Last time on the Summoning, they talk about zombie….movies. That sure wasn’t a waste of time.

Veracs brought up a good point last chapter:

She could be trying to apply insane, but hilarious logic to zombies like (okay, so I probably shouldn’t zombify my dead mother, dress her in clean clothes and bring her down to dinner then).

And what would actually have made for an especially interesting chapter is her making this joke and then realizing that wait, she actually could bring her mother back.

Because she can, as far as we know. She’s already been told that the necromancy thing is genetic, and she doesn’t know how much her mother knew. She won’t talk to her aunt, but she doesn’t need to worry about ghost-Mom not believing her. And…she could talk to her dead mother.

Now, she might not do this – she might be afraid it wouldn’t work, or scared of what she’d find out, and reference the movie tropes of how this kind of thing never turns out right. But she’d definitely think of it.

She doesn’t.

Simon asks mommy nurse if he can go play basketball outside. She isn’t sure about letting Chloe out too, but Simon convinces her it’ll be fine with the brilliant strategy of telling her it’ll be fine.

That’s a point in favor of the theory they aren’t deliberately anything, the staff of the place is just that jawdroppingly incompetent. Still, you’d think rich people could afford actual accredited staff with at least half a brain between them.

They don’t even pretend to play basketball this time.

Simon explains that Derek was trying to piss him off when he talked about their dad. Obviously.

Anyway, it turns out both Derek and Simon think Simon should go look for him, but Derek wants to stay and Simon doesn’t want to leave him.

“How? Like, break out? You can’t—”
“That’s no big deal.” He settled back on the bench. “When you’re raised like us, as supernaturals, it’s . . . different. The rules are different. They have to be. If there’s trouble, you have to run.”

Two things I hate here, one more than the other.

The minor one is the bit about different rules. This is one of those tropes that doesn’t get much examination, but in practice it rarely means that things really work differently for them, and mostly means that by having special powers they get special rules. There’s often a hefty dose of the idea that they’re above the mundanes.

The major one is the idea that they’re an oppressed and persecuted group. Run from what? You’re exactly the same as humans except you also have better powers, but your better powers aren’t terrifyingly better enough to prompt anyone to zerg rush you.

I mean, Harry Potter’s worldbuilding is – well, unbuilt, but at least the basic idea of wizards keeping themselves secret makes sense. There are very few of them, they’re gods compared to a regular human, and they’re not godly enough that a sufficient mob can’t take them down.

But let’s consider Chloe. Chloe was outed as a necromancer, and all that happened was people thought she was schizophrenic. While that’s not an awesome outcome, it’s not something you need to go on the run over either, and Chloe could clear everything up by showing that she actually is a necromancer.

Same for Simon.

So what trouble are they running from? If there’s some secret order of angry nuns devoted to wiping out supernaturals, surely going public and getting public protection would help? And if it’s other supernaturals, again, public protection would help. That’s kind of what government is for, it’s there to be a counterpoint to mob structures and might makes right.

Also, if the other supernaturals aren’t malicious, it seems like the best thing for either of them is to start using their powers. It’s obvious that there must be a crack squad devoted to scooping up baby supernaturals and covering up the evidence or else everyone would know. If Simon’s problem is that his dad was the only one who knew the rest of the supernatural community, that’d be the answer.

But none of this is explained because it’s just being taken as an article of faith that the way things work is that supernaturals exist in hiding, even if there’s no reason why.

Chloe asks what happened to their dad.

“Where is your dad?”
He shook his head. “We don’t know. He just— Things went wrong and he disappeared and we ended up here. It’s a long story . . .”
“Then it can wait.”

…

The book is just fucking with me now.

So we’re stuck here, supposedly waiting to get released, but then what? Where would we go? There’s no grandma or great-uncle or family friend waiting to take us.

Why aren’t there any relatives? We were told this is genetic, and even if it wasn’t, something where there are very few, very endangered kids seems like prime ground for setting up a foster system of family friends. There should be someone there to take the kids if something happens to the parent, because if they value the masquerade for whatever reason, the kids being in foster care is the last thing they want.

Simon further explains that he knows spells for getting in touch with his dad. The book naturally gives no explanation for why he doesn’t just use them now, so for the sake of my sanity let’s assume they take a while to work and maybe involve burning incense or something, although honestly, it seems it’d be easy to just claim to be wiccan and say it’s a ceremony.

Throughout this he keeps rambling about Derek but never actually saying anything but vagueness and just going “never mind” on the occasions Chloe bothers to ask for an actual explanation. Padding, padding, padding.

Then he says that she needs to get out, because there’s no way she can hide her powers. Considering she’s only been caught because she explicitly chose to go talk to the ghost, I’d say she totally can she’s just stupid. …which I guess is the same thing and he’s just being diplomatic.

“If I get transferred to a hospital, I’ll get through it.”
“But what if it’s not a transfer?” He glanced over, worry in his eyes. “What you said about Liz keeps gnawing at me. Maybe she is a shaman. Or if she is dead, maybe it was an accident. Why would they kill kids who don’t get better? It sounds nuts, but even Derek’s worried.”

Well, it’s about time someone cared about that.

Getting out wouldn’t solve my problems. Aunt Lauren would always be watching, misinterpreting every “abnormal” thing I did as a sign that I needed to return to Lyle House … or worse.

Actually she was totally willing to misinterpret the actual abnormal thing you did as being normal. I think she really wants to believe you’re okay based on that. Anything short of another screaming fit should be fine.

If Chloe Saunders, necromancer, followed the old rules, she could wind up in a padded cell, ranting about voices no one else could hear.

Uh, no, Chloe Saunders could wind up with a fucking zombie army.

I wasn’t naive. I read the news. I knew what happened to kids who ran away, and it wasn’t the wonderful life of freedom they imagined.

…kids who run away aren’t really “naïve” most of the time. If they were, they’d just go back home when things got bad.

Also, fucking zombie army, Chloe!

if I got out of here, I could track down Liz. That would be easy. There were a limited number of hospitals in Buffalo.

All of which, apparently, have no confidentiality rules.

God.

You can’t even say Chloe’s just stupid here, her aunt works at the hospital. Hospitals are fucking insane about this.

Anyway, Simon says he’s planning to go alone and come back with help, but Chloe wants to go too. This would be meaningful if we hadn’t just spent the past thirty chapters establishing that Chloe is roughly as self-sufficient as your average baby bird. In fact, possibly less so. I mean, she totally should be useful because she could use ghosts to keep an eye on things and fucking zombie army, but she’s not. We know that.