for herself. Any other time, Lily would have teased her about such a blatant display of power, but Eve seemed so disconnected from the process, Lily kept her mouth shut.
Once they both had their glasses, Eve took a sip of her wine and sighed. “Over the years, I’ve learned to sense when you’re troubled, Lily, and I know you are tonight, but I have a selfish reason for wanting you here. I’m so glad you’ve come. I need your help.”
Lily stared at her friend over the lip of the glass. “Anything, Eve. You don’t even have to ask. I am troubled, but obviously so are you.” She smiled. “Your turn. I’m listening.”
Eve stared beyond Lily. Her eyes swirled in their familiar but disconcerting pattern from green, to gold, to blue. Finally, she seemed to shake herself out of whatever thoughts held her, and focused on Lily.
“When I became the goddess, I knew such unbelievable power. For the first time in my life, I could choose my own way. I could help those I loved, experience the love each of you felt for one another. There was very little beyond my abilities. Nothing, I believed, could ever hurt me again. Or hurt the ones I love.”
She turned her swirling gaze on Lily and sighed. “I was wrong, Lily. So terribly wrong.”
She glanced about, as if searching for something just out of sight. “There’s trouble on the astral plane. I sense it, but I’m unable to determine its source. All I know for certain is that it’s based on magic, but not a magic I’ve ever experienced. I’m afraid it’s dark magic. You’re sensitive to magic in its many forms. I’m hoping you’ll be able to trace the dissonance to its source, find out who or what is causing the rift in my world.”
“Have you gone to the Mother? Asked her?” Lily sipped her wine, but her mind was spinning. Eve could do anything. She knew everything. How could Lily know something Eve didn’t?
“I’ve tried, but she doesn’t answer me, and that’s part of my worry. Something is disturbing the normal flow here. It’s interrupting my ability to communicate with the Mother.” Her chin dropped; she bowed her head. “I’m unable, at times, to connect with any of you. When I knew you were coming to me, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to meet. It’s as if the dimensions are sliding along beside one another, not linked as they should be, as if the fibers of time are disrupted.”
Staring into her glass of wine, she sighed. “I can’t watch over you when that happens. I worry, especially now, when humans are growing concerned about your place in the world. I don’t want any of you to come to harm.”
Lily tossed back the last swallow of her wine and handed the glass to the goddess. Eve threw it into the air, and the glass winked and disappeared.
Lily blinked and squeezed Eve’s hand. “Now that beats washing dishes all to hell.”
Eve smiled, stood, and tugged Lily to her feet. “It would have been handy when I was still part of the pack. I washed a lot of dishes.”
She’d once been as mortal as Lily, mated to the pack’s healer. But because their first goddess had screwed up, Eve died before her time. As punishment, the goddess Liana was sentenced to life on earth while Eve took on the role of goddess and protector of the Chanku.
Liana’s punishment had worked beautifully for everyone. She was now happily bound to Eve’s mate and mother to Adam’s children, while Eve had blossomed as the perfect goddess for a growing group of shapeshifters.
She’d also taken on the job as Lily’s guardian angel long ago, something that gave Lily the courage now to follow Eve across the meadow and take a seat beneath an impossibly huge tree with gnarled branches and thick moss growing over the thick trunk. Protected beneath its branches, Lily opened her senses to the ebb and flow of power within the astral plane. No matter what she found, she knew Eve would watch over her.
Sitting with legs akimbo, Lily searched for any anomaly, for the slightest touch of magic that could be causing trouble.
She loved taking mental journeys while on the astral plane. She’d traveled it in reality when she’d been nothing but a child, and now, as an adult, relished the rich sense of power, the ebb and flow of life and time, of energy linked to forces both negative and positive.
There was