Last time on the Summoning, Chloe de-raises the zombies because she realized it was in excess of the federally mandated excitement allotment.

You know, fuck it. I will talk about the Old Kingdom trilogy and you can’t stop me.

The Old Kingdom trilogy is, among other things, a much better name for the universe. “Darkest Powers”? Oh no magic fog! Truly Simon you have the darkest of powers! And Chloe, YOU CAN TALK TO GHOSTS ABOUT THEIR STUPID GHOST PROBLEMS SOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAARK!!!!!!!!

The Old Kingdom is about the Old Kingdom. It is freaky and awesome and the seasons are slightly disjointed from the rest of the world and it’s separated by this wall that keeps most of the magic back so the rest of the world is magic-free and safe, but it’s a very leaky wall so people near the wall can still do some minor stuff.

Most of the magic revolves around the dead. Death involves traveling down a river through nine gates. No one knows what’s past the tenth because no one’s ever returned, but you can claw your way back up the river if you’re sufficiently motivated (and/or you eat other dead spirits). The waters can warp the dead as well. When these things finally make their way back into life again, they come in many forms – but they all need to devour life to stay in it. Necromancers can mutilate the dead to create even more creatures. Waiting/starving the dead is a valid option, but in most places the dead push through, the problem is a broken boundary, so new ones take their place. They have a lot of trouble crossing water, but the stronger they are the better chance they have at getting across.

In a world like this, necromancy has meaning. It can even be used to do good – if you yank a spirit back fast enough, and if you know the right spells to heal their body, you can actually bring someone back alive, not undead. And necromancy can be used to control and drive back the malicious dead, or fight off an evil necromancer. You can also use it to stick someone in stasis. And see the past. And lots of other stuff, probably.

Do you notice how nothing I just said was “friendly ghost wants you to talk to other ghosts”? That’s because that’s boring and necromancers are too cool for that shit.

What’s interesting is exploring how the afterlife works in the setting and having the characters interact with it, not saying “okay so there’s a ghost LOOK OVER THERE IT’S SOMETHING SHINY OH YOU MISSED IT anyway as I explained, ghosts now let’s move on.”

Anyway, last chapter Derek said that they had work to do. Because, as I think I’ve now proven conclusively, this book is a boring piece of shit, he meant reburying the corpses.

Chloe raised the fucking dead. She can prove she’s not crazy but actually has legit magic powers.

Even if the exact limit of her power is raising zombies and talking to ghosts, and she doesn’t want to raise the zombies again, why are they hiding the bodies? GO TELL SOMEONE. There are multiple corpses in a shallow grave in the basement of a house for crazy kids. It is time to get the fuck out.

I could tell the bodies had been buried quite a while, probably before Lyle House had become a group home. And they were adults. For now, that was all I needed to know.

And you can fell this how, precisely?

You don’t know how long Lyle House has been a group home. You don’t know anything about decomposition rate, but the fact they were still somewhat fleshy when these are presumably murder victims who weren’t embalmed or anything is pretty damn worrying. And you know what? Older teens and adults are the same size. Your uneducated eyes that can barely even look at them, in a lightless crawlspace, is not exactly going to be able to tell the difference.

Fuck, considering bodies tend to shrink up, you’d be more likely to misestimate in the other direction.

As we worked, I asked Derek how he’d found me. He said that when he realized Tori had stayed behind, he knew she was up to something, so he went to check on me. How exactly he found me, he didn’t say, only shrugged and mum bled something about checking “the obvious places” when I seemed to be missing.

Uh. Chloe was screaming through the gag, something that would almost certainly be audible to an ordinary human who was in the basement at the time. Derek can perfectly hear conversations taking place in another room. This should not be a big mystery.

Then Chloe explains her great plan for dealing with Tori:

“I’m going to act like nothing happened.”
He considered it, then nodded. “Yeah. If you blame her, things will only escalate. Better to ignore her and hope she gives up.”

Ethics? What ethics?

Regardless of if we’re assuming that doing so was a sign Tori’s further round the bend than anyone realized, she’s a danger to others. Chloe’s mouth is probably messed up from pulling at the tape and she’s likely got marks from the rope, and both things will still be there in the crawlspace. Things will not escalate. Tori will be sent off to the farm a real mental institution.

If Chloe had put two and two together about Liz, this would actually be pretty noble. She knows Tori’s a danger but she’s not willing to tell when she thinks it could mean Tori’s death. That would also be a good reason to hide what happened in the crawlspace – the adults can’t be trusted, something horrible is going on, and any sign she knows about it might get her shipped off.

Instead, Chloe just defaults to the usual protagonist behavior of not telling the adults because then she wouldn’t get to keep playing detective.

Anyway, they finally crawl out of the closet right as mommy nurse comes down.

“Chloe? Derek?” Mrs. Talbot stood in the laundry room. “What are you two doing together? Derek, you know you’re not supposed to—” Her gaze traveled over my filthy clothing. “Dear Lord, what happened to you?”

Well, so much for hiding it.

Chloe attempts to hide it anyway.

To recap: Chloe had her head smashed with a brick, then smacked it again, then smashed facefirst into a pole, then literally inched along the dirt while pulling at ropes on her bare skin. She’s been crying and she’s peed herself and her mouth was presumably covered in duct tape, which would probably have messed up her lips with all her attempts to open it, and she is coated head to toe in dirt.

Naturally, their response is to ask what happened instead and the logical conclusion they come to seeing a girl with tear streaks through the dirt in her face and marks on her wrists is that she and Derek were totally making out in the crawlspace.

Even though they both fit in the closet without needing to anyway.

Even as I denied it, I saw she’d given us the perfect out. If I just dropped my gaze sheepishly and said “Yep, you caught us,” they’d have their explanation, with no reason to go into the crawl space and discover those hastily reburied corpses.

Aside from there being no reason for you to be so concerned about them finding it, remember how Chloe sucked at lying and stuttered and stuff? Book’s forgotten again.

It’s also not a good out, because Derek was told to keep away from Chloe or else he’s gone. There is no way secret makeouts in the crawlspace counts as keeping his distance.

So Chloe goes and changes.

I had two goose eggs, one from Tori and one from hitting that pillar.
Back downstairs, I showed the smaller one to Dr. Gill, hoping it would support my story that we’d been exploring—see, I even bopped my head. She just took a cursory look, handed me Tylenol, and told me to lie down in the media room. Aunt Lauren was on the way.

Okay, if you’re trying to hide the fact you hit your head badly enough for the bigger one, showing her the smaller one is idiotic, she – or at least the nurse she should call because psychiatrist does not mean general doctor – should check it over and would find the second one.

Also, goose egg lumps on your head are kind of a big deal.

Anyway, her aunt gets called and it’s time for another fucked up aesop.

“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t anything like that.” I twisted to face her. “We found the crawl space and Derek wanted to check it out and I thought that’d be cool.”
“So you followed him in there? After what he’d done to you?” She’d gone still, the disappointment in her eyes changing to horror. “Oh, Chloe, I can’t believe— Did you think harassing and hurting you the other day meant he liked you?”
“What? No, of course not. Derek isn’t— He made a mistake. He didn’t really hurt me and he didn’t mean to do it. It was a misunderstanding.”
She reached forward and gripped my hand. “Oh, Chloe. Sweetheart, no. You can’t fall for that. You can’t make excuses for him.”

Can it get worse? Yes, it can.

Her aunt tells Chloe that she can do better, and Chloe immediately knows her aunt is really talking about Derek’s appearance.

How Derek looked wasn’t his fault. He was obviously aware of it—and how others reacted to it—and it certainly wasn’t like he tried to be repulsive. An adult should know better. Aunt Lauren should be the one giving me the you-can’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover speech.
Any notion I’d had of confessing the truth to Aunt Lauren evaporated.

Like you were ever really considering it. If you wanted to tell her, you could have said what really happened straight off instead of lying.

Come to think of it, that’s another thing. Chloe is getting all upset no one will believe her, and they actually should, or at least her aunt should Her aunt knows she stutters when she’s upset or lying.

“Aren’t you going to say anything, Chloe?”
“Why?” I heard the chill in my voice. “I’ve tried. You’ve already made up your mind.”
She shifted in her seat, inching to the edge, closing the gap between us. “I’d like to hear your side.”
“Just because I’m in this place, just because I’m ‘sick,’ doesn’t mean I’m any different than I was a week ago. Back then, you’d know something was wrong with this story. You’d have asked for my explanation before accusing me of anything. But now?” I stood. “Now I’m just the crazy girl.”

This actually works. Her aunt is only asking for her side after lecturing her based on what her aunt assumes happened, and this sort of self-defeating spite is a very understandable feeling.

The only issue is that Chloe has the ability to prove everyone wrong in one stroke, and if we’re talking of questionable actions made in anger, “Fine, I’ll show you what really happened.” and going to raise zombies seems like it’d be a real temptation.

Chloe is too busy being offended that her aunt thinks the two of them made out in the crawlspace.

That was insulting. No, more than insulting. It made me furious.
Did Aunt Lauren know the first thing about me? And if she didn’t, who did?

She’s not insulted by the idea she’s some weakminded girl who’s getting pushed around by an abusive boy. She’s offended her aunt thinks she’s a slut.

She’s summoned back later.

I didn’t bother to argue about why we’d been in the crawl space. I’d moved well past the “Oh, my God, I don’t want anyone to think I’m that kind of girl” stage. If they thought Derek and I had been grappling in the dirt, then at least it meant they wouldn’t go into the crawl space and see the signs of disturbance … or, if they did, they’d figure they knew what caused it

I hate this book.

We need to nip this in the bud, and the only way we’re going to do that is with a transfer. One of you will have to go.”

So Chloe immediately says she’ll go, because she doesn’t want to have Derek separated from Simon, because she’s so fucking stupid she thinks that a kid who’s only there so he won’t be separated from his brother would stay there separated from his brother.

Was I crazy? Volunteering to be transferred when I was already worried about what such a transfer meant?

We haven’t seen her doing any such worrying. In fact, it’s a major problem I have with the story.

Chloe expects Derek to jump in and volunteer to leave instead, because again, fucking stupid.

“No one’s going anywhere,” Dr. Davidoff said softly. “For now, I’m putting you both on notice.

Uh…

We need to nip this in the bud, and the only way we’re going to do that is with a transfer. One of you will have to go.”, remember?

And then Chloe volunteers to go and suddenly it’s all “no wait nevermind”? Either this is bad writing or they really want Derek out, but they’re the ones in charge, they could just overrule Chloe’s offer and kick Derek out anyway.