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I have just had some... news, that I felt I should probably tell to the rest of the staff.

It would seem, on the evidence we have now though it will not be confirmed until some tests are carried out... that Amanda Sefton is my sister. Or my foster sister, rather, who was stolen from the family many years ago. I have spoken of this before to some of you, you will remember...

Amanda is aware of the situation, though I have not spoken with her about it yet. I just thought you should all be made aware also.

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What a lovely fucking euphemism. I'm seeing Romany very shortly, and I'm sure she'll be delighted to hear the news.

If we're really lucky, I'll be able to keep her from doing something you'll regret, but really, don't make bets. I've had long conversations with her about what she'd do if she ever found Amanda's "family".

Yes, Pete. Stolen. Whatever Rack may have had to say.

And I will willingly have the Professor look into my memories, if it will help you believe me.

...maybe pointing out that the family possibly being as much the victim as Amanda in all of this, just might make a point towards 'taking revenge on the innocent' not exactly being the thing to do? Just saying.

Romany and I have talked it over, and she's going to want some pretty bloody good answers. As she put it: never mind that they were stupid enough to allow a child to be stolen, but they compounded the error by giving her up for lost, and not fucking moving heaven and earth to find her again, because this is all before Rack went into hiding, after bloody all. But she's not about to make anyone's life hell just yet.

But the answers are going to have to be bloody good, because whenh you get right down to it, Romany and I have spend the last year (and more in her case) making sure Amanda gets to make her own choices and generally cleaning up them mess caused because they were careless enough to let Amanda get stolen and go through the hell she did. Because they didn't do the job right, Romany and I have had to take steps to make sure that any scumbag from the magical community that wants a piece of Amanda will probably try and kill the pair of us first. That's going to need to be one hell of an excuse.

I'm sure you've got some idea how we feel.

Speaking just for myself, though: Amanda chooses her own family, and I'm damn sure no-one's going to stop her doing that.

Child kidnappings aren't as simple as "letting" and "allowing" and not doing enough and I think you know this. Could someone with no experience with magic do anything to stop someone like Rack? Would they even stand a chance? Not everyone has the ressources we have, or the ones Romany has.

Waiting for the answers is good.

You could say that I do have some idea, yes. And I still wonder how I managed to stop them from taking Miles because by all rights I should be dead now Pete. So forgive me if I'm a little touchy on the assumption that someone else who, from what I'm seeing and what I was told was devastated by the loss of their child, would not have done enough.

And if anyone tries to force Amanda into anything, you can be damn sure I'll be right up there making sure it doesn't happen. I just don't see any of that happening now.

You owe them nothing and Amanda all you have. I understand that. I'm just saying it... might not be doing her a favor to go off angry about this. That's all.

For all the answers, you would have to speak to my mother. But of what I know...

Rack did not take Amanda from us by violence, or by walking into the camp with no subterfuge and simply taking her when we were not looking, as you seem to believe, Pete. We were not that careless... perhaps we were stupid, but in a certain sense only. The man was intelligent enough and had resources enough to make it look official, for long enough to suit his purposes.

He came to the camp as others had before him, smartly dressed and in a car, with identification "proving" him to be a representative of the local Social Services, and paperwork allowing him to serve a compulsory care order and take Amanda away. As I said, this was not the first time local authorities had removed a child from our midst "for their own good", and we had no reason to believe this was not just another example of that. None of us had ever seen Rack before.

Believing it was an official decision, my mother fought the best way she could. If Rack had been who he said he was, defying him would have brought the police down on our heads and risked getting all the camp's children taken into care and the adults, perhaps, arrested for wilful endangerment or worse. So my mother, though not without argument and distress on all our parts, finally let them go. The next day, and for many days after that, she and my father went straight to the local government offices and made their presence felt.

It took three weeks before someone, wanting no doubt to get rid of them, finally looked up the family name and told them there was no record of any child by that name being legally removed from her parents. And then my mother turned to other means.

She does have some magic, you see, though I doubt she is as powerful as Romany and I know she is not as powerful as Amanda... or Rack. If she had known the truth when Rack came to us, she would have fought him with everything she had to prevent his getting his way. But as it was, all she could do was use all the ways she knew to find someone magically. By then, of course, Rack and Amanda were long gone, and we had no hint of where they might be. So she tried locator spells, and scrying, and other ways...

All failed. And she tried them again, and again, and again, every day for years, without results. I believe, now, it is because Rack knew she was not without power, and had acted to block her attempts. But please do not say that we did nothing to try to find her.

There's probably not a lot of point us continuing this line of conversation - I'm willing to believe that's what happened, and I'm not such a monster that I don't have sympathy for you and yours and your loss, and I completely believe that you have done anything you could to spare her what she went through.

But it doesn't change what happened, and I'm not someone with a forgiving disposition.

But my views don't actually matter very much, and Amanda's quite a bit nicer than I am. Give her time and space, and let her come to own decisions, and I'll support whatever she wants.

You know, this whole system is a shit way to carry on a conversation.

In brief: I accept that to a large extent, my views don't matter, and that being pissed off isn't going to help Amanda. Which is why I'm doing it here, where she can't see it. I'm completely willing to support whatever decisions she comes to, and she knows it.

My comment about forcing things wasn't so a reflection on what I think anyone might be doing, just, you know, a statement of pride about Amanda.

For some things, yep - it is.

She's come a long way since she's been here - and you have more right to state such a thing than I do, at that. But there's agreement there, without a doubt.

And hey. If you still need to rant and rave, that's hardly going to put me off - I'm just a phone call away.

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"Stolen"?

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You know...

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