True, she’d never told Andrew about the shadows, but she had been very open with Ryker about them. He never flinched or said she was crazy or high, even if he thought it. She felt guilty about hiding it from her husband, but wives had to have some secrets. She’d been so overexposed to him and a bevy of doctors and nurses, it made her feel less like an outsider to keep a few things from him, like every other married woman she knew.

“Not up here, which is a good thing. No, instead of shadows, I get a funky vibe off this place. You feel anything?”

“Just concern for you. Even if there was some weird energy here, I don’t think it could cut through my apprehension.”

“You need to stop worrying about me.”

“I will when you’re all better.”

She gave him a hug, so grateful to Andrew that he’d brought Ryker here. She didn’t know what she’d do without the two most important men in her life.

Ryker rubbed her shoulders and said, “Now, back to that weird meditation. Has it happened to you since that first time?”

“To be honest, I’ve kinda stayed away from meditating. It really freaked me out.”

He nodded. “Understandable. That would flip me out too. You’re going through a lot. I think where you may have gone wrong was focusing on a negative. We can both agree a fever is a negative, right?”

“It sure as hell is.”

“Which means you gathered this negative energy around you. I don’t know what the heck that burning sensation was. It’s probably a coincidence that that stuff the doctors put in you reared its head at that moment. Whatever, the combo was powerful. So powerful, you may have attracted negative energy in the process.”

Kate sighed. “So I brought whatever strangeness on myself?”

“Not intentionally,” he was quick to add. “But if there’s something out there or in here that’s a tad on the dark side of things, your meditation may have called it over like a dinner bell.”

She wasn’t crazy about the dinner bell analogy, but she was feeling lighter just talking to him. “So, I’ve somehow attracted this bad juju, whether it be in the form of a person, place, or thing. Right?”

Ryker shrugged. “It’s possible. I’ve told you, we can attract and manifest anything we put our minds to. With you being a little, off…”

“Way off.”

He grinned. “Way, way off, you managed to pull in some bad vibes that have been lingering around. Who knows, maybe this is where some pioneers were attacked by wild animals in the 1700s, and you’re latching on to their anger at having their lives cut short.”

“Very dramatic,” Kate said.

“And most likely completely wrong, but you get the gist.”

Chewing on a fingernail, Kate said, “Is there a way to reverse it?”