“No,” Warder said. “And don’t stand over me like that. It keeps me from concentrating.”

I went back over to Carruthers, who had sat down at T.J.’s sim setup and was pulling off his boots.

“One good thing came out of all this,” he said, peeling off a very dirty sock. “I can definitely report to Lady Schrapnell that the bishop’s bird stump wasn’t in the rubble. We cleared every inch of the cathedral, and it wasn’t there. But it was in the cathedral during the raid. The Head of the Flower Committee, this horrible old spinster sort named Miss Sharpe — you know the type, gray hair, long nose, hard as nails — saw it at five o’clock that afternoon. She was on her way home after a meeting of the Advent Bazaar and Soldiers’ Parcel Effort Committee, and she noticed some of the chrysanthemums in it were turning brown, and she stopped and pulled them out.”

I was only half listening. I was watching Warder, who was hitting keys, glaring at the screen, leaning back thoughtfully, hitting more keys. She has no idea where Verity is, I thought.

“So you think it was destroyed in the fire?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“I do,” Carruthers said, “and everyone else does, except for this dreadful old harpy Miss Sharpe. She insists it was stolen.”

“During the raid?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

“No. She says as soon as the sirens went, she came back and stood guard, so it must have been stolen after five and before eight, and whoever took it must have known there was going to be a raid that night.”

Numbers were coming up rapidly on the screen. Warder leaned forward, tapping keys rapidly. “Have you got the fix?”

“I’m getting it,” she said irritably.

“She had an absolute bee in her bonnet about it,” Carruthers said, peeling off his other sock and dumping it in his boot. “Interrogated everyone who’d been in or near the cathedral during the raid, accused the verger’s brother-in-law, even wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper about it. Generally made everyone’s lives miserable. I didn’t have to do any detective work on it. She was doing it all. If somebody had stolen the bishop’s bird stump, you can be certain she’d have found it.”

“I’ve got it,” Warder said. “Verity’s in Coventry.”

“Coventry?” I said. “When?”

“November fourteenth, 1940.”

“Where?” I said.

She tapped the keys, and the coordinates came up.

“That’s the cathedral,” I said. “What time?”

She worked the keys some more. “Five past eight P.M.”

“That’s the raid,” I said and started for the net. “Send me through.”

“If the net’s malfunctioning—” T.J. said.

“Verity’s there,” I said. “In the middle of an air raid.”

“Send him through,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“We’ve tried this before, remember?” Carruthers said. “Nobody could get near the place, including you. What makes you think—”

“Give me your coveralls and helmet,” I said.

He looked at Mr. Dunworthy and then started to strip them off.

“What was Verity wearing?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

Carruthers handed me the coveralls, and I pulled them on over my tweeds. “A long white high-necked dress,” I said, and realized I’d made an erroneous assumption. Her clothes wouldn’t create an incongruity in the middle of an air raid. No one would even notice them. Or if they did, they’d think she was in her nightgown.

“Here, take this,” T.J. said, handing me a raincoat.

“I want a five-minute intermittent,” I said, taking the raincoat and stepping into the net. Warder lowered the veils.

“If you come through in the marrows field,” Carruthers said, “the barn’s to the west.”

The net began to shimmer.

Carruthers said, “Watch out for the dogs. And the farmer’s wife—”

And found myself right back where I’d started from. And in pitch-blackness. The darkness meant I was there the next night, or any of a thousand nights, a hundred thousand nights, while the cathedral sat its way through the Middle Ages. And meanwhile Verity was in the middle of an air raid. And all I could do was stay put and wait for the bloody net to open again.

“No!” I said, and smashed my fist against the rough rock. And the world exploded around me.

There was a whoosh and then a crump, and ack-ack guns started up off to the east. The darkness flared bluish-white and then the aftercolor of red, and I could smell smoke below me.

“Verity!” I shouted and ran up the stairs to the bells, remembering this time to count the steps. There was just enough orangish light to see by, and a faint smell of smoke.

I reached the bell platform and shouted up the stairs. “Verity! Are you up here?”

Pigeons, no doubt descendants of the one I’d disturbed six hundred years ago, flapped wildly down the upper tower and into my face.

She wasn’t up there. I ran back down the stairs, shouting, till I reached the step where I’d come through, and began counting again.

Thirty-one, thirty-two. “Verity!” I shouted over the drone of planes and the wail of an air-raid siren that had, belatedly and unnecessarily, started up.

Fifty-three, fifty-four, I counted. “Verity! Where are you?”

I hit the bottom step. Fifty-eight. Remember that, I told myself and pushed the tower door open and came out into the west porch. The smell of smoke was stronger here, and had a rich, acrid scent to it, like cigar smoke.

“Verity!” I shouted, pushing open the heavy inner door of the tower. And came out into the nave.

The church was dark except for the rood light and a reddish light in the windows of the clerestory. I tried to estimate what time it was. Most of the explosions and sirens seemed to be off toward the north. There was a lot of smoke up near the organ, but no flames from the Girdlers’ Chapel, which had been hit early. So it couldn’t be later than half past eight, and Verity couldn’t have been here more than a few minutes.

“Verity!” I called, and my voice echoed in the dark church.

The Mercers’ Chapel had been hit in the first batch of incendiaries. I started up the main aisle toward the choir, wishing I’d brought a pocket torch.

The ack-ack stopped and then started up again with renewed effort, and the hum of the planes got louder. There was a thud, thud, thud of bombs just to the east, and flares lit the windows garishly. Half of them, the half that had had their stained glass removed for safekeeping, were boarded up or covered over with blackout paper, but three of the windows on the north were still intact, and the greenish flares made them light the church momentarily with a sickly red and blue. I couldn’t see Verity anywhere. Where would she have gone? I would have expected her to stay close to the drop, but perhaps the raid had frightened her and she’d taken shelter somewhere. But where?

The drone of the planes became an angry roar. “Verity!” I shouted over the din, and there was a clatter above on the roof, like hail pattering, then a pounding and muffled shouts.

The fire watch, up on the roof putting out the incendiaries. Had Verity heard them and hidden somewhere so they wouldn’t see her?

There was a crash overhead and then a whizzing, spitting sound. I looked up, and it was a good thing I did because I narrowly missed being hit by an incendiary.

It fell onto one of the pews, hissing and spitting molten sparks onto the wooden pew. I grabbed a hymnal out of the back of the next pew and knocked the incendiary off with it onto the floor. It rolled into the aisle and up against the end of the pew across the aisle.

I kicked it away, but the wood was already smoking. The incendiary spit and sparked, twisting like a live thing. It hit the kneeling rail and began to burn with a white-hot flame.

A stirrup pump, I thought, and looked around wildly, but they must have taken them all up on the roof. There was a bucket hanging by the south door. I ran back and grabbed it, hoping it had sand in it. It did.