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Half City Chapters 9–17 Summary
This Kate Golden Half City chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Half City Chapter 9
After class, Viv and the group make plans to spar in the gym after dinner. When she mentions her broken dagger, Sophia points her to the armory. Viv heads there alone and stops on the way to text Penny a cover story about staying late at the Windsor.
At the armory, Viv finds Reid helping a female student with a damaged weapon while the armorer is occupied in the back. As she waits, Viv notices a locked case of short swords, one of which looks strikingly similar to her own daggers. Reid appears behind her and makes a pointed remark implying she might be about to slip out without fully committing to Harker.
The confrontation that follows has an edge to it, partly because the blonde student is still hovering and clearly listening. Viv prods Reid about what it’s like being a predator surrounded by hunters and their souls, and he fires back that she wasn’t exactly impressive the night they fought. She threatens to prove otherwise, and Reid takes her up on it, telling her to show him in the coliseum at the end of the week.
The armorer reappears and breaks the tension. Reid leaves. Viv is left irritated with herself, knowing the no-hunting rule is wearing on her and that she let it get the better of her. She hands her dagger over to be fixed.
Half City Chapter 10
Viv spars with Elliot in the gymnasium, deliberately pulling her punches so the group won’t notice how much experience she has. She’s impressed by his speed and strength, and the two agree to a rematch. When Kitty joins in, Viv watches her closely. Kitty’s instincts are sharp, but she loses composure when she takes a hit. The combination makes Viv wonder privately whether Kitty might be an aeon and how she could ever ask without giving herself away.
At dinner, Viv notices Reid sitting alone at the far end of the room. She doesn’t want to feel anything about it, but the isolation is hard to look at. She cuts her gaze away and joins her friends.
Over the meal, the group loosens up and trades stories about their lives outside Harker. When Peter admits he’s worried his old friendships won’t be the same, the thought lands squarely on Viv. It’s something she’s carried for years in relation to Penny and her family. She tells Peter the people who matter will still be there, as much for her own benefit as his.
By the end of the night, Viv decides the library can wait. She’s too tired to do it properly. Lying in bed across from a sleeping Sophia, she thinks Peter was right to push her to stay and that today showed her a side of herself she hasn’t had much room for before.
Half City Chapter 11
Viv slips back to her apartment early to grab clothes, bedding, and her half-frame while Penny’s already out. She spends a little time with Hound and, after going back to Harker, she enrolls in all of Sophia’s classes. She then calls Penny to say she’ll be staying with Nora and Fiona for a few months because of a big work project.
That same morning, Viv and Sophia’s first class is Potions and Salves with Professor Dawnmere, a tall, striking fairy with a deceptively gentle manner. Things go sideways when a student named Matt Peverell keeps interrupting and second-guessing her. Dawnmere snaps. The chandelier shatters, and a goblet hurtles toward Matt’s head. He barely dodges it.
Next is Monster Identification with Professor Crowley, whose laid-back style feels like a relief after Dawnmere. He’s walking the class through creature identification when Dean Driscoll and Reid arrive. Crowley announces the class has a rare chance to question an actual Brood demon, and that demon is Reid. After two students pack up and leave, Crowley opens the floor to questions.
Half City Chapter 12
The Q&A with Reid covers demon life, the underworld, and the Chasm. He explains that demons are stranded on the mortal plane since the Chasm was sealed, that souls claimed by demons are condemned to hell, and that he no longer feeds on souls, at the cost of both power and years off his life.
Viv grows frustrated watching her classmates warm up to Reid instead of fearing him. She raises her hand and asks why the dean is really there. Reid answers plainly, saying the other professors don’t trust him near students and that Driscoll came to keep watch. The response stings because he confirmed he’s dangerous while making Viv look like the one picking a fight.
After class, Driscoll pulls Viv aside and tells her she must show Reid respect on his campus. She pushes back. He shares his own history of growing up dismissed, being beaten by his father, and having to fight for his place at Harker even after becoming its dean. His point is that her bias against Reid is making her a worse hunter. Viv asks if he was the one who brought Reid out of the Brood. He starts to walk away, then tells her to ask Reid herself.
Half City Chapter 13
After her friends go to bed, Viv slips out to the library. She starts by looking for information on controlling her aeon instincts but comes up empty, as if the relevant books have been pulled entirely. She does find one censored passage hinting that dark magic can strip hunter genetics, though nearly everything else on the page is blacked out.
Viv then tracks down the 1992 Harker yearbook. Her father’s photo is there, but his last name is listed as Cadell instead of Abbot, a name she’s never seen before and one with no connection to her mother’s side either. She figures he must have changed it at some point. A fragmented memory surfaces of him saying he couldn’t keep running forever, and Viv begins to wonder whether he was hiding from someone rather than standing his ground as a hunter.
Viv decides her next move is to dig through the restricted archives and search for records under David Cadell, though that will require a staff key card.
Before Viv can leave, Professor Lisette appears and eyes the books on her desk. Viv brushes her off, but Lisette warns her to stop looking for trouble before vanishing into the dark. Viv leaves rattled.
Half City Chapter 14
The group heads to the coliseum for their first Combat Training with Reid. He pairs students off and has one in each pair wear a blindfold to force reliance on other senses. Viv volunteers to go first so Sophia doesn’t have to.
Things turn when Matt stabs his blindfolded partner through the hand with a switchblade. Reid challenges Matt to a blindfolded fight and takes him apart effortlessly. When Matt refuses to stay down and swings anyway, Reid sidesteps with ease.
Viv steps in next, both she and Reid blindfolded. She stays on her feet but can’t land a clean hit. Reid is always a step ahead and eventually knocks her down hard enough to injure her shoulder and back. Instead of finishing the fight, he pulls his final punch and lets it crash into the stone beside her head.
After class, Reid invites Sophia, Kitty, and Elliot to his advanced Field Training class, leaving Viv out. When she pushes back, he tells her she fights with her heart instead of her head and isn’t ready. She’s furious. As her group heads out, Reid calls after Viv to ice her shoulder and use arnica on her back, which catches her off guard.
Half City Chapter 15
Three weeks have passed since the combat class. Viv attends a dinner at the Pine family home with her mother, Nora, her boyfriend James, and the Pines. The night goes badly from the start. Her mother manages to turn a compliment about Viv’s outfit into a dig, Nora accuses her of being jealous and moody, and James spends the evening networking with Caspar Harlock instead of paying attention to her.
During a tense exchange with Nora, Viv crushes her wine glass in her hand and spills merlot on an expensive white rug. Penny steps in to clean it up and smooth things over, but the incident rattles Viv.
The dinner’s main reveal comes when Viv’s mother and Caspar share that he’ll be backing her mayoral campaign, with a formal announcement planned for the Windsor Gala in the spring. Viv learns this at the same time as the rest of the table, while Nora and Fiona clearly already knew.
On the ride home, Viv asks to be dropped at the Windsor instead of staying with James. She realizes Harker is the only place she wants to be. Back in her dorm, she picks up her daggers intending to name them but feels too drained to follow through. She lies down and falls asleep, then wakes to what sounds like a massacre.
Half City Chapter 16
Viv wakes to wraiths attacking the dormitory floor. She grabs her daggers and fights alongside Peter, but her silver blades don’t cut through the creatures. The wraiths have the numbers and the element of surprise, and the students are being overwhelmed fast.
A wraith clamps its hands around Viv’s throat and nearly chokes her out before Sophia appears, clearly mid-hookup when the attack started, and drops it with a crossbow bolt. Viv realizes the arrows are tipped with salt, which is what actually kills wraiths. She and Peter use that knowledge to fight back, but they’re still badly outnumbered.
Then Reid arrives and wipes out every remaining wraith with a leaf blower packed with salt. Pixie nurses from the infirmary flood in behind him to treat the wounded, several of them with life-threatening injuries.
When Reid tells everyone the Citadel is investigating and to go back to sleep, Viv stops him in the hallway. She accuses him of not caring that his students nearly died. He argues that Harker does everything it can, but danger will always find hunters. He also tells her she needs to make peace with who she is. Viv fires back that he’ll never truly be good regardless of how he presents himself now. Reid tells her his place at Harker isn’t her fight, then walks away.
Half City Chapter 17
The morning after the wraith attack, the group finds that Kitty has apparently dropped out overnight, leaving a letter and taking all her belongings, along with some of her roommates’ shoes by mistake. Peter isn’t convinced. He doesn’t believe Kitty would ever willingly leave Harker, questions whether the letter sounds like her, and points out that she vanished the same night as the attack.
The group compares the letter to Kitty’s handwriting in a class note but can’t reach a definite conclusion. Viv privately suspects someone used the chaos as cover to remove Kitty from the school, though she keeps that theory to herself for now. The group agrees to look into it.
Later at the Windsor, Fiona confronts Viv about her absences. Viv improvises, claiming her mother needs help with her mayoral campaign and that it has to stay private. She turns that into paid leave until the Chasm exhibit in November, with remote paperwork to keep her technically on the job. Fiona agrees, reluctantly.
The morning after the wraith attack, Viv mentally runs through everything she’s now managing at once. She’s juggling Harker classes, hunting, investigating Kitty’s disappearance, digging into her father’s past, keeping her cover intact with her family and boss, and maintaining a relationship with James she’s not entirely sure she wants.