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My eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“If I help you, maybe you’ll appease my curiosity.”
I ran my fingers though my hair in frustration as I surveyed the room. He already knew I was looking for answers. That’s why I had come to his office. “The day my father died, he told me that he wrote down some information that I need and hid it somewhere. Only he neglected to tell me where exactly he hid it. I’ve searched this room several times without finding anything, so I decided to try ripping it apart. I’m running out of time.”
“What happens when you run out of time?”
I turned my back to him and repressed a groan.
“Okay, so you don’t feel comfortable telling me what happens when you run out of time. How about this: Are you looking for information about the symbols?”
I hesitated. “I hope. Among other things.”
“Can I look at your photo again?”
“The one on my phone?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried about me flashing you a naked picture of myself?”
He laughed. “You’d be surprised by how many I’ve seen.”
“It must be a real burden,” I teased, grabbing my phone off the desk and pulling up my photo app.
“It’s a pain in the arse.”
He was serious. I couldn’t help thinking that Collin would eat it up if women showed him naked photos of themselves. At least until I showed up. Would he change his ways now that our souls were joined? Probably not. They had all been meaningless before me, so why would it be any different now? Collin was right about one thing: his feelings had been laid bare when our marks touched. I had meant something to him—I still did. It just wasn’t enough.
“Ellie?”
I looked up, mentally shaking myself. I still hadn’t handed him the phone. “Sorry. I’ve been a little scattered lately.”
“Since the colony reappeared?”
“You have no idea.” I regretted the words the moment they fell out of my mouth—they were bound to pique his interest even more.
“Can I ask when you first started putting marks on the doors?”
The more cooperative I was with him, the more cooperative he might be with me. I just had to be careful. I always let things slip when I was tired, and I was beyond my usual state of exhaustion.
“Around the time the colony appeared,” I replied. Collin had first marked my door the night he broke the curse, but I wasn’t about to say that to this guy.
“Why?”
I lifted my eyebrows and handed him my phone. “I answered your question, now you can answer mine. What does it mean?”
He moved beside me and rested his backside against the desk as he lifted the phone for a closer look. “You said this tattoo is henna?”
“Yes.”
He grimaced. “I wish I had my reading glasses. Thirty-one years old and I need reading glasses. I feel like an old man.”
David was about the furthest thing from an old man I’d ever seen, but it didn’t seem wise to mention that.
“I have some.” I moved around to the back of the desk and grabbed a pair from the top drawer. “Here. They were Daddy’s.”
He perched them on his nose and studied the photo, moving the image a little closer so he could see it better. “Like I told you, they’re symbols for forces of nature. I’ve never seen them put together in this type of an arrangement, but that doesn’t mean anything.” He looked up from the screen and over the frames. “You asked if the symbols were like our alphabet, and the answer that I so rudely withheld is no, they aren’t.”
“But Okeus’s mark in the middle. Would it mark the person bearing the symbol as belonging to Okeus?”
He pulled the glasses off, lowering his hand to his side while he still cradled my phone in the other. “Belonging? I’ve never heard of the Algonquians marking themselves to belong to Okeus, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. They often made sacrifices to him.”
