Last time on the Summoning, okay no really this time they’re going to go talk to the crawlspace ghosts.

“What do you want?” a woman’s voice snapped, so close and so clear I grabbed the flashlight, certain one of the nurses had discovered us.
Instead, I shone the beam on a woman dressed in a sweater set.

What?

Okay, so now ghosts are affected by light. In fact, thanks to bad word choice, she’s actually blocking that light (on her) but even if we charitably assume it’s more that the beam is illuminating the area in general, why should light affect your ability to see ghosts when you’re obviously not seeing them with light?

Anyway the ghosts just want Chloe to fuck off and not bother them.

“I just w-want to talk to you,” I said.
“That much is obvious,” the woman snapped. “Calling and pulling and pestering until you drag us out against our will.”
“I didn’t m-mean—”
“Can’t leave well enough alone, can you? It wasn’t enough to shove us back into our bodies. Do you know what that’s like? Sitting down, enjoying a nice afternoon, and all of a sudden you’re back in your corpse, buried, clawing your way to the surface, terrified you’ve been trapped by some demented necromancer looking for zombie slaves?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, do you hear that, Michael? She didn’t mean it.” The woman moved toward me. “So if I accidentally unleash a storm of hellfire on your head, it’ll be all right, as long as I didn’t really mean it?

Yes.

The author is actually saying that what Derek did – grabbing her knowing full well he’s really strong and can hurt her, and yanking on her intending to prevent her from leaving, is exactly the same thing as Chloe trying to do something she didn’t know how to do and having something completely different happen she didn’t even know was possible.

No wonder the author keeps using the aunt to mock the idea girls should avoid boys who hurt them.

Oh, also the ghost threatens to hurt Chloe if she does anything like that again. So apparently ghosts, or at least the ghosts of witches, can still do stuff. Or maybe it’s just a bluff because she assumes Chloe doesn’t know better.

Chloe keeps trying to talk. The ghost explains that yes, she was a witch, yes, she was tortured and killed, yes, it was by the guy who owned the house. We also get some bonus creepy (Her lips curled in an ugly smile. “I’m sure my being a witch added a little extra dash of pleasure for him. because that adds so damn much) and no, she has no idea what’s up with the current place and doesn’t give a shit.

On the brighter side, she gives the only decent advice so far, which is to actually do something instead of sitting around or summoning long-dead ghosts.

“Am I in danger?”
Her lip twisted. “You’re a supernatural. You’re always in danger.”

This is never going to get justified, is it? The author’s just blindly following the trope.

They head off and Derek says he can’t sleep because he’s so restless, in part because he’s not getting enough exercise.

“Could you ask for workout equipment? They seem pretty good about stuff like that.”
He slanted a look my way. “You’ve seen my file. You really think they’re going to buy me a set of dumbbells and a punching bag?”

I was picturing something more like a treadmill, but since you don’t seem to be considering that I’m just going to assume that when you say “exercise” you really are just using it as a euphemism for not getting your allotment of punching people. The time for charitable interpretations has passed, book.

Derek suggests going out for a walk. He knows the alarm code.

Because it’s not like going out together could have any bad repercussions.

I crossed my arms. “You can walk out anytime? Get that exercise you need? But you never have?”
He shifted his weight. “Never thought of it—”
“Of course you have. But there could be an alert when the alarm is turned off. Or a record of it being disabled. So you’ve never taken the chance. But now we should. If we get caught, well, everyone already thinks we’re fooling around. We’d get in trouble for sneaking off, but not like Simon and I would if we were caught running away.”
He scratched his chin. “That’s a good idea.”
“And it never crossed your mind.”
He said nothing. I sighed and headed for the stairs.

Why is this the only thing Chloe’s super smart about?

Probably because the author can’t figure out how to write it any other way, I guess.

Also why does it matter why why why why why why why why

It’s not like he’s really using her here – he suggested they go for a walk, nothing changes if he normally could but doesn’t because he’s worried about getting caught, he’s not even particularly trying to force her into it. What does it matter?