Half City

ChApter 1

Once, I crushed a beetle with my bare foot.

Nora was faster than me back then. I was all limbs and joints, with little coordination between them. We'd been playing gymnasts on the sidewalk-cartwheels resulting in skinned knees and tumbles leading to bits of asphalt embedded in our palms-when the sun-drenched day bled into a dusk that turned our neighborhood downright menacing. Or at least, that's how it looked to six-year-old me. I peered up from one of my more impressive somersaults and realized Nora was already at the stairs of our apartment building.

I ran after my big sister as if the shadows yawning off the power lines were long fingers that could seize me where I stood. I didn't even see the bug.

When the shell crunched beneath my heel-innards spreading across my foot like jam on toast-I expected revulsion. Guilt. Horror.

But none came.

I bent down to inspect the gore, my fear of creatures that slunk out with the fading daylight forgotten. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the insect's shattered exoskeleton. The still-twitching limbs. My blood thrummed with morbid allure. A predator discovering prey and, with it, a sick, insistent desire.

A desire I've fought against every single day since.

Staring down at the once-blue, now-gray gum stuck to the heel of my loafer, I try to shake the memory. I don't have time to dissect my psyche this evening. I'm late.

"Thank you so much for calling-"

I nearly jam the phone into my ear canal. "Yes? Hello?"

"Your call is very important to us. Someone from the district attorney's office will be-"

The noise I release is less human woman, more exasperated hyena. A balding man in a crumpled shirt recoils from me, and I deserve it. The Astera subway at rush hour is terrible by anyone's standards. The Astera subway at rush hour in the summer is a stinking, sweat-drenched hellscape from which few emerge with their sanity. A hellscape made worse only by all the lunatics who call this city home, and tonight, to Crumpled-Shirt Man, I am said lunatic.

But there's no time to mutter apologies. I secure the phone against my shoulder and shove past him down the stairs into the bowels of the multifloored subway. A sardine in a sweaty, sticky, tin can of conference calls, nursing scrubs, and unsupervised teenagers. My bags, water bottle, wallet, and railway card are about as secure in my hurried grasp as a handful of eels. When I maneuver through a turnstile, a dog's yapping echoes from deeper within the subway, rising above the din.

Someone behind me, equally rushed, knocks my precious phone from the crook of my shoulder and I spy the endless depths of a grate beneath my feet. A mere second before disaster, I catch the phone between my chin and collarbone. Phew. I listen to the irritating melody over the line to confirm that my spot in the queue hasn't been compromised.

What kind of mother is more likely to answer her work line than her cell? I'm all for boundaries, but if I hear one more automated woman tell me how valuable my time is, I'm going to implode. While I wait for my train, the Muzak blares in my ear and that dog yowls again.

Every time a train thunders past, the entire tunnel flickers. One fluorescent light high above is missing a bulb. My stomach growls, and I wonder if every suit on the crowded platform can hear it over the rumble of the subway cars. I search through my leather tote-a designer bag my from my mother, which I hate yet carry daily out of some misplaced guilt-and find the soft pretzel I grabbed on my way to work this morning.

This morning.

Shit. I haven't eaten today.

My mother once told me that forgetting to eat when stressed is a superpower. I'm about to cram as much of the stale, salty dough into my mouth as I can in an act of fierce rebellion against such an archaic, patriarchal notion when I finally catch sight of the dog that's been barking for the last ten minutes.

Against the tiled wall to my left, below graffiti depicting white antlers on Caspar Harlock's ad for his burgeoning news network, sits a yowling, dark-haired mutt, not too unlike my own. He's barking mostly at his owner, a kid with matted hair, leathery skin from too much sun, and clothes that I can smell from here.

The boy's sign reads: Hungry, Anything Helps.

Astera-the Half City, the country's epicenter of culture, business, and politics, located on the glittering edge of the eastern seaboard. We must have the largest population of billionaires in the world-our graffitied Caspar Harlock over there and my best friend Penny Pine's parents, to name a few-and yet a seriously shameful percentage of the city is living on the street. And who can you blame for a cycle that never breaks? Those in government? Say, perhaps, our tough-as-nails district attorney?

Whose office I am still on hold with?

Even though she birthed me?

It's moments like these in which I almost understand my mother's obsession with marrying me off to James Pine like some tragic Dickensian wretch. It's the same part of her that gifted me this bag on my first day of work so I wouldn't look quite so pedestrian. She loves me. She wants me to be taken care of in this dog-eat-dog city. And even though I can take care of myself in more ways than she could possibly fathom, I do wish I had the means to pull a wad of hundreds out of my bag for this kid and his dog.

Instead, I offer him my squashed, cold pretzel. His eyes light up as he takes it from me, immediately ripping off half for his floppy-eared companion. The dog eats hastily, fragments of wet pretzel crumbling on the ground, before he quiets, snuggling next to his owner in satiated gratitude. The young kid offers me a similar expression.

I don't even realize my heart is in my throat until my mom answers on the other line with a shrill "Yes, Viv, what is it?"

I falter for words.

"Viv? Do you need something? I'm about to step into a meeting."

"Hi, sorry." I pull myself together just as my train arrives. "Your team left a box of Dad's things outside my place this morning?"

A pungent whiff of some guy's noxious body spray fills my nose as the crowd coalesces around the open doors. I can barely hear my mother's exasperated sigh over the tumult.

"Yes." She sounds distracted. "I'm trying to declutter."

I nearly take a model's bony elbow to the chin as I find a seat. "You don't want . . ." I can't even find the right words. "Anything to remember-"

"My assistant saw a drug exchange on your block when she was leaving the apartment. How many times do I have to say I don't like you living so far past the Chasm?"

I mentally pound my head against a wall. I want to ask, Have you blocked out everything that happened before Dad died? You guys raised me around the corner from a brothel. The madam had to pick me up from school once. But I go with "Babylon is up-and-coming."

"Will you at least have James stay with you? He says you never invite him over."

It's not her fault-she doesn't know how laughable it is to assume my boyfriend can protect me better than I can protect myself. I fumble for a response that isn't No thank you, please.

"Or I could have a home security system installed?"

"You're kidding, right?" Her silence is like a whip. "Yeah, okay. If you must."

"So much graciousness on this phone call."

I bite back my attitude. "I'm sorry."

"Is Fiona having you work opening night?"

My mom has hounded me about this new exhibit on the Chasm for months. I work at the Windsor, Astera's largest and most well-funded museum, gallery, and research institute, and our newest collection opens in November. To my mom, whether or not I am one of the assistants chosen to help wealthy old women in pearls and tweed-wearing historians up the stairs on opening night is the full extent of my worth as a human. "I still don't know," I tell her. I don't add that I told her the same thing last week, and the week before.

"Well, you've certainly put in the time. I'm sure she will."

"One can only hope," I deadpan. When I hear her irritated sigh on the other line, guilt swims in. "Thank you, though. For the faith."

"Mm-hmm."

"Love you," I add.

But the line is already dead.

After my dad died when I was ten, my mom traded in her grief for justice. She'd been a city councilwoman in Lethe, the lower-middle-class neighborhood where my sister and I grew up, but his death prompted her to get a law degree, spend her weekends championing local anti-crime legislation, and dig into my father's murder until it was branded a cold case and thrown into some cheap suit's file cabinet.

Only two years later, she got a fancy government job and moved Nora and me across the city in the same station wagon we'd used as his hearse. I went to bed one night in the dingy yet lovable five-story walk-up I'd known all my life and woke less than a week later in a luxurious, chillingly empty house over the hill in the Hesperides, enrolled in Belaire School for Girls-and yes, it was as bad as it sounds.

I allow myself a brief gut-deep sigh at the memories before taking a seat and rummaging through my three overstuffed bags-gym bag, tote, purse-and running through the work wear-to-cocktail dress transition in my head.

My dress can be thrown on over my blouse. Or Nora's blouse, which I've stolen to look presentable. Then I'll shimmy the blouse down and off. No, wait-it could snag on the dagger strapped to my ribs. Britannia silver would eviscerate the blouse, and Nora would eviscerate me. Luckily, only I inherited the hunter gene from my father, otherwise that wouldn't be a joke. I'll unbutton the blouse first and pull it through my dress's neckline.

Pants always come off last, even after shoes, meaning there will be an unavoidable period of time in which I am barefoot on the Astera subway.

Vile, but alas-the things we do for love.

Thankfully, by the time I'm ready for my acrobat-level quick-change maneuver, the railcar's crowd has thinned out a bit. Probably because we're heading farther and farther south toward the Chasm. Nobody from up here goes down to Babylon, the neighborhood where Penny and I live. Especially not at this hour-assistants at the Windsor rarely leave before eight.

After graduating from Belaire, I didn't quite have the GPA to attend a decent college. My mother was beside herself, of course, but it's not like I could tell her I missed half my finals because a vampire was drinking his way through the city's strip clubs.

After my gap year became gap years, I'd wanted to apply to entry-level jobs at photography galleries. There's a smattering of cool ones in Babylon, but-to nobody's shock-my mom was not jazzed about that idea. I think she said something like I didn't spend every dollar I had on Belaire so you could look at other people's pictures for a living.

Luckily, Nora's wife, Fiona, stepped in a year ago and offered me a job as her assistant. She's the Windsor's head curator, which basically means she's a history buff who gets to travel the globe, say the word gala a lot, and wear high, clacky heels every day.

As the subway car moves over the Erebos Bridge across the Chasm, my bags begin to slide. Despite having a cocktail dress currently overhead, I save them from escaping with my outstretched foot, like it's a frog's tongue on an errant fly. For a rare moment in which my tampons and sweaty Pilates clothes don't spew onto everybody's shoes, I am awash in warm appreciation for my heightened hunter reflexes. Though I pray the second dagger strapped to my thigh didn't poke through my slacks. I can't afford another pair this month.

Eventually, the dress is on, loafers replaced by sensible heels, and there are no injured subway citizens to show for it. My eyes find my shoes, and I twist my ankle for a better look. In my head, my mom says, A stiletto wouldn't kill you. In-my-head-me replies to her, Actually, it might. Have you ever chased down a demon in a six-inch? Two sprained ankles have taught me that a platform heel is the only way to go.

I peer up at the remaining stops ticking away on the digital banner. Three more until Babylon. I check my hair using my phone camera and pull the long night-black strands into a low bun. Smooth my brows. Examine my teeth. The phone reads 8:51.

Dinner was at 8:00. I can probably be through the doors of Cobwebs by 9:07, which isn't too terrible for me. Maybe Penny won't even notice.

The smell of bacon pulls a growl from my stomach. A woman at the end of the railcar is munching a breakfast burrito with one hand as she holds on to a double stroller with the other. Her eyes are drooping closed as she chews.

A breakfast burrito at 8:00 p.m.-my kind of lady.

I reach into my bag and grab my half-frame camera to discreetly snap a shot of the mom and her burrito. There's exhaustion there but also the joy of a perfect bite when you need it most. It's incredibly human, and, as I often try to remind myself, so am I.

The train slows to a halt and a few more passengers file in and out. One stop left. Thank the lord.

"They're sleeping, so . . ." the mom says. When I peer back over, a man in a grease-stained jumpsuit is scooting closer to her, asking to see her kids. He's shifty-eyes darting here and there, scratching hastily at his arm. I hear the noise like his nails are inside my brain.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

I try to tell myself he's just a poppy addict or a mugger from STC-South of the Chasm. But then shivers break out across my skin, and my heart sinks. I can almost hear kind, forgiving Penny ordering a red wine for me and saying to the waiter, "She'll be here any minute . . . She has a really demanding job." I wonder if they already sang her happy birthday.