On the weekend of Cassandra Mitchell's and Daniel Benjamin's wedding, a powerful storm wrecks Cape Cod, and three-year-old Lucas Kleister goes missing, while the body of drug dealer Lee Chambers is found in a dumpster. While helping the displaced, Cassie has been receiving cryptic messages from the spirits of her great-grandparents, the original residents of her Victorian manor, the Bluffs. In this sequel to House of Ashes, Cassie works to decipher their meaning, finding that the mysterious local legend of Barnacle Boy—and what happened to him during another storm decades earlier—will weave through the desperate search to find Lucas and the identity of the killer.