Chapter 1: The Confession

Willa knew something had been eating her husband long before he finally told her.

It was in the way Silas watched her when he thought she wasn't looking — not the way a man watches his wife, but the way a starving animal watches something it has decided not to kill. He was thirty-three, broad-shouldered and quiet, with hands that could fix a carburetor or hold her face like she was made of glass, and for six years of marriage Willa had told herself that the darkness in him was just the ordinary darkness men carry. She was twenty-eight, five years his junior — his younger wife in every way that mattered — and she had never once been afraid of him. Until tonight. And even now, the fear tasted like want. Stress. Temper. The past.

That night, he told her the truth.

They were in the kitchen of their little house at the edge of the woods, the overhead light too bright, the remains of dinner between them. Willa wore his old t-shirt and black lace boy-shorts, her dark-purple hair piled up carelessly, her lipstick long since kissed away. She had been laughing at something — she couldn't remember what, later — when she looked up and saw his face, and the laugh died in her throat.

"Silas?"

He didn't answer at first. His hands were flat on the table, fingers spread, and she saw they were shaking.

"I need to tell you what I am," he said.

Willa went still. In six years, through every fight and every dark night and every slow Sunday morning, he had never once looked at her like this — like a man standing at the edge of a cliff with his wife's hand in his, deciding whether to jump.

"You're scaring me," she whispered.

"Good." His voice was rough. "You should be a little scared. Willa — I have a hunger. Not a metaphor. Not a craving. A hunger." He lifted his eyes to hers, and they were black with it. "For flesh. For blood. For you."

The kitchen clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. Willa's heart hammered so hard she was certain he could hear it — and then, with a cold wash of understanding, she realized that he probably could. That he had probably been hearing it for years. That every time she had lain beneath him, flushed and gasping, he had been listening to her pulse like music and holding back something enormous.