.

My lungs have already started burning from running so fast. What do I think I'm going to do when I get there? Sam's there. He's being controlled by Hart. Madison is already dead. I'll be next if I keep going…

I'll be next.

"Gracen, calm down. Just stop running. Stop!"

I do what he says because I have the same idea. Stop. Stopping would be good. Stopping would be smart, and it's high time for me to be smart about this.

"Where are you?"

"South Quad. On the way to Smith Hall. It's Madison…" I don't have to finish my sentence. Lucien is standing in front of me. Phone on his ear. I stare at him, unable to register this for a second or two. One second he's not there and then boom. There. In front of me. He looks different than he did last night. Worried. Way more worried if that's possible. Black and purple bags are under his eyes, and his hair is disheveled. He has on dark jeans and a black t-shirt. For some reason, I always assumed angels wore white. Apparently, I was wrong.

He shuts off his phone and puts it in his pocket. I do the same. "What happened?"

I close my eyes for just a second so I can figure out the right words or at least semi-right words.

"Coherent words will do." He says.

Might be easier said than done.

Before I can speak, he gets closer to me and puts his hands on my forearms. He doesn't squeeze. Doesn't hurt. He just stands there. The warmth comes back. Part of me hates it because I know I only feel this way about him because he's an angel. The other part of me doesn't give a damn. He feels good. I need good feelings. End of story.

"Take a few deep breaths. Concentrate. What happened?" His voice is deep, rich, calming, but it has an urgency that I feel too.

I have to get this out. I have to be brave. I can't let Hart hurt anyone else. I won't. "I talked to Hart again last night."

"What?" Lucien's eyes widen, and his hands grip my arms tighter. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was scared, but I don't know what he'd be scared about. Do angels get scared? "I thought you weren't going to sleep after all that coffee you drank. Did he hurt you?"

"No more than usual. I mean. I thought I was walking through campus. I thought I was walking to you."

"To me?"

"Yeah. I thought I was on our way to our meeting."

Lucien shifts from one leg to the other. "So he knows. He knows we've been talking."

"Is he not supposed to? I mean, he was there last night too. When we were talking in the dorms… when you said he wasn't really there."

"It's different… it's… it's nothing."

I don't like the sound of that. But I don't question it, and he keeps going. "So you were on the way to see me?"

"Yeah. And Hart stopped me. And he told me all this stuff about being human and what happened to him in the war with his brother."

Lucien stands straighter and lets go of my arms. "That a fact."

"Yeah. He said he had been human and got turned after his brother killed him."

"Wait…" Lucien's voice gets scarily dark. "He said his brother killed him?"

I, honestly, don't want to answer that. Lucien is a bit—read a lot—taller than me, and a ticked off angel isn't something I really wanted to deal with. But I don't have time think about this. Hart has Sam. I need to save him. "Yeah. He said at Stones River or something. His brother shot him. He shot his brother. It was a big thing. Anyway. After all that, I woke up in the same room I'm always in. I saw Madison—a girl who works at the library with me—there. I woke up in my room. Got ready. Called Madison and…"

Lucien tilts his head and narrows his eyes. "And what?"

"Sam answered the phone."

"Sam." His nose flares.

"My boyfriend. He hasn't been home in a few days. And he called me sweetheart, just like Hart does."

"Hart calls you sweetheart?"

Have we not wasted enough time? "After all I told you, that's what you pick up on?"

Lucien has this look about him that I can't place. It's like he's fighting something—something within himself—but truthfully, I can't worry about that. I have more things to worry about. Namely Hart, Sam, Madison, and—oh yeah—my sanity.

"Can we please go and find Sam?" I walk past him, but run right into his chest. This angel appearing wherever he wants thing is a pain. A big, ginormous pain.

"No. I'll go find Sam. I'll go find Madison. But you need to go back home. Wait for your boyfriend there."

"You don't really think he'll be there." I can read it all over his face. "You think he's still at Madison's. You think he's waiting for me."

"You don't want to know what I think." He grits through his teeth. "Please, Gracen. Go home. I'll take care of Madison's. I'll call the police. I'll…"

"The police!" Of all the… "If you call the police, they'll find Sam's prints everywhere. They'll know he's the one who killed her."

"He did." Lucien says almost eerily calm. Like he's saying the sky is blue, or I like cheese.

I fight the urge to smack his arm. Probably wouldn't be the best thing in the world to smack an angel. Even one being a bit of a jerk. "He didn't. Not really. Hart did. You said it yourself. Hart can possess people. He did this, Lucien. Not Sam. Sam's innocent." Then it hits me. Like a ton of bricks, it hits me.

"How long do you think Hart's been inside Sam? How long has he taken him over?"

"Gracen…"

"No! How long, Lucien? How long has the monster that torments me in my dreams been posing as my boyfriend?"

Lucien's stares at me, but his eyes aren't as hard as they were a few minutes ago. They've softened. "Look, I should have told you before, but I needed… I needed some way to keep an eye on Hart. I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for this."

"Tell. Me." I'm done with both of them.

Lucien clears his throat before he destroys my world. "Gracen… there never was a Sam Asher. There never has been."

Chapter Twenty-Two

"
Y
OU'RE THE CRAZY ONE.
Y
ES, THERE
is. Yes… yes there is. Sam's real. I think I know that much about life." Lucien has officially gone off the deep end. That settles it. I'm not the crazy one here. Lucien—the angel—is. "I think I'd know if my boyfriend was real or not."

"I don't have time for this." Lucien says as he turns to walk away.

He takes three steps while I'm screaming at him before he pops back up in front of me, so close we're almost touching. He needs to take a step back.

"You're crazy," I say, tears stinging my face. I can't… I won't believe it. I think part of me knows, though… part of me…

"If that's what you really think, then it's your right. You go back home. You wait for Sam to come home. You greet him with a big ole sloppy kiss, and you pretend everything is all right. But you'll be wrong. There is no Sam. There never has been."

"How do you know? You acted like you didn't know who I was talking about."

"I lied."

"Angels can't lie." I bite back.

"That a fact?" He's challenging me. I want to throw up. Or sit down… something. This is all too much. I can't take much more of this.

"I don't… I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. How could you? You're human and this is way beyond anything you've ever had to deal with. But think about it. Don't think with your heart."

"Hart says I don't have one." A weak smile pulls on my lips. I feel numb. Completely numb.

"He isn't completely wrong."

My head shoots up, and my eyes meet his. He looks down at me. I think he's trying to act strong and big and bad. Trying being the operative word. I see compassion in his eyes. That scares me more than anything. When an angel looks at you like that, it can't be good. Not that any of this has ever been good. "What is an abomination, and why won't anybody give me any straight answers?"

He looks away.

"Lucien. Tell me. I have a right to know." Everything around us is still. No people. No wind. No birds. Nothing. It's quiet. Not like it was when I talked to Hart. I can tell this is real. This is really happening and not in a dream. I wish it were.

Finally, his eyes find mine again. "Do you have a hard time making friends?"

"What?" Where did that come from?

"Friends, Gracen. Do you have a hard time finding them? Relating to people? Relationships?"

"I think a lot of people have problems with that…"

"Answer the question. Just answer it. Don't try to overthink it or quantify it or anything like that. Just answer. Do you have a hard time with friends? With people?"

I don't have to think hard. "Yeah. I mean, I guess. I've never been what you call a people person. My mom just said I was unique. That's it. I've had acquaintances, but I've never been one to have a bestie or anything. The closest thing I have to a friend now is Tina online, and Sam said that if she knew the real me, she wouldn't like me. But I guess that wasn't Sam saying that, was it?"

"It was Hart. It's always been Hart. He's obsessed with you. Because of what you are. I wasn't sure before, but I am now."

"Why me? What is about me that makes me what I am?"

"Because it has to be you. Because of what's inside you."

"What's inside me?"All this going around and around is giving me a headache. I want him to stop and be straight with me!

He doesn't answer. He just gives me that look I'm growing to hate.

"What's inside me!" I yell. Birds sitting in the big oak tree next to us fly into the darkening sky. They don't make a sound.

"I can't." A tear—a freakin' tear—runs down his cheek, and then he's gone. Just like that. Gone. Disappeared. I'm all alone.

My stomach knots and my tongue feels like it's going to dry out. I think I've heard people call it cotton mouth.

My phone rings. It's Sam… or Hart… or whoever.

"What did you do to him?"

Hart doesn't acknowledge I've said anything. Would I expect anything less? "We need to talk. Meet me at home.
Our
home. I have what you need. You'll die without it." The phone clicks.

I'm all alone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I
WALK IN THROUGH THE FRONT
door like I always do.

I toss the keys on the table like I always do.

I walk into the kitchen, and he's sitting at the kitchen table. He is wearing a white t-shirt, jeans, and boots like he always does. His brown floppy hair is perfectly styled, just like always.

He's Sam.

He's my Sam.

He's never been Sam.

I pull up a chair next to him and sit down. He hands me an I-love-you puppy dog cup filled with coffee. It smells so good that I take a sip. I don't even hesitate. Don't even think. I'm thirsty. It's there. It's halfway gone.

Sam—Hart—grins and takes a sip of his.

"So, what do I call you?" I ask. The coffee feels good. Warms me. I haven't been warm in a while… well, without Lucien being present.

"Hart is fine. I never liked Sam anyway. Always felt… unnatural. Artificial."

"I thought demons didn't have physical forms."

"We don't. Not really. I found this guy in a morgue. He was a John Doe, poor soul. I just popped in, and there we were."

"He's dead?"

"That tends to be why one is in a morgue."

I'll smack him. Demon or not.

Hart rolls Sam's eyes. "He's not here. The soul that was in here before I hitched a ride, if that's what you're worried about. He's long gone… been gone about two years."

"He's in Heaven?"

Hart simply smirks.

I think I'm going to throw up. "Why? Why are you doing this? Why me?"

He takes another sip of his coffee. I do the same because my stomach is craving it. Who knew I loved coffee so much? "That's the problem with you people. Always with the why. Does there have to be a why? Can't things just be. Just… because. Coincidence and whatnot?"

I don't answer.

He seems to take that as my answer. "When you see me in your dreams, that's what I really look like. Well, before I died. That handsome devil is my true form. He's rotting in a field somewhere. Stones River or somewhere close to it. Mass grave. This guy, Sam, he's just a body to walk around in."

"Was his name really Sam?" Why I care about that, I have no idea.

"How the hell should I know? Sam just seemed like an easy name to remember. Sam, simple. Easy. If I had told you my name was Hart, it might have freaked you out." He smiles. It's weird seeing him like this. I mean, he's actually a bit more chipper than he was when he was pretending to be my boyfriend.

Hart gets up and goes to the fridge. He pulls out a brown paper bag and shows me the contents. "It's five o'clock somewhere, right?"

Wine.
Sam's
favorite thing.

I shouldn't drink it. Hell, I shouldn't drink with him. I'm tired, though. Just way too tired and run down and a big part of me just doesn't care. Plus, I'm thirsty. Really, really thirsty. The coffee has done nothing for me.

Somewhere in the distance I hear a sound, rhythmic. I can't place it, but I know I've heard something similar before. Where did I hear it?

Hart grabs two plastic cups and brings them to the table. He pours a glass, filling it to the rim, and hands it to me. Red wine. If ever there were an occasion for liquor, this would be it. Lots and lots of liquor.

"I take it you talked to Lucien." Hart takes a drink and watches me expectantly.

"Yeah. It's like playing ping pong talking to you two. Maybe we should all just meet up. Have a group chat." I take a swig of my wine and wince. Wow. It's incredibly strong and incredibly good. We've drunk this brand before, back when I thought we were dating. It's good. Very good. The pain in my stomach seems to die down. Thankfully.

Thank you, Lord.

"I don't think that's a very good idea."