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I went back to the first register.

Beside one entry, someone had sketched a woman's face. In the notes was a single identifying mark.

A streak of white in the hair at the left temple, present from birth. Common to the line.

My hand rose to my own temple before I could stop it.

Then I saw the last name on the page.

Hale, Seraphine. b. 12.03.1980. Assessed 4.09.1985: Wildheart, dormant. Minor. Retained by order of the Chair.

I stopped.

Her disposition had been entered twice.

The first was in red, dated six weeks after the Hollowing.

Deceased.

A single line had been ruled through it.

Beneath it, in black, in a much later hand:

Deceased. 7.02.2008. Confirmed W.M.

And beside that, added more recently in red ink, was a question mark.

That's Sera, Marion had said in the yellow kitchen, holding out a photograph of a laughing woman in a sundress.

Your mother was like you, she had written.

She didn't die.

My eyes went back to the line above.

Minor. Retained by order of the Chair.

She had been five.

They hadn't killed her with the others.

They had kept her.

I followed the dates with my finger.

Born in 1980. Assessed in September 1985. Marked dead that November, then left untouched for twenty-three years.

Until February 2008.

I was born in 2004.

For a moment, I couldn't make the dates fit any other way.

My mother had been in Council custody when she had me.

But how was that possible?

I stared at the date for several seconds before I understood what I was looking at.