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Half City Chapters 36–44 Summary
This Kate Golden Half City chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Half City Chapter 36
Reid and Viv kiss, and it quickly turns intense before he pulls back. He tells her it won’t be their last kiss, just not tonight.
The next morning, Viv wakes to a text from an unknown number that turns out to be Reid, and they trade flirty messages. She catches Sophia up on what happened, then heads to Lisette’s office to work on her harpy discrimination essay.
The visit proves more useful than expected. Lisette mentions that harpies are drawn to lymantrian flowers, asphodels among them. Viv connects this to the planetarium at the top of Mortimer Tower, which Peter describes as the highest point on campus.
Before Viv reaches the door, Lisette stops her with a warning that feels personal, telling her to stop looking for trouble before she ends up hurt.
On her way out, Viv texts the group about the lead and wonders if Lisette could be a deviant in disguise. Peter confirms that it could be possible with strong enough magic, which unsettles Viv.
Viv goes to the planetarium alone and checks locked cabinets and control panels. She eventually crawls under dusty seats in her silk skirt, searching for a hidden entrance. Someone laughs from the doorway and catches her mid-crawl.
Half City Chapter 37
Reid shows up at the planetarium after Lisette tips him off. He gives Viv a charm bracelet called a lure, a siren’s artifact that lets him hear her if she’s ever in danger. Viv and Reid talk and flirt, then slip into a pretend date as two ordinary people. They kiss again until Reid accidentally knocks the control console and activates the projection system, which floods the room with a display of the lymantrian plane. They sit together in its light, momentarily suspended.
Then, Reid cuts through the back wall’s insulation and finds a hidden door. Inside is a small, humid room housing an asphodel garden beneath blinking equipment and glowing machinery. Several stems have been ripped clean from the soil, the earth dry and cracked where they were taken.
Searching for any sign of who was there, Viv spots a small bag of red powder marked with a white antler symbol. Before she can place it, Reid’s phone buzzes. He checks the screen and goes pale. Another student, Lyra Roth, has gone missing. The symbol finally clicks into place in Viv’s memory.
Half City Chapter 38
Lyra’s disappearance throws Harker into panic. Citadel hunters are called in, and the dean confers with professors at the scene. Viv spots Lisette among them, and her suspicion sharpens. She gathers Reid and her friends to lay out her theory. Kitty and Lyra both had the white antler stamp from a club in Astera, the same symbol that appeared on the poppy bag found near the stolen asphodels, and the disappearances are tied to whoever is brewing the syrabraxa.
Sophia identifies the stamp as belonging to Fever Dream, a criminal and exclusive nightclub deep in the Half City. Viv wants to go that night, but Reid shuts her down, telling her she’s not trying to save these girls so much as trying to make up for not saving her father. The words cut. Viv pretends to stand down, agrees to give Reid a few days, and walks out.
In the rotunda, Viv stops at her father’s photo and notices for the first time that Dean Driscoll is pictured beside him as a teammate. Combined with her guilt over how little progress she’s made, the moment drives her to ask for help.
Viv goes to Driscoll and lays out everything. He tells her the club’s owner operates under the alias the White Stag, a criminal figure protected by powerful people across Astera. The Elders have blocked official action, but Driscoll promises to tie him to the missing girls and the theft on school grounds. He then forbids Viv from going to Fever Dream. She agrees, walks out, and immediately texts Sophia to meet her at the gateway in twenty minutes.
Half City Chapter 39
Viv and Sophia arrive at the apartment to find Penny mid-breakdown. Claude met someone in Paris and ended things. Sophia insists on bringing Penny along to Fever Dream, and Viv agrees, slipping Reid’s lure bracelet onto Penny’s wrist before they head out.
At the club, Sophia talks her way past the bouncer and gets all three of them stamped in. Inside, Viv notices two deviants working the door and the bar, which tells her Reid either lied about the place or knows less than he let on. She leaves Sophia and Penny dancing and works the room for leads.
Viv spots a jittery man carrying a bulletproof briefcase and trails him through the crowd, out to a garden patio, and through a hidden door in the hedge wall. She steps into a private back office and comes face to face with the White Stag, an enormously tall demon with bleached hair and the easy authority of someone who runs the room.
Trying to bluff her way through, Viv first poses as a girl who lost an earring, then as a journalist. The demon sees through both. When he tries to glamour her and it fails, he assumes she’s mortal and hasn’t registered that she’s a hunter. Viv seizes the opening, pulls her daggers, and drives them toward his heart.
Half City Chapter 40
Viv’s attack barely begins before the demon, already aware she’s a hunter by scent, sends her flying with one hit. She fights back hard enough to land real damage, driving a dagger into his thigh, but he overtakes her, clamps his hand around her throat, and is on the verge of drinking her soul when Reid bursts in and orders the demon named Deacon to let her go. Deacon obeys.
Reid steps between Viv and Deacon and tries to get Viv out. Viv, badly beaten and concussed, refuses to yield and demands proof that Deacon took Kitty and Lyra. Deacon denies any involvement with Harker students, and the denial feels genuine. The white antler stamp no longer points as clearly to him as Viv had hoped.
The scene shifts when Deacon calls Reid brother. Reid doesn’t deny it. Viv holds her reaction together, but the implication hits hard. Deacon is the brother from Reid’s past, the one who killed the woman he loved, and Reid never told her. Reid tells Deacon they’re square on whatever debt existed between them. Deacon responds that if he ever sees Viv again, she won’t survive it. Reid gets Viv out of the office and into the smoking garden.
Half City Chapter 41
Deacon’s men, a vampire named Baz and a werewolf bartender named Ward, force Viv and Reid out of the club. Outside, Penny and Sophia are waiting. Penny recognizes Reid from a previous incident and threatens to call the police. Sophia tries to smooth things over by claiming Viv and Reid are a couple, but the attempt accidentally exposes a lie Viv had told Penny earlier about who Reid was. Penny, already having a terrible night, gets upset and leaves in a cab. Sophia goes with her.
Viv and Reid turn on each other. Reid says she ignored his warnings and came to the club without the protection charm he gave her. She fires back that he lied about his brother being dead and hid the fact that Deacon was the very demon she came to hunt. The fight ends with Viv cutting off whatever had been building between them.
On the subway home, Viv realizes she missed the opening night of the Chasm exhibit. Fiona has left two voicemails, the second telling Viv she’s been let go. A message from her mother follows. Having already heard the news, her mother leaves only a crushing question about what’s wrong with Viv. Viv hurls her phone across the car.
Half City Chapter 42
Harker is on lockdown, with half the student body gone and dozens of Citadel hunters patrolling campus. In the commons, Viv studies with Peter until the conversation turns personal. Peter admits that as a child he watched a Brood demon kill his mother and did nothing. Viv recognizes the guilt he carries and connects it to her own feelings about her father, briefly wishing she could come clean with the people closest to her.
Viv then rushes to the Windsor museum to collect her things before it closes for Thanksgiving. She expects to find only Fiona, but her mother and sister are there too, waiting to take Fiona to dinner. Fiona tells Viv she genuinely believed in her and warns that letting people down has real consequences.
Then, Viv asks her mother outright why she hates her. A raw fight follows, pulling years of resentment to the surface. Her mother defends pushing James on Viv, moving the family out of their old neighborhood, and working hard after their father died. Viv accuses her of never truly grieving him. Her mother says the loss changed her in ways Viv never saw.
At the most painful point, the Windsor security alarm goes off and glass shatters somewhere down the hall. Viv senses immediately that a deviant has broken into the museum.
Half City Chapter 43
Viv gets her mother and Nora out through the emergency exit and heads toward the Chasm exhibit alone. On the way, she calls Reid, and they agree to meet inside. Scouting the room, she notices that display cases holding artifacts have been ransacked while paintings and other pieces nearby remain untouched, which tells her the Brood came looking for something specific.
Then a hooded figure drifts into the room, and his presence nearly drops Viv to her knees. She knows it’s the High Thane.
Reid arrives, and he and Viv regroup in the shadows. Before they can move, the High Thane and his warlock slip through a conjured gateway and vanish, leaving four Brood demons behind. Viv and Reid engage them, but mid-fight, one of the demons drives Viv to the ground and presses his hand to her throat, cutting off her air as he prepares to take her soul. She cannot call out or break free.
Then a spear punches through the demon from behind. Viv looks up and sees Professor Lisette, who appears to be fighting alongside them. But once the four demons are dead, it’s Fiona who steps forward holding the spear, dressed in hunter’s leathers. She was never hiding.
Half City Chapter 44
Fiona reveals she is a dichotomous shifter, existing as a mortal in one form and a hunter in the other. Nora has no idea. Fiona secured Viv the Windsor job after recognizing her as a hunter and has been secretly teaching at Harker while protecting the museum on the Elders’ behalf.
She goes on to explain that the High Thane came for a brass censer that shields demons from certain magic when burned on the new moon. The new moon is tomorrow. Viv concludes the censer is the High Thane’s safeguard against the madness that follows a syrabraxa casting, and that whoever has been sabotaging Harker has been coordinating with him all along.
Before leaving to alert the dean and the Citadel, Fiona tells Viv she’s on probation, not reinstated, and that surviving as a hunter means not letting the hunt swallow the rest of her life.
Viv and Reid clean up the exhibit and sit alone in the dark. Reid tells her that the night they fought the strzyga was when he realized he had feelings for her. Viv admits she has spent her life feeling like she belongs nowhere, and that she belongs with him. She cannot bring herself to say the rest out loud, so she kisses him instead.