The Summoning

The first installment in the Darkest Powers trilogy, the novel follows fifteen-year-old Chloe Saunders as she discovers she can see ghosts and is drawn into a hidden world of supernatural teenagers.

A prologue set 12 years earlier establishes Chloe's earliest encounter with the dead. As a toddler in her family's old house in Allentown, she is lured into the basement by what sounds like her babysitter's voice. The voice belongs to Mrs. Hobb, a malevolent spirit whose flesh burns away to reveal a grinning skull.

Years later, Chloe is a petite fifteen-year-old at A. R. Gurney High, a Buffalo art school where she studies theater arts. Her mother died when Chloe was six. Her father, Steve, travels constantly for business, and her closest family figure is her Aunt Lauren, a doctor. On the day Chloe gets her first period, strange things happen: A boy leaps off a curb and vanishes, and she hears a girl crying in an empty bathroom stall. Then a man in a custodian's uniform confronts her in the hallway, flickering and revealing a horribly burned face. Chloe flees. Teachers corner her and, mistaking her panic for a suicide attempt, restrain her. The school's zero-tolerance policy requires two weeks in a group home, and Aunt Lauren finds a private facility called Lyle House.

Lyle House is a white Victorian. Chloe's roommate, Liz (Elizabeth Delaney), is a cheerful tenth grader who makes her feel welcome. Other residents include Tori (Victoria Enright), Liz's moody best friend; Rae (Rachelle), diagnosed with pyromania; Simon, a friendly boy about a year older than Chloe; and Simon's foster brother Derek, who is enormous, acne-covered, and socially abrasive. Tori is immediately hostile, announcing at lunch that Chloe "sees dead people." The house psychologist, Dr. Gill, diagnoses Chloe with undifferentiated schizophrenia, citing her visual and auditory hallucinations. Chloe is devastated but resolves to cooperate and get released.

Chloe bonds with Rae, who confides that her pyromania diagnosis feels overblown and suggests Chloe research the dead custodian online. Derek corners Chloe and types "necromancer," a person who communicates with the dead, into the computer. Chloe discovers a newspaper article confirming the custodian, Rod Stinson, died in a 1991 chemical explosion at her school, exactly matching the ghost she saw.

Liz's troubles escalate. Objects fly across rooms whenever she becomes angry, though she insists she cannot control it. The nurses sedate and transfer her. The next morning, Chloe wakes to find Liz sitting on her bed, chattering about a dream of waking strapped to a cold metal table. When Chloe reaches out, her hand passes through Liz's arm. Liz screams and vanishes. Chloe fears she has seen Liz's ghost but forces herself to dismiss the encounter as a hallucination and swallows the pill she had hidden under her mattress.

Simon arranges a private meeting and levitates a basketball using a spell, proving magic is real. He explains that Chloe is a necromancer and that this ability is hereditary. He describes the supernatural races: sorcerers like himself, witches, half-demons, shamans, and rare types like Derek, who possesses superhuman strength and heightened senses. Simon's father, a sorcerer, brought Derek home from a supernatural research company when Derek was about five. Before this revelation, Derek had lured Chloe to the basement by forging a note from Simon, then grabbed her and flung her across the room. Chloe and Rae steal Derek's file and find a history of violence, including an incident that left a boy with spinal fractures. When Aunt Lauren notices Chloe's bruises during a visit, she reports her concerns, and Dr. Gill warns Derek that another incident will result in his transfer.

Chloe stops taking her medication to strengthen her ghost-seeing abilities. Derek helps her beat the resulting urine tests. He also warns that the doctors are discussing transferring her. Meanwhile, Chloe overhears Tori's mother viciously berating Tori in a private meeting, revealing the toxic pressure behind Tori's hostility.

Tori lures Chloe into the crawl space beneath the basement, strikes her with a brick, and ties and gags her. In the pitch dark, Chloe accidentally reanimates decomposed corpses buried in the dirt floor. Derek finds her and talks her through releasing the spirits, then helps rebury the bodies. On a later visit, Chloe properly contacts the ghosts. A ghost necromancer explains that Samuel Lyle, the home's original owner, was a sorcerer who experimented on supernaturals and murdered his test subjects. He warns that Chloe's powers are unusually strong for her age.

Chloe deduces Derek's scheme: He wants Simon to escape and find their missing father, but Simon refuses to leave without him. By casting Chloe as someone in danger, Derek gives Simon motivation to go. Simon reveals that Derek's violent record stems from defending Simon against attackers and that Derek believes he belongs in a controlled environment. Chloe agrees to escape with Simon. Rae discovers the plan and reveals she may be a half-demon, having burned her mother's arm with her bare hand. Before leaving, Chloe retrieves Liz's green hoodie from Tori's room, keeping it as a focus for summoning Liz's ghost.

On the night of the escape, Derek is gone, having hidden because his worsening condition would have stopped Simon from leaving. Chloe sends Simon and Rae ahead to a nearby factory and finds Derek behind the shed in the throes of a partial werewolf transformation: bones crackling, coarse hair sprouting, fingers elongating into claws. She sits with him until the episode reverses. Dr. Gill then appears, revealing she knows about the buried bodies and Chloe's necromancy. Derek vaults over the porch railing, startling Dr. Gill so badly she falls and knocks herself unconscious.

Chloe and Derek flee and reunite with Simon and Rae at the factory. Strangers working with Dr. Davidoff, one of the administrators overseeing Lyle House, pursue them. The group hides in a warehouse, where a tranquilizer dart grazes Derek. They split up: Simon and Derek create a distraction while Chloe and Rae run to a rendezvous point. The boys do not appear after nearly two hours.

Rae convinces Chloe to seek help from Aunt Lauren. At her aunt's duplex, Chloe shows the tranquilizer dart as evidence. Aunt Lauren appears horrified and insists on driving Chloe to a clinic. Chloe dozes in the car and wakes at an unmarked building, where she recognizes one of their pursuers. Aunt Lauren has slipped her a sedative. Dr. Davidoff arrives, and Aunt Lauren reveals she is part of the organization. She calls Derek a "monster" who should be "put down like a rabid dog" and names Chloe, Rae, Simon, and Tori as "very special," pointedly excluding Derek.

Chloe wakes in a comfortable but inescapable room with no windows and no doorknob on the inside of a thick steel door. She pieces together the truth: Lyle House was a facility for supernatural children whose powers manifested uncontrollably, where they were medicated and labeled as having mental health conditions rather than told the truth. Those who did not improve, like Liz, were killed. Aunt Lauren's list confirms Rae and Tori are also supernaturals. Aunt Lauren has always known Chloe was a necromancer, meaning Chloe's mother must have known about the ghosts as well.

Resolved to warn Derek before the organization captures him, Chloe clutches Liz's hoodie and summons Liz's ghost, breaking through whatever spell blocks spirits from the facility. Liz appears, confused and unaware she is dead. Chloe prepares to tell Liz the truth so Liz can help scout the building and plan an escape. The story continues in The Awakening.