“Everything,” John said, and Liam gave him a look—he had already surmised the same thing. But John just continued steering the boat. They passed Narragansett Town Beach and Scarborough Beach, where surfers sat on their boards, staring out toward the open sea—toward the roar of Ghost Hills—while waiting for something worth riding amid the comparatively gentle swells. A pair of osprey fished along the shallows, wings gleaming white in the sun.

As they rounded Point Judith, the smell of fish became stronger. Liam wasn't surprised—this was home to the Galilee fishing fleet. Big diesel trawlers passed in and out of the breachway, to and from the Harbor of Refuge. These boats fished Georges Bank, the edge of the continental shelf, for haddock, cod, hake, whiting, flounder, and lobster, and they were every bit as hardy as the fleet out of Cape Hawk, Nova Scotia.

Liam had smelled lots of old bait and discarded fish in his day—but this was different. It was alive, and smelled of the sea, deep and blue and mysterious. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He looked at John, saw him frowning as he drove the boat. Instinctively Liam reached for Rose, drew her closer as they faced forward and the boat sliced through the water.

“Where are we going?” Rose asked.

“Not much farther,” John said.

Liam glanced down the coast—Lily was just about twenty miles west of here. He wondered what she was doing right now, and he wondered whether the sudden, atavistic fear he felt welling up from inside had anything to do with Lily and what she was going through.

“This is it,” John said, pulling back on the throttle, slowing the engine to a dull hum.

“Where are we?” Rose asked.

“That's the Point Judith Lighthouse,” John said, pointing at the fifty-foot tower. Built of brownstone, the lower half whitewashed, it was crowned by a Fresnel lens that glinted in the brilliant sunlight.

“And seven miles out there is Block Island,” Liam said.

“Six-point-four,” John said. “From the tip of Point Jude to the north tip of Block. I remember, from when I got my pilot's license. Three-point-two miles to glide if I lost an engine. Three minutes of gliding is one afternoon of swimming. But I wouldn't want to swim in this water right now. Can you hear it?”

Rose frowned. With the engine down so low, the sound of small waves hitting the hull became more insistent. Only it wasn't waves at all: the sound was rapid and hard, almost like hundreds of hands clapping. Below, and more insistent, was a growing roar.

“What's that?” Rose asked, hurrying to the side. She gripped the rail, with Liam standing right beside her. They looked down into the blue water and saw silver everywhere. Silver tails, fins, scales. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of small fish, right at the surface of the sea.

“Fish feeding,” he said.