Soon, her even-toned instructions joined those of Mr. Stokes, leading with well-trained guidance and offering support. She led them to the shelter, their numbers far greater than during any of the air raids before.

As people entered the brick shelter lined with sandbags, Grace recorded their names, recognizing all of them from Mr. Stokes’s nightly roster of house numbers. It made sense to her then, as she put the addresses to faces, how knowing who lived where and who was safely sheltered held such importance. The drone of planes caught at her awareness, tickling the insides of her ears and running a chill down her spine.

They were louder than before.

And growing closer still.

Mr. Stokes glanced sharply behind them and slammed the door to the shelter shut. Grace looked in the same direction, searching the darkness for something, anything, with which to gauge the location of nearby planes.

Spears of light stabbed up through the night sky as the anti-aircraft guns sought out their targets, the beam rolling over the dense underbellies of clouds. When Grace had seen the planes in the park, they had been flecks in the distance. Now, they looked much larger. Closer. Like an enormous black bird pinned in the center of the shaft of light.

A German plane.

Not above them, but near enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Without a moment’s hesitation, an anti-aircraft gun boomed into action, its baritone shots rumbling in Grace’s bones.

A dark, oblong object slipped from the bottom of the plane and sailed downward. A bomb.

She and Mr. Stokes stood transfixed as it glided toward its target, a whistle of air building around it as it went, followed by a fraction of a second of silence, so quick one could scarce blink. Then a flash of light. A soul-shuddering boom that rattled the ground where they stood. A cloud of smoke belched upward, flickering with flames.

And just like that, someone’s house might be lost. A family might have been killed.

The reality of it happening in Grace’s borough, to people she might know, was like a dagger in her chest. But she couldn’t stand in awe of something so terrible. Not when she had a job to do.

It was difficult to tell from where they stood if the bomb hit within their sector. Adrenaline fired through her body. She charged through the empty street, lit by the nearby glow of a fire as well as the rekindled flames of the East End, which had clearly been struck again.