Last time on the Summoning, Chloe pushes Tori toward suicide. She could apologize, but what if Tori took it the wrong way? Better to just skip off and forget about it.

I STUFFED LIZ’S HOODIE INTO my bag. It took up more room than I could afford, but I needed it. It could answer a question I really needed to answer . . . just as soon as I worked up the courage to ask.

Or you could ask now and then it wouldn’t take up room. Especially since part of why you’re planning this escape is uncertainty over what happened. What if Liz shows up and says actually she’s fine, she’s got whatever powers she has totally under control now, they really know what they’re doing over here!

Chloe then talks about how they’re doing all these futile things while they wait for night.

helped Mrs. Talbot think up meals we’d never eat

It’s fallen by the wayside, but you may remember that early on Chloe would not shut up about the food in the place and I suggested that maybe it was actually what the other kids wanted to eat. So hey, I’m right and Chloe is just the sort of person who’d rather whine than ask.

They do this instead of going off for more planning to avoid suspicion.

Both Rae and Tori had noticed my “powwows” with the guys, and if we kept it up, the nurses might suspect it was more than teen hormones at work.

Because in dumbass no research land, a fifteen girl slipping off to hang out with older boys is totally fine as long as it’s because of teen hormones. Parents are always so understanding when the people they’re paying to watch their kid tell them their precious angel has gotten knocked up. And by a boy they’ve twice demanded be kept away from her, no less!

I warned the others about Tori, but no one seemed concerned. It was like I told her—she was totally out of our minds. Insignificant. I wondered whether that hurt her most of all.

Hm I wonder it sure is a mystery because Tori is so very subtle and restrained about her feelings.

Only like eight more chapters to go of this bullshit.

Then they watch a movie.

At the rate this is getting dragged out, it looks like finding out Liz is dead or in horrible danger is going to be saved for the end. I’m going to guess dead because horrible danger would be a lame cliffhanger while dead would be solidly upsetting without the need for immediate action.

What’s really uncomfortable about this is how it’s dragged on. If Liz died back then, there was nothing Chloe could have done, but because it was never made clear, it’s felt like there’s been something horrible hanging over her that might have been preventable and Chloe just never gave enough of a fuck to try. It doesn’t matter if we discover in the end that Liz was always dead and Chloe couldn’t have saved her, because Chloe wouldn’t have done things differently no matter what the case was.

Derek’s up in his room feeling sick, and the nurses don’t go near him.

The nurses seemed to leave him to his own devices, like his size made them forget he was still a kid. Or maybe, given his file and his diagnosis, they wanted as little contact with him as possible.

No, I’m pretty sure nurses are expected to treat both adults and mentally ill people. This is just yet more failings of proper patient care.

Chloe starts to worry so she goes and fetches him a glass of water and more tylenol. I feel like repeating this. Chloe, while there are nurses present, fetches medication without asking them and then gives it to another patient. Medication that you can overdose yourself on easily should you so desire.

I’d also like to contrast this with the part where she’s spent the entire book not giving a fuck about Liz. Derek and Simon get her consideration, the other girls don’t.

Anyway, Derek looks like shit, thanks her for the stuff, rebuffs her attempts to mother him further, then tells her not to tell Simon.

Then they go to bed.

like Simon and Derek said, old rules didn’t apply to us anymore.
” ‘Cause we’re special.”

This is an interesting little bit. Rae’s statement reads like exactly what I was complaining about, that this really boils down to being part of the special class of people who can do what they want without consideration for the rest of society, but there’s actually no evidence she’s saying that to complete Chloe’s thought – it’s the first bit of dialogue we get in this scene.

In other words, while we’re being presented it in such a way as to make Rae look like the one saying “the rules don’t apply because we’re special :D” it’s Chloe who is saying this, and it’s her inner monologue that views Rae’s line as being an appropriate completion of the thought. And either way, while Rae’s statement is childish, it’s the first bit about rules not mattering that’s important, and Chloe is definitely on board with that one. This is a bit of narrative slight of hand.

While I complain about the writing of this, it’s probably wrong to say it’s incompetent in the normal sense. That is, I don’t think this is a matter of the author trying and failing. This story is terribly constructed and has a terrible worldview, but neither are accidental, and you can see it at moments like this. It’s doing what she wants it to.

Rae is all excited. Chloe disdains this. Doesn’t she know being special isn’t anything special? It is a chore. She’s been lots of special things: rich, dead mom, new kid in class, and how could we forget: The drama major who didn’t want to be an actor.

It is so hard to be rich and get sent to special art school where you can have your own personal curriculum about your special interests and have a dead mom you can barely remember.

Chloe does admit that okay, some of that special is stuff she just doesn’t appreciate. But only in the past! She is totally sure her current specialness sucks and anyone who wants it is dumb and shallow.

Rae is trying to light matches with her mind and not making any progress.

Derek said they did burn things with their hands. By her age, Rae should have been lighting that match no problem. But then he’d never heard of a necromancer who woke up one morning and suddenly started seeing ghosts everywhere. Usually it was a gradual process.

…so, she’s developing slow like you develop fast? I don’t see what’s so weird about this, the easiest explanation is there’s a lot of variation. Derek also claimed necromancers are crazy rare and he knew nothing about half-demons beyond that they existed, so I don’t see why we should take his word for what the standard way their powers develop is.

Chloe instead connects it to normal human puberty. Just like she was super late developing, it’s probably the same with supernaturals! Except that there are seven billion humans for us to have a good baseline for, and outliers are really rare. My point here is that you have no similar knowledge of what normal even is, and also shut up with your stupid comparisons. Is that why it took forever for Chloe to have a period? Because the author thought this comparison was awesome?

At least we finally find out that yes, half-demons are half demon.

Apparently half-demons had a human mother and a demon father, who’d taken human form to impregnate her. That fit Rae’s history, with a mother who’d given her up at birth, no father in the picture.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but the ghosts Chloe summoned also referenced something about having no idea where Lyle was but they hoped it was some hell dimension.

So like all terrible worldbuilding, we both have some incredibly concrete things and hazy vagueness. Demons apparently totally exist, but ghosts aren’t sure if people go to hell or not. If there’s actual demons walking around, I’d really like to know how things work on their end.

Also, one of the things people never seem to take into account is that if there was any concrete evidence of an afterlife, let alone actual demons, you would probably have more people being hesitant about stuff like torturing others to death for science. Lyle may not have given a fuck about anyone else, but he probably didn’t want to spend eternity sunbathing in hell either. There probably are some people who really believe hell exists and are still willing to do things that’ll get them sent there, but I imagine they’re vanishingly few. In such a world, even the most callous person has selfish reasons to find a better scientific method than torture and murder.

(Although there is always the issue of someone who’s already fucked up enough that they’re going to hell already. It depends on the rules. If Lyle knows he’s already going to it for that youthful indiscretion with shellfish, he really has nothing but a conscience to stop him from chowing down on live baby or whatever else he wants to do.)

Back to demons, how human do demons get? Because a literal reading of this is just they turn human long enough to rape women. You could also read “to impregnate” as turning human in order to convince people to have sex with them, which is a lot better, although depending on what powers demons have, “convince” and “consent” may be in conflict. I’d like to assume the fact her mother gave her up for adoption instead of having an abortion indicates that we’re at least going for the latter, but her mom may never have had that option regardless. Which in turn would be a reason to pick those places for a demon.

See, if this was a world and not a blue screen, you’d think half-demon numbers would vary based on area. If they’re just raping people, they should go for places where women can’t get abortions, but they also need enough permissiveness that the women won’t be killed or be desperate enough to try anyway when they get pregnant.

If, on the other hand, they’re more of the persuasive type, then one would think they’d like modern cities instead, where casual sex becomes less and less stigmatized and pregnancy won’t necessarily ruin your life. So there should be a bumper crop of half-demons every time things get more progressive. (And if the demons are actually making these kids via sperm, there’s also the sperm bank option.) So loosening of traditional values = demons impregnating women.

Worse, assuming that demons have anything to do with the actual meaning of the word, this means the sort of cultures that would stone any single mother are actually making a good decision, since the kid could actually be a demonspawn. It’s also a good argument for abortion, but not one where it’s about the woman having the choice to. Rather, women must be prevented from having sex (because it might be a demon!) and then forced to abort if they do (because it might be a half-demon!) and either killed or sterilized if there’s a risk it’ll keep happening.

Thus far, there doesn’t seem to be any sign demons are actually bad, but come on, it’s somewhat of a loaded term. Even assuming this particular story ends up treating demons as just fire spirits, it’s still being put in a way that directly ties women having sex out of marriage with women getting knocked up by demons.

(Incidentally, if half-demons are nephilim-type superhumans, you could have demons doing this without the deception part and with quite good intentions – more like a more widespread and lower-power version of impregnating Mary with Jesus. But see, that kind of thing could be terribly interesting, so obviously nothing of the sort will ever be going on.)

We end with Rae still trying to light the matches and failing. I will grant Simon and Derek this – she does seem to be exactly like someone who simply really wants it to be true.