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“I hope I don’t get a disease,” Jett muttered beside me, his arms crossed as he leaned his shoulder against the concrete pillar like he was posing for a cowboy magazine spread. “That hair of his got whipped into my mouth.”

I grimaced but didn’t respond. I just watched the man, taking in the twitch of his fingers, the erratic rise and fall of his chest, and the way his pupils stood blown and unfocused.

“Have you understood anything he’s said?” I asked quietly.

Jett shrugged. “It’s all over the place. Some of it’s about the devil. Some of it’s about the girl. Some of it’s about spiders under his skin. It’s a real TED Talk situation.”

The drifter’s muttering hit a new pitch, higher and almost gleeful. His head tipped back, eyes half rolling, and for a moment his lips moved without sound. When he finally spoke louder, it came out as a breathy chant, one that was creepy enough that I felt it against my spine. “Breathe the deep…feed the deep…”

Jett straightened. “What’s he saying?”

The man rocked in the chair, a grotesque little motion. His smile cracked wider, red seeping into the creases around his mouth. “Breathe the deep…feed the deep…” He giggled.

Jett glanced at me. “Have you ever heard anything like that?”

My fingers flexed at my sides. “No. But…” I exhaled, thinking of what we’d found at his abandoned campsite. “I wonder if it's related to those stones.”

“The spiraled ones?” Jett asked.

“Yeah.”

He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “He was probably doing some kind of ritual, wasn’t he? He was trying to feed something.”

I nodded slowly.

Ritual.

The word hovered between us.

Jett frowned. “You think it’s actually…you know…part of something? Like a cult?” His brows pulled together. “I mean, rituals come from somewhere usually. Books. Stories. Folks passing them down. This? Who the hell teaches a man to stack rocks in perfect rings and chant about feeding the deep? Oh, and that while they’re doing that, they should eat people.”

I didn’t have an answer.

Because if it was a ritual…then someone had taught it. And the pieces we’d been finding weren’t just the ramblings of damaged minds. They were signs, repeating and spreading, taking root somewhere in the dark.

The man giggled again, humming the chant under his breath like he was proud of it.

Jett let out a disgusted sound. “Yeah, we’re not getting anything out of him.” He pushed off the pillar and stalked toward the counter along the wall, where his tools were laid out like a surgeon’s toys. He grabbed the hooked knife without hesitation.

The man’s chanting stuttered.

Jett smirked. “Uh-huh. Thought that’d get your attention.”

He swung a chair in front of the man and dropped into it, the knife resting casually across his knee. “All right, buddy. Let’s chat. Who taught you the chant? Who showed you the stones? Who told you chomping on a woman was the thing to do on your little nature retreat?”

The man’s voice climbed, cracking with glee. “Breathe the deep…feed the deep…” He rocked so violently the chair legs scraped, the metal shrieking against the concrete. Spit flew from his mouth, and his eyes bulged, wild and fever-bright.

Jett sighed dramatically. “He’s useless.” He leaned forward and gripped the drifter’s ankle. The man jerked.

Jett’s voice dropped. “Relax. I’m only taking the one you’d run on first.”

I didn’t have to look at him to know the memory that flickered behind Jett’s eyes every time he said that line.

His stepdad. The night that started it all. His sister screaming. And how the bastard had nearly gotten away because we hadn’t broken the right part of him first.

Jett had never let anyone run again after that night.

“This is where I always start,” he explained to the man, as if he were about to give a cooking demonstration. “It’s my ritual, so to speak.”