Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 by Angela Slatter Page A

with men. Their appetite for flesh had also increased, and over the years they’d
     evolved, losing their aerial abilities and morphing into water creatures. The otherbranch, the older one, stayed aloft and kept their wings – they didn’t hold with all that reclining on rocks and serenading
     their dinner, although they still liked the seduction, the chase. Some liked the murderous habits so much they couldn’t or
     wouldn’t give them up; some just liked to tease and flirt, to break a heart or twelve.
    I closed the book and contemplated what could kill a siren. Bullets, arrows, decapitation, they’d all do it. Poison wouldn’t
     work – maybe because their own blood was already so toxic. It’s difficult to catch something that can fly away unless you’re
     a dab hand with nets. They had fangs and claws, so they could defend themselves pretty effectively. And then there was that
     whole hypnotic effect: some idiots, men and women both, were dumb enough to fall victim to their lures, rather like a bird
     being mesmerised by a snake. On the whole, siren bodies were as frail as humans’, but unless violence was visited upon them,
     they simply outlived us. Hell, they’d outlived whole civilisations.
    And there had been no marks on the dead siren, whoever she was, apart from the standard fell-from-a-great-height-and-went-splat
     kind.
    The autopsy might show something, but I wasn’t going to bet on it. Whoever – or
whatever
– had murdered the siren had probably been smart enough to clean up after themselves. So if there was anything there to be
     found, I’d have to wait for McIntyre to call once the chopping-up-and-cataloguing part was done. Oddly, I’m squeamish about
     that kind of thing.
    The city’s sirens had a regular meeting place: they got together once a month, at the full moon, and fortuitously, we were
     due a full moon that very Sunday. Sometimes they sang, not the nasty, lure-you-to-your-death sort of singing, which is never
     conducive to maintaining a low profile, but a nice ladies’ choir thing. They gathered together forthe same reasons humans do: for companionship, to be surrounded by their own so they didn’t feel so alone. Of course, there
     are edgy loners in every species, and I really hoped that whoever the victim was, she hadn’t been one of those, not only because
     that would make my task more difficult, but because it would mean she wasn’t mourned or missed, and that always made me sad.
    *
    Mindful of Ziggi’s etiquette tip to ensure my continued good health – it was fairly basic: don’t be rude, because sirens have
     a very strict view of what constitutes good manners – I tucked the bestiary into my bag, rose and walked along the cliff path
     towards the park with its herd of BBQ pergolas sitting in pools of artificial light. Maybe on a non-siren night David and
     I would go there, bring some Thai food, talk into the wee hours.
    The full moon turned the landscape silvery-ash. Everything – buildings, cars, city lights, trees, people, the river below
     – was washed of colour, rendered ghostly and limned with a strange sort of shine in the winter air. Soon enough I stopped
     noticing that because I heard the melody, seeping in through my pores and making my belly tingle.
    As I got closer the singing got clearer, splitting into lyrics, a version of Greek from before time and history were recorded.
     I caught the words for
moonlight
and
grace
and
mother
, which was as far as my dodgy translation skills allowed. I figured it for a hymn, the open sky their church. The power was
     pitched low, so as not to entrance anyone, but I could see figures gathered on balconies in the apartment complexes across
     the road, and evening picnickers scattered along the cliffs listening, quite still, food momentarily forgotten.
    The women were clustered on one of the grey- and white-tiled lookouts, the one closest to the tiny garden of St Mary’s Church,
     atthe farthest end of the park.