Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 by Angela Slatter

and frequently unsound form. But a book, a nice solid book, a thing you could touch and hold
     and, more importantly, own – that was
solid
. That was tangible.
    Books had shown me that although I was different, I wasn’t alone.
    My father’s library disappeared after his arrest and was probably still mouldering in an evidence locker somewhere. My grandparents
     had cleaned out Grigor’s house, my old home, and disposed of anything that wasn’t suitable to be left next to
Women’s Weekly
, which covered pretty much everything. They turned out to be very particular about reading material where I was concerned,
     at such pains to give me a Normal childhood, but I started spending my pocket money on questionable investments such as compendiums
     of tales about the occult and ghosts, myths and legends . . . weird stuff that would later become Weyrd. I hid my illicit
     purchases under my bed, behind the old suitcase stuffed with the toys I’d outgrown but couldn’t bear to throw away.
    My adolescent rebellion might have been nerdier than most, but I found myself hanging out in the sort of bookstores that didn’t
     look like proper shops, the ones hidden down dark alleys, with doors with peeling paint and strangely sturdy locks, or behind
     hidden trapdoors in the storerooms of shiny new book chain-stores, under which would be
the rest
of the inventory: books as old as breathing, covered in everything from tightly woven hair to human skin, from shaved bone
     shards to glass, from beaten bronze to blood-dyed silks.
    I wasn’t like other kids. I knew things they didn’t; I’d seen things they never would – and I was strong, so strong. Grandma
     warned me over and over:
No pushing, no shoving, no fighting, no matter what – you don’t know your own strength, Verity
. I really did, though, and I was careful not to use it against anyone – or at least, not until I was older and started recognising
     and encountering the Weyrd again.
    That’s where the bookshops came in: I didn’t feel as if I was playing dress-up or wearing a suit of armour there. Around the
     books, I didn’t have to be anyone but
me
. That was where Bela first foundme – or maybe ‘made contact’. He knew who I was. Now I realise that, of course the Council would have kept an eye on Grigor’s
     daughter, but when I was fifteen I was flattered and naturally, I developed a fierce schoolgirl crush. He wasn’t interested
     then (not until I was well into my twenties), but in those early years he showed me my heritage, pointed me towards tomes
     filled with disguised versions of the truth of where we came from, and others not so disguised. He taught me not to be afraid
     of what I was.
    It’s no wonder I loved him for so long.
    He’d also been a great giver of books while we were together – a great forgetter of anniversaries and birthdays, too, but
     random books-for-no-reason helped to smooth that over. Despite those gifts, I’d grown my library mostly on my own, though
     I only ever bought those volumes I could
afford
to pay for. Some could be had for a lot of cold hard cash, others for a lock of hair, a tiny square of skin, a vial of blood
     or a whisper of breath, but Bela had taught me that it was unwise to give up any part of yourself, even for knowledge. You
     never knew what someone would do with something so personal.
    The bestiary on my lap was written in bad Latin, which had made it a little cheaper, but it’d still cost me the better part
     of a month’s salary. My Latin was even more atrocious (needless to say my language studies grades had not been stellar), but
     it had good pictures, which I could ‘read’, and armed with a dictionary and a basic primer, I managed. Shame about all that
     effort. The entry on sirens told me nothing I didn’t already know.
    The winged women with the legs of birds had not been sea-going to begin with. One particular branch of the family had started
     that tradition, and had also started mating