Cursed City

The second installment in the Harker Academy trilogy picks up immediately after Half City, set in Astera, a modern city bisected by the Chasm, a sealed rift between the mortal world and the underworld. Deviant hunters trained at Harker Academy battle vampires, demons, and werewolves, while the Elders govern the Lymantrian Order, the society of hunters, from a fortress called the Citadel.

Viv Abbot, a deviant hunter and secret aeon (a rare bloodline with heightened abilities for sensing and killing deviants), arrives badly injured at Fever Dream, a nightclub run by Deacon Graveheart, the estranged older brother of her quasi-boyfriend, Reid. A syrabraxa, a destructive dark spell, has been fused into Viv's spine by the now-dead Driscoll, a warlock and former Harker dean who was turned, meaning transformed from human into a deviant. Driscoll acted on behalf of the High Thane, the leader of the Brood, a deviant crime syndicate. If the High Thane kills Viv on the new moon while using a protective artifact called a censer, he can absorb the syrabraxa and reopen the Chasm. Viv begs Deacon to rescue Reid, who has been captured by Finn, the High Thane's son. Deacon rushes to the docks with Ward, his werewolf associate, but arrives too late.

Deacon warns the syrabraxa will drain Viv's sanity within months and tries to confine her. She escapes by hurling herself out a ninth-story window, surviving thanks to vampire blood in her system, and retrieves her mortal best friend, Penny Pine, before the Brood can target her. After revealing the truth about deviants, Viv brings Penny and their dog, Hound, to Harker Academy, hidden within the Windsor Museum. Fiona Hyde, Viv's sister-in-law and secret interim dean, warns that the Elders would kill Viv if they discovered she carried the syrabraxa. Viv confides in her closest friends: fellow hunters Sophia, Peter, and Elliot.

Penny identifies a foreclosed Cineplex as a possible Brood hideout. Inside, Viv discovers her aeon abilities have evolved, allowing her to identify specific deviants by presence. Deacon and Ward arrive, and a standoff is broken when Brood demons attack. The groups fight together, and Deacon learns Finn frequents a members-only club called the Manor. He agrees to take Viv there to search for Reid.

At the Manor, an underground sex dungeon, Deacon stages a sexual encounter to conceal their identities when Finn unexpectedly enters a room they are searching. Finn calls Deacon "cousin," revealing the High Thane is their uncle. They discover a torture room with Reid's blood and broken chains but overhear Finn berating lackeys: Reid tricked his captors into thinking he had died and escaped. The syrabraxa's bloodlust seizes Viv so violently she kills a dying demon to relieve the pain.

Over winter, the group exhausts Harker's resources. Reid sends Viv a silver camera, proof he is alive. Peter confirms the syrabraxa's bloodlust, fueled by rage, grows increasingly uncontrollable. Viv visits Shiloh Asylum seeking a mysterious elderly woman she previously encountered, but the room is empty. A blood-tracking spell reveals Reid is on campus, yet Viv cannot find him. She begins experiencing syrabraxa-induced dream visions, including seeing Reid searching for an unnamed relic.

At a fundraising luncheon, Viv realizes Caspar Harlock, the billionaire CEO funding her mother's mayoral campaign, is the High Thane. Deacon, attending as Caspar's nephew, helps Viv through a severe episode by instructing her to stab him to relieve the bloodlust. He warns the Elders already know Caspar's identity. Viv obtains a fairy wing fragment from Professor Dawnmere, Harker's fairy chair of Magical Studies, to temporarily mask the syrabraxa and visits the Citadel, where her senses detect the Elders themselves register as deviants. When Elder Alton demands she bare her back, the concealment expires and Viv flees.

On Valentine's Day, Landon Prak, Reid's replacement as combat instructor, lures Viv to a hidden watchtower. Deacon, on a periodic visit to Harker, finds her there, but Citadel hunters arrive and chain them both. Landon brings them to a lagoon where captive mermaids serve as truth detectors. Submerged, Viv's scar blazes, confirming her as the aeon. One mermaid pulls Viv underwater, gives her a flower to breathe, and whispers: "The band lights the attic." Deacon kills the guards using Viv's blades, framing her for the deaths. He reveals Caspar holds his mother, Odette, prisoner and asks Viv to use her dream abilities to locate Odette. With Harker compromised, Viv moves into Fever Dream with Penny and Hound.

At Fever Dream, Viv discovers unexpected depth beneath Deacon's exterior. She learns from Baz, Deacon's vampire associate, that her dream visions are real, triggered by strong emotion. She deciphers Reid's photographs as a coded message leading to a restaurant where she, Deacon, and Ward confront Nicco, a djinn bound centuries ago to guard a ring. The mermaid's clue and Nicco's reaction confirm the relic. After a Brood demon spots Viv, Finn lures Penny to her apartment, where a naga (a serpentine deviant) attacks. Viv kills it, but the creature explodes, coating her in paralytic venom. Deacon rinses the toxin from her despite burns to his own skin. Viv's father's locket is destroyed.

Peter identifies the relic as the Caspian Ring, a Sumerian artifact that removes a syrabraxa by transferring the spell into its ruby; anyone who then wears the charged ring dies. Viv interprets the riddle, reading "the band" as a ring and "the attic" as an old nickname for the Windsor Museum, and suspects the ring lies in catacombs beneath the building. Viv also learns her paternal grandmother, Ada Cadell, is alive in an institution, an aeon imbued with a syrabraxa decades ago whose mind has been affected by the spell. She realizes Ada is the woman from Shiloh and that Caspar plans to kill Ada on the new moon during the annual ACFAC Gala at the Windsor.

Reid reappears, claiming he searched for the ring to free Viv. The truth emerges when he sends Orin, a warlock who defected from the Brood, to take Fiona hostage. Reid reveals he is the legitimate heir to the Throne of Bael, the deviant underworld's seat of power, and intends to use the ring to exterminate every deviant, himself included. He confesses that after sleeping with Viv, he deduced she was the aeon and told Driscoll, triggering Penny's kidnapping and Viv's capture. Viv declares she never loved him. Fiona, under duress, reveals the Elders said the ring is "buried in the tombs." Reid flees.

At Fever Dream, Deacon presents Viv with her father's locket, recovered from the wreckage. He tells her the full story behind his estrangement from Reid: Their father ordered Reid to take the soul of Thea, whom Reid loved, or face execution. When Reid refused, Deacon killed Thea to save him, and their father exiled Deacon to the underworld. Deacon also reveals he is a half-born, the child of the previous High Thane and a harpy, giving him the unique ability to glamour, or magically compel, hunters. Viv assembles her team to plan a heist during the gala.

At the gala, the team breaches the catacombs and battles a massive ogre. Viv discovers the Caspian Ring embedded in the chamber's wall sconces, hidden in plain sight. Deacon slides the ring onto her finger, extracting the syrabraxa in a blinding flash. Sophia secretly swaps the real ring for a decoy. Reid arrives demanding the ring, but Caspar enters with Finn, Brood forces, and both Ada and Viv's mother as hostages. Viv surrenders the decoy. Protected by the censer, Caspar kills Ada, absorbs her syrabraxa, transforms into a winged demon, and reopens the Chasm.

Deacon, manifesting glowing white antlers, engages Caspar but is fatally slashed. He uses his glamour on Viv for the first and only time, compelling her to safety. Peter retrieves the real ring and throws it to Viv before Finn drags him down; Peter kills Finn before the ceiling crushes them both. Viv slides on the charged ring and channels the syrabraxa to seal the Chasm permanently, draining her life force.

Dying, Viv is reached by Deacon, who takes her soul to save her, turning her into a demon and condemning them both to the underworld. Viv awakens on a cliff above black sand and a sea of flame, able to shift her hands into clawed appendages. Deacon stands behind her, alive but terrified. With the Chasm sealed, there is no way out. He chooses to follow her rather than let her die, trapping himself in the place that traumatized him most. The story continues in the third volume.