A community of girls held captive in a silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms, spinning delicate threads from their own bellies. A dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull's nest. A family's hunger for land to call their own in the American West creates a monster. And in the collection's marvelous title story--an unforgettable parable of addiction and appetite, mortal terror and mortal love--two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood.