Last time on the Summoning, Chloe randomly decides Simon’s her friend and plots to talk to him away from his brother to get her answers.

Simon heads out to play basketball in the yard while Derek showers, and Chloe follows. There, Simon comments on the fact he can’t wait to get out of the place, even though they are apparently kind of on a time limit here, less stupid chatter and more spit out what the fuck is going on already.

After a quiet emo moment where Chloe thinks about how they have nowhere to go because their dad’s AWOL, Simon remembers the whole time crunch thing.

So he says sorry and gives an abbreviated summary of what’s happened – his brother doesn’t beat him or anything, he just doesn’t want to piss him off, and his brother doesn’t know how to back off or be tactful.

“When he decided you might really be seeing ghosts, I should have said, Sure, bro, let me talk to her. I’d have handled it.. . well, different.

Okay, why didn’t you? Apparently this entire chain of events was completely predictable, and also apparently you believe in the ghost thing too, so it’s not a matter of you not wanting to go along with the crazy plan.

Simon then compliments her for standing up for herself and saying this is a good idea, unaware that Chloe already did that before when he cornered her in the basement and it didn’t work so great.

Anyway, Simon also knows a bit about necromancers.

You’re the only person who can hear them, and they all have something to say. That’s why they’re hanging out here, in limbo or whatever.” He shrugged as he tossed the ball. “I’m not real clear on the specifics. Never actually met a necromancer. I just know what I’ve been told.”

Well, that’s…something. But it looks like we’re running into the issue of if people know this, how is it kept secret?

That’s what you’d expect ghosts would do to people who think they can talk to the dead. Mediums, spiritualists, psychics, whatever.”
He shook his head. “Yes, mediums, spiritualists, and psychics are people who think they can talk to the dead. But necromancers can. It’s hereditary.”

That’s semantics, Simon. All those words mean people chatting with ghosts. Unless Chloe raises some damn zombies or at least uses them to prophesy the future, there’s no special distinction about necromancers.

Anyway. We’re at least gotten another clue. If it’s hereditary and her mom was the one taking it seriously, then her mom either had it herself or knew about it. That means her aunt probably does as well. So the necklace probably is important and her aunt knows this.

But if her aunt knows this, she shouldn’t want Chloe at the crazy kid house getting stuffed full of dangerous drugs. Unless her family doesn’t know what’s actually going and they just think it’s some sort of mental illness that runs in the family, but in that case, her aunt should still be incredibly worried Chloe’s showing the symptoms and more concerned about getting her someplace that’s actually halfway competent for treatment.

The Simon levitates a ball an inch with a bunch of magic words and says that and fog patches are all he can really manage. Book, do you know what I don’t care about? I don’t care about inventing magic only for it to be lame.

I’m not Harry Potter and real magic doesn’t work that way.

THERE IS NO REAL MAGIC YOU MADE IT UP

SO YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE FOR WHY WHAT YOU MADE UP IS FUCKING BORING

He tells her to come closer and check it to see if she can figure out how he’s doing this, to prove it’s really magic.

I slid all my fingers through, then waggled them. Simon’s fist closed, grabbing my hand and I yelped as the ball bounced off across the concrete pad.
“Sorry,” he said, grinning, his fingers still holding mine. “I couldn’t resist.”

That’s because you’re a dick, Simon.

She asks if he can teach her, and he says it’s also hereditary, although apparently not that hereditary if you also have to say magic words for it to work.

It’s then that Tori shows up, which I guess is the reason the author decided Simon should grab her hand. She actually takes it pretty well, just going quiet and retreating.

Later that night, Chloe can’t sleep.

This time, though, it wasn’t bad dreams that kept me awake but thoughts pinging through my head, so shrill and insistent that by midnight, I was seriously considering a real kitchen raid—to grab the travel tube of Tylenol I’d seen there.

1) I wasn’t aware Tylenol made you stop thinking about things.
2) They have drugs just sitting out for anyone to use?! Especially when these kids are already heavily medicated with other drugs?

I was a necromancer.
Having a label should have come as a relief, but I wasn’t sure this one was any better than schizophrenic. At least schizophrenia was a known and accepted condition. I could talk to people about it, get help coping with it, take my meds, and make the symptoms go away.

Yeah, but if you’re really a necromancer you can prove you’re not crazy and won’t have to take meds for the rest of your life. But tell me more about how no matter what happens you’ll whine about it, I’m not already sick of that from the last book.

Those same meds might cover the symptoms of necromancy, but as Simon said, it would be like coloring my hair—I’d still be the same underneath, my true nature waiting to pop up as soon as the medication wore off

Chloe, you are so dumb that at times I feel bad for hating you so much.

Why the fuck would medication to treat schizophrenia prevent you from seeing actual ghosts. How does that even make sense. Also, how is what you just described any different from schizophrenia coming back when the medication stops? Do you even listen to yourself?

She then wonders which side of the family it came from. Although it’s obviously the mom’s, I’ll grant this makes sense – she doesn’t remember the prologue we saw where her mom seemed to take Chloe’s fears far too seriously or the fact she used to see ghosts before getting the necklace, and the necklace isn’t currently doing her a bit of good.

But NOTHING IS FUCKING HAPPENING. The allotment of dramatic irony has long run dry. At a certain point, even if something can be justified, you shouldn’t because your readers are sick of this stupid bullshit.

Or maybe neither of my parents or my aunt knew anything about it. It could be a recessive gene, one that skipped generations.

Or, and this is really obvious, maybe they just figured those people were crazy and stuck them in an institution, like exactly what’s happen to you. Something running in a family doesn’t mean people know what it is.

Simon was lucky. His dad must have told him about the magic, showed him how to use it.

Actually, under the circumstances I’d say it’s pretty likely Simon was stolen just like Derek. We just learned that magic is something you’re born with and it apparently doesn’t breed true, going by Chloe’s case. Maybe they worked out a way to find any kids with the same abilities and then steal them.

Necromancers are a lot rarer, and the necromancy skillset doesn’t seem to have any way of finding kids, while general magic powers seem like they could, so that’s why she didn’t get snapped up as someone’s apprentice.

I’d spent days denying that I saw ghosts, and now, suddenly, I had no problem believing in magic?

…no, I’m pretty sure that going by the timeline, you didn’t even know they were ghosts, it was pointed out to you, and then the next day you confirmed that yep, ghosts. I mean, I’ll grant you that at any given point you seem to exist in a weird quantum state of believing/not believing, but I think that’s just the same bad writing that’s led you to completely forget about Liz.

And what about Derek?

See? Completely forgotten.

Chloe considers if maybe Derek really does have super-strength. Do you know what super-strength is, Chloe? It’s the most boring fucking power. No one cares. Liz had telekinesis and/or an angry ghost pet and may be dead right now, let’s go pay attention to that.

I almost laughed. It was like something out of a comic book. Kids with supernatural powers, like superheroes. Superheroes? Right. Somehow, I didn’t think seeing ghosts and levitating basketballs was going to help us save the world from evil anytime soon.

So. Let’s take a moment to visit this book’s mirror opposite, Competent Land.

In Competent Land, Simon’s ability to move stuff without touching it lets him pick locks or disable alarms. Chloe can use the ghosts to tell her what’s going on in the surrounding area, plus the obvious stopping evil by solving murder cases thing.

If both Derek and Simon had powers, is that how they’d ended up together, as foster brothers?

I think a better question is, if Derek and Simon have powers, and Liz has powers, and you have powers, how the fuck did you all end up together here?

Was that why the guys had enrolled in school under fake names and kept moving around? Is that what our kind had to do? Hide?

…*sigh*

Yes, presumably. A better thing to ponder is how incredibly little sense it makes that people with the exact same abilities as regular people, plus an additional ability, would need to hide so badly. I mean, I realize there’s the whole idea of persecuting whoever’s different, but that’s missing a crucial bit of historical context, namely that you generally don’t persecute people who actually have power.

And if Simon’s level of suck is normal, then I can’t imagine anyone really caring much historically. Sure, there have been periods where I can see that sort of thing getting you into trouble, but we still have homosexuals and atheists and redheads. If people really could levitate random shit or talk to ghosts, people would know about it by now and in most places, people would be fine with it.

Instead of doing anything but thinking of questions and not actually going anywhere with it, she falls asleep.

She wakes up again because a voice tells her to.

Instead of try to respond to it and maybe get some answers, she decides to try to find it instead, even though it’s obviously doing fine talking to her where she is.

Once she gets into the hallway she sees a shape by a door, and when she goes there she finds it leads to the attic.

Chloe hesitates, then her inner voice tells her she’s making excuses. Her inner voice can fuck off, she still doesn’t know what ghosts are capable of and what little she does know is that if it wanted to talk to her it should be able to talk fine where she is, so it presumably has some other reason it wants her to follow her.

But Chloe goes up anyway.