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Falling into a single file line, the women walked silently through the arched doorway and into another large room. No one made comment regarding the fact that cats were streaming in from every direction to slide in alongside them.
Shauni immediately noticed the change in atmosphere and saw that some of the others did as well. Claudia trailed her fingers over the stone wall and closed her eyes briefly before they sprung open in surprise and pleasure.
"What did you see?" Shauni asked.
"It was different, hazy and gilded at the edges. This place is protected. It's sacred." She folded the hand that had touched the wall into a fist, as if holding onto a secret.
Shauni didn't need Claudia's gift to realize they had entered a much older portion of the house, probably the original structure, around which everything else had been built. The walls were no longer painted and trimmed in wood, they were of ancient rock and mortar and supported a high, pointed roof with wooden beams intersecting each other. The design held her attention, and after scanning the length of it as it stretched from point to point, she realized what she was looking at. "A pentagram?"
Anna turned to face her and said, "It wasn't built for invocation, but as a long-revered symbol of the Goddess." Her blues eyes lifted, "That and as the Greeks were well aware, it employs golden section mathematics."
"As in, the golden ratio?" Viv, the physicist, asked before explaining to the others with a smile. "That means because it's pretty."
Willyn studied the work above then tossed a worried look to Shauni. Whatever she was thinking, she kept to herself, but she fingered something beneath her shirt, and Shauni realized it was a motion she'd seen before. It was the movement of a Christian grasping their cross or crucifix for comfort, and here they were under a gigantic pentagram. Oh boy.