Nestlings

Ana Greene, a former dancer who uses a wheelchair after a spinal hemorrhage during childbirth, and her husband, Reid, tour a top-floor apartment at the Deptford, a storied Manhattan apartment building, after winning a housing lottery. Their daughter, Charlie, is nearly one. The apartment offers wide doorways and Central Park views, but Ana sees a critical problem: if the elevator fails or there is a fire, she is trapped. She almost declines, then reverses course, determined to stop letting bad luck define them. Their guide, Vera, privately calls the couple "perfect," noting Ana's disability as an asset, and catches a cockroach on the counter and eats it alive.

Reid, who works as an office assistant at a small law firm, interprets the apartment as a turning point after years of hardship, including his mother's death from COVID and Ana's injury. At a bookstore, he finds a rare, out-of-print book about the Deptford and becomes obsessed. It describes mysterious disappearances, the building's origins as a progressive housing experiment by founder Thomas Emile Janebridge, and "the Plummet of 1919," in which 20 people allegedly leapt from the roof.

Ana, left alone with Charlie during the day, struggles with isolation, insomnia, and an inner monologue shaped by her emotionally abusive mother, Cathy. She records audiobooks from a soundproof booth in her closet. She harbors a feeling she has never spoken aloud: She resents Charlie and wishes her daughter had never been born. Charlie cries constantly; the pediatrician attributes the behavior to the stress of moving. Food delivery drivers refuse to enter the building. The concierge, whose impossibly wide smile earns him the nickname "Smiler," deeply unsettles Ana.

Georgia, Ana's physical therapist and friend, urges Ana to stop bracing for impact. When Georgia pushes Ana to try standing with a walker, Ana explodes in rage and slams the door. Georgia explores the staircase on her way out, descends into a lightless hallway, and encounters a skinned, dog-like humanoid creature. Something grabs her from behind. She is never heard from again.

Ana notices the courtyard's gargoyles have vanished and finds organic gunk on Charlie's windowsill. Hearing crying through the wall, she enters her neighbor's apartment and finds Mrs. Jacobs, an emaciated woman who insists her baby is killing her. Mrs. Jacobs tries to throw herself over the banister; Ana talks her down by confessing that months after Charlie's birth, she stood over the crib holding a butcher knife before Reid stopped her. Mrs. Jacobs makes cryptic statements before the concierge leads her away: "That's not my baby anymore," and, "Babies! They're the reason why we got these apartments!"

Reid's professional life collapses when he snaps at his boss and is forced to quit. He tells Ana nothing. Instead, he begins working secretly as a personal assistant for Camilla Varné, a glamorous elderly former movie star and Deptford resident. He socializes with the building's famous residents, all surprisingly vital despite their age, who dismiss his book as rubbish but confirm the Plummet really happened.

Meanwhile, Ana's fears intensify. She finds red welts on Charlie resembling bedbug bites and applies diatomaceous earth, a powder lethal to insects, along the baseboards. In the courtyard, her wheelchair becomes stuck in warm, organic terrain. Translucent spiders swarm from the earth, and Ana loses sight of Charlie before finding her in the central meadow. One night, Ana wakes to find an almost-human face with a bat-like nose and rippling lips pressed against Charlie's window from outside. Reid insists it was a nightmare.

A chapter from the perspective of Bizzie, a man placed at the Deptford through a parole program, reveals the building's feeding practices. At a gathering called "the pantry," an elderly resident extends a fleshy tube from his mouth down Bizzie's throat, liquefying his insides.

Charlie's first birthday party briefly achieves normalcy before chaos erupts. While Ana is in the bathroom, Charlie latches onto a toddler's neck with an insectile grip that leaves a raw puncture wound. Ana confronts Reid about hiding his job loss. While he runs an errand for Camilla, Ana hides Charlie inside her recording booth. Two elderly residents and a gargoyle-like creature then attack Ana in the hallway, demanding the baby. She calls 911 and is backed toward the staircase, where she falls and strikes her head.

Reid rushes home from the hospital and finds Charlie safe in the booth. Camilla appears with the baby, takes Reid to the roof, and throws Charlie over the railing. Reid watches in horror as Charlie clings to the exterior wall with her bare hands, perfectly calm. Camilla explains that the residents form an ancient eusocial colony, each member serving a role within a greater organism. They are not traditional vampires; they reproduce by transforming human infants, and most attempts fail. As they age, their skin hardens until they become the building's gargoyles. Camilla offers Reid a place as a human helper. He secretly records the conversation and negotiates one more night with Charlie and a promise to heal Ana's paralysis.

Reid consults Isaac, a Hasidic acquaintance from the park who is grieving his young son's death from COVID, about Jewish vampire lore. Isaac shares information about creatures called the Alukah and the estrie but delivers a fatalistic message: In a truly Jewish story, the hero cannot defeat the monsters. Reid rejects this nihilism. Charlie then speaks her first words: "Dadda. Ess go home." Convinced the offer is genuine, Reid repairs the door of Ana's recording booth, preparing it as a trap.

When Ana returns from the hospital, Reid lures her into the booth with recorded cries, locks the door, and explains that Charlie has been transformed. Ana smashes through the glass door with a microphone stand and grabs a bronze chai paperweight, a Jewish symbol for life that belonged to Reid's mother. She strikes Reid and escapes. When he grabs her wheelchair in the hallway, she tips them both down the stairs. Reid's spine is injured, mirroring Ana's paralysis. Ana leaves him and crawls down the staircase, dragging her folded wheelchair.

The descent takes hours. Armed only with the chai, Ana fights off intermittent attacks. She discovers that direct sunlight accelerates the creatures' hardening toward stone. Frank, the couple's former Brooklyn landlord, a bigoted man who tracked them to the Deptford, bluffs his way inside and is killed by the creatures, creating a diversion that lets Ana escape through a fire-stair door.

In the basement, Ana confronts the queen, an immense organism that was once a transformed infant and now serves as the building's reproductive center. Tendrils of her body extend into the walls, and specialized parasites crawl over her. Camilla arrives with Charlie and reveals that Charlie actively participated in her own transformation, feeding herself the queen's golden parasites during the courtyard trip. Ana is too late.

Ana watches Charlie light up with joy as the creatures sing to her. Recognizing that removing Charlie would kill her, Ana surrenders her daughter. She slashes open the queen's mouth with the chai and pours in the bag of diatomaceous earth. The queen convulses, the creatures are incapacitated, and Ana wheels out of the building. As she emerges, all 25 gargoyles fall from the façade; the pursuing concierge is struck and killed.

Nearly five years later, Ana has built a new life on careful lies: Reid abandoned the family, and she gave Charlie to her mother. She works at a spinal cord injury foundation and has come to love her wheelchair. She visits a new Manhattan building where she recognizes one of the puppet-like doormen as Reid. Pressing her hand to the wall, she feels breath and pulse beneath the surface and believes Charlie has become the queen of a new hive. She whispers, "Love you, Baby Bird," and pushes herself forward.