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Half City Chapters 27–35 Summary
This Kate Golden Half City chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Half City Chapter 27
Alone in the archives, Viv searches the compendium for her father. Under his real name, David Cadell, she finds a full picture of his life at Harker, from his athletic record to his marriage and the births of his two daughters. But the trail goes cold around the time she was born, with no entries from the decade he lived after that.
Before Viv can dig further, Reid appears in the doorway. He noticed his key card was gone and spent the day working through every faculty-restricted area on campus until he found her. He lets the theft go without punishment and tells her to clear out before Lisette, who oversees the archives, arrives.
Viv and Reid’s exchange is noticeably warmer than usual. When Reid tells her she’d look good in red, Viv uses it as an opening and asks about the secret garden on campus. He admits he knows what she’s referring to but not its exact location, and says even if he did, taking her there would break faculty rules. She keeps her real reasons for wanting to find it to herself.
Reid then invites Viv to join Field Training that night, telling her she’s ready. Despite dinner plans with James, Viv agrees without fully understanding why. She texts James to cancel and heads to the rotunda to meet the group.
Half City Chapter 28
Field Training feels different this time as Viv officially joins the patrol with Reid and a small group through the wealthy north side of Astera. She notices that Lyra, a second-year, appears to have awakened her abilities unusually early and files it away.
Viv is the first to spot a strzyga on a street corner. The creature goes after a couple on a moped before the group can cut her off, then attacks them in an alley. Reid and two students stay back to tend to the victims, with Reid glamouring the conscious man into believing the rain caused the crash. Elliot and Sophia try to fight the strzyga, but she escapes toward the main street. Viv ignores Reid’s order to fall back and gives chase.
The pursuit drives the creature into a nearby Italian restaurant, where Viv clears the diners out by faking a gas leak. Reid follows. With their equipment useless in the downpour, Viv gets behind the bar and strips a wire to start an electrical fire, but the strzyga knocks Reid over the bar and douses all three in spirits. Abandoning the wire plan, Viv grabs a book of matches from the host stand, pulls Reid back as far as she can, throws herself over him, and strikes the match.
Half City Chapter 29
Viv wakes to find Reid carrying her out of the burning restaurant. The strzyga is dead, destroyed in the fire. Both of them have burns and take a moment to recover in the alley outside.
Once she’s steady, Viv decides to tell Reid everything. She walks him through Kitty’s disappearance, the dagger checked out under Kitty’s name, the asphodel garden, and how it all lines up with the syrabraxa recipe. Reid wants to bring the information to Driscoll or Lisette, but Viv argues against it, insisting that someone on faculty may already be involved. He agrees to look into Kitty’s disappearance and find the garden, and they leave it between themselves for now.
The conversation turns personal when Viv asks why Reid didn’t invite her to Field Training from the start. Reid admits her instinct to only take risks when a life was on the line unsettled him. Before either can say more, a group of men pours out of the bar next door and Viv walks straight into James.
James sees Viv burned and standing outside a fire with a stranger. She introduces Reid as her colleague. Reid tells him Viv saved his life in the blaze, which James accepts. He then tries to pay Reid off for his silence and drops Fiona’s name as a veiled threat. Reid refuses, and James pulls Viv away. She watches Reid walk down the alley until he turns the corner and is gone.
Half City Chapter 30
Weeks have passed since the restaurant fire. The school has blamed the wraith and zombie attacks on a disgruntled ex-student, and life at Harker has settled into a surface-level routine. Viv is still waiting on Reid to find the asphodel garden, but she and her friends have fallen into a comfortable rhythm.
On a free weekend, Viv heads back to her apartment. The growing closeness she feels with Sophia, Elliot, and Peter is starting to unsettle her. She feeds Hound, makes coffee, and settles into her textbook, but she ends up texting her friends anyway. They plan to come to the city the next day for Halloween costume shopping.
Viv falls asleep and dreams of the night her father died. She’s a child hidden in a storage container at the docks while he faces twelve Brood demons alone outside. Through a crack in the metal, she watches him fight and bleed, unable to force the door open to help.
The shattering of her coffee cup wakes Viv. A creak echoes from across the apartment, and she moves toward the kitchen for a silver utensil, certain something is in the flat with her. But it’s only Hound that appears, stretching in the doorway. Viv sinks to the floor and holds him close, staring out at the city lights while her heartbeat settles.
Half City Chapter 31
Viv spends the morning cleaning the apartment before Sophia, Elliot, and Peter visit for the first time. They arrive, take in the space, and meet her dog, Hound.
The visit becomes complicated when Penny comes home unexpectedly after a falling out with her boyfriend Claude. He wanted her to join him in Paris and feels hurt that she turned him down to attend her school’s Harvest Festival. Viv introduces her friends as unpaid interns to protect her cover.
The group brings Penny along on a last-minute Halloween costume run. In a quiet moment at the costume shop, Viv encourages Penny to stay at Claude’s once things settle between them, using a made-up story about nearby break-ins to make the idea sound reasonable.
When Viv asks Penny if something’s wrong, Penny says she felt Viv was keeping her away from her new friends, and Viv reassures her. Then they spot Sophia in a barely-there Medusa outfit and Elliot shirtless in his usual gladiator look. Penny chooses a vampire costume, while Viv picks a bold red devil costume, a break from her usual all-black wardrobe that shows a shift in how she sees herself.
Half City Chapter 32
Viv gets ready for Halloween in the red devil costume, with Sophia helping her apply makeup and false lashes. On a last-minute impulse to shake things up with James, from whom she’s grown distant since arriving at Harker, Viv decides to go without underwear.
Before Viv can leave, Reid shows up at her door. He’s visibly thrown off by her costume, but they get down to business. He hands her a printed email chain confirming that Kitty is alive and left school on her own terms. Viv tells him about the possible deviant sighting at her apartment and argues the investigation still needs to move forward since someone stole the Aeon’s Dagger and used Kitty’s disappearance as cover. Reid agrees to go to Dean Driscoll about tracking down the garden.
Viv hugs Reid to thank him, but he doesn’t hug her back or even breathe, and she pulls away without meeting his eyes. When he asks where she’s going, she invites him to come along to Astera. He resists, reminding her he’s her instructor, though he’s clearly tempted. When he mentions he has no costume, Viv says she has an idea and asks if he trusts her.
Half City Chapter 33
Viv arrives at Cobwebs with Reid and finds Penny and James already there. When James compliments her appearance, she realizes the relationship is over. She privately admits, with some unease, that she wore the red costume for Reid rather than James.
Penny sweeps the group into hugs and surprises Peter with a rare 1966 Spider-Man trading card. Meanwhile, Viv loses track of Reid in the crowd and fights off a wave of jealousy at the thought of him leaving with someone else.
Viv pulls James outside to end things, but the conversation goes sideways. He accuses her of embarrassing him the other night and says he thought her provocative costume was a peace offering. Then he reveals that her mother once told him he could do better. Viv ends the relationship and sends him off.
Back inside, Viv tells Sophia she’s heading out and slips away before she can interrupt Penny, who’s laughing in a booth with Peter and Elliot. Outside, she finds Reid leaning against the wall alone. He admits he overheard the breakup and says he never understood what she saw in James. They stay side by side, watching the Halloween crowds. Viv and Reid share a charged exchange, and she admits she’s not trying to kill him anymore.
Half City Chapter 34
The breakup sends ripples through both families. Penny feels quietly relieved, her parents remain silent, and Viv’s mother sends a stiff email with a couples therapist’s number.
Fortunately, Peter takes the update about Kitty better than expected, though Viv doesn’t tell him she’s still urging Reid to track down the hidden garden.
Fiona suddenly calls with good news. Viv has been asked to help with the Chasm of Astera exhibit that night. Riding that high, she agrees to a sparring rematch with Reid, who shifts into his demon form mid-fight. The match stays competitive until one of his claws opens a deep gash on her arm. Reid feels stricken with guilt, but Viv bolts from the arena.
Back in her dorm, Viv tries to stitch the wound herself and makes a mess of it. When Reid pounds on her door, she can’t bring herself to answer, caught between the physical pain and her guilt for egging him on. Hours later, the wound is still bleeding, and she’s going dizzy, so she goes to Reid’s cottage rather than risk the infirmary and the report that would follow.
Nobody answers when Viv knocks. Worried Reid may have been removed from campus, she jiggles the door handle until it snaps. She lets herself in and hears the shower running. Before she can retreat, the water shuts off, and Reid walks out wearing only a towel.
Half City Chapter 35
Viv accidentally breaks the door handle trying to get into Reid’s cottage and finds him fresh out of the shower. Reid already has a first aid kit waiting, having guessed she would come to him rather than risk the infirmary.
As Reid prepares to stitch Viv up, he mentions he’s been asking around about her after the breakup out of concern. Viv tells him that she no longer sees him the way she once did and that he’s more than what the Brood brand on his neck suggests.
Reid opens up in return, describing a childhood shaped by an abusive father who set him and his brother against each other and measured them by how cruel they could be. He talks about joining the Brood to earn his father’s approval, how it never worked, and how Dean Driscoll found him and offered a different path when Reid had been sent to kill him. He also shares that his brother murdered the woman he loved.
The honesty heightens the tension between Viv and Reid. When Viv asks whether Reid has thought about taking her soul, he doesn’t deflect or deny it. She steps closer, backs him against the kitchen counter, and asks him to kiss her. He does.