When she received no response, she knelt by the cabinet, confirming it was indeed the old man beneath. She shoved at the furniture to no avail. A bomb crashed somewhere nearby, and the building shuddered as if it wished to crumble in on itself.

It very well might.

But the cabinet did not matter, not after she tried to find a pulse in the limp, slender wrist. There would be no saving Mr. Pritchard.

He was already dead.

Another bomb crashed, this one with such force, Grace’s balance faltered. That’s when she heard it, a pathetic mewling cry.

She rushed to the sound, straining, and looked beneath the sofa to find a very frightened Tabby. She scooped him up with such haste, he did not bother trying to fight her. Instead, he clung to her as she raced from the building.

Outside, Mr. Stokes was standing in the middle of the street while fires raged on either side of him. Men with the AFS pointed their hoses into the flames, their uniforms soaked with runoff from the brass nozzles, but still they didn’t move from their position.

Mr. Stokes glanced at Tabby and said nothing. “Any other survivors?”

The image of Mr. Pritchard pressed lifelessly beneath the cabinet flashed in her mind. She hugged Tabby a little tighter and shook her head.

Wind swept through the narrow alley, fanning the flames into wild excitement and sending flecks of sparks shooting every which way. The heat around them expanded, pressing in on Grace until she felt as though the marrow of her bones was melting like wax.

When she was a girl, she’d thought the glowing embers in the fireplace beautiful, like fire fairies. There was nothing beautiful or magical now. The flames were cruel in their greed and merciless in their destruction.

“We need to leave.” Mr. Stokes’s face glistened with sweat, and his eyes darted over the swelling fires. “They’ve no water to spare. There’s nothing we can do here.”

She took Tabby with them as there was nowhere to leave him, depositing him at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which remained blessedly free of flames thus far. One of the parishioners who sought refuge there offered to mind the cat for Grace, enfolding the small frightened feline into her arms.

After that, Grace and Mr. Stokes returned to the blazing streets. The planes were overhead still, not visible in the haze of smoke, but audible with their droning engines and the repeated dropping of bombs and the maddening plop, plop, plop of incendiaries.

A firefighter stood in front of a burning building, the hose in his hand limp and empty. “They’ve bombed the mains,” he said as they approached to help.

“What of the water relays from the Thames?” Mr. Stokes asked.