Last time on the Summoning, we waste a chapter talking in circles at Derek.

Chloe then tries to go to sleep, has a nightmare, and heads off to Derek again. Chloe if you want to get transferred so badly just wake up one of the nurses and say so, this is absolutely ridiculous.

Derek, naturally, hears her coming and opens the door, and also he’s half naked, and continuing Chloe not having two brain cells to rub together, Chloe is shocked to see he’s actually super muscular because she was expecting him to just be fat, because it’s not like she knows he’s really strong or anything.

She tells Derek he owes her so he should come down and talk to her right now. Derek doesn’t argue, perhaps because he’s realized you can’t argue with crazy people. While he throws something on, Chloe realizes she’s in a tank top! About to meet a boy without a chaperone! So she throws on a sweater.

Then she realizes Derek looks like shit and must be sick and she feels bad and tells him to go back to bed, and he says he’s not sick it’s just an allergic reaction or something because apparently there’s some meaningful distinction to Derek. Because he’s also crazy, I guess.

Chloe goes to get him a glass of water and some Tylenol

“Two for now, two for later, in case you—”
He tossed all four in his mouth and drained half the water.
“Or you could just take them all now.”
“I’ve got a high metabolism,” he said. “Another part of my condition.”

That’s not how it works!

If you have a high metabolism, drugs kick in faster and wear off faster. That doesn’t mean taking more is the solution, that just means the overdose kicks in faster.

Now, Derek might have a really high tolerance for drugs, in which case he’d have to take more for them to wo
rk. But that’s not the same thing.

Chloe says the usual line about how there are girls who wouldn’t mind that. No shit, really? There are people who would like to be able to eat food without gaining as much weight? Chloe you have blown my mind.

Proving that Derek has never had a normal conversation in his life, he doesn’t react like this is a tired statement he’s heard a billion times and just says she doesn’t have to be so nice to him.

If I were you, I wouldn’t be bringing water unless it was to dump over my head.

That doesn’t mean Chloe’s nice, that just means you’re a complete dick.

Chloe explains that what she wanted to talk about was the necromancy, because he at least knows more than she does. She wants to know how to contact a specific person.

“If you mean your mom, Chloe—”
“No.” The word came sharper than I intended. “I haven’t even thought— Well, yes, I’ve considered it, for someday maybe, of course I’d like to, love to—” I heard myself rambling and took a deep breath. “This is connected to our situation.”

Chloe, you’re the viewpoint character. You thought no such thing.

Also, talking to your mom is also probably connected to your situation. If she knows about necromancy, then she could tell you more than Derek, plus it’d answer the question of how much your aunt knows (there are currently three options, remember: knows nothing, knows of running in the family but thinks it’s mental illness, knows it’s necromancy. That last one is unlikely, but the first two are both plausible and which one it is will change how she treats Chloe.), and she’d be able to help you because you’d have a ghost that would presumably want to protect you. She could spy on the adults, maybe find out what’s going on with Liz.

“You mean Liz?”
“No. I—I should try to contact her, I guess.

You guess. Really.

Chloe continues to refuse to say who she wants to contact for no reason but to drag out the conversation further. TLDR she guessed that the reason the ghost wanted her in the crawlspace was that the bodies made it easier to contact those ghosts, but obviously she can’t just ask Derek that, she has to ask him to list off all the ways it’s easier to contact ghosts and hope that was one he knew.

it’s not easy and it’s not guaranteed at your age. Like Simon and his spells, you’re at the . . . apprenticeship level.”
“Where I can do things by accident, like raising the dead.”
“Well, no.” He absently scratched his arm, theskritch-skritch filling the silence. “From what I heard, raising the dead is the toughest thing to do, and it needs this complicated ritual.” He shook his head and stopped scratching. “I must have heard wrong.

Also Chloe’s got sue powers. The fucking lamest sue powers ever. I can’t imagine how much regular necromancers must suck if what she’s doing is epic.

Derek wants to know why the ghost wants her to contact the other ghosts. Maybe he just wants her to alert the authorities to all the murder, that’s kind of an obvious option.

“From what he seemed to say, it’s about Lyle House. Something they can tell me.”
“But those bodies have been down there way longer than Lyle House has been a group home.

No they haven’t!

I don’t believe we’ve ever had anyone say how long the place has been a group home, and neither of you are experts at decomposition rates in the first place! All you know is that none of them were put there last week, and for all you know, that might just be because Chloe only raised some of them!

Anyway, Derek agrees to go check out the crawlspace AGAIN. And we end the chapter.