Diana wakes up to more ghost parents.  She continues to have absolutely no emotional reaction to the fact that they are ghost parents.  Not a single, solitary hint of confusion or fear or wonder or even happiness at getting to see them again.  I mean, I could sort of buy this as a sign that she’s a bit off-balance from the whole ‘tortured and dropped down a hole’ thing, but in that case…well, it would be nice to see an emotional reaction to being tortured and dropped down a hole.  She’s pretty much just sitting around chatting with her parents while occasionally being confused that she’s in a hole instead of her old home.  For something so potentially powerful, it comes off as extremely bland.

Matthew shows up, and despite all that stuff in an earlier chapter about how he fed her his blood and enthralled her, ghost!momma tells her to trust him.  Wait, is that all the payout we’re going to get?  That’s it?  We had to suffer through a ridiculous cartoon villain and all sorts of torture and bullshit and then rage over Matthew tricking her…and it all amounts to nothing?

Oh, and learning how to fly?  Yeah, she does it in a snap with no obvious effort at all.  Ghost!momma tells her how.  So, boom, she flies out of the hole and is reunited with Matthew.  They get her to the helicopter, where she starts to freak out and go into shock.  Apparently she wasn’t in shock all night at the bottom of a magic hole after being tortured, though.  Nope, only now.  Matthew tries to give her his blood to make her calm down (fun fact: shock can kill you even if you have no other injuries or maladies, so I’m in favor of trying to calm her) but she doesn’t want it because of what Satu said about thrall.  So…instead of letting him do it, she gets a drop of his blood on her finger and licks it herself?  Um, how does that make a difference?

Well, the little drop of blood knocks her out until they get back to Matthew’s house.  They take her inside, where she just lays there like a lump while everyone talks around her.  I don’t mind that she’s not doing anything, since she has had quite a rough night, but if she’s going to be conscious…damnit, some sort of a reaction would be nice!  She’s such an utterly useless narrator.  She might as well be a fly on the wall.  She’s not even reacting to that whole ‘tortured for hours’ thing by needing reassurance or anything.  She’s a lump.   A useless, thoughtless lump.

They spend many, many pages on cleaning her up and getting her fixed.  Hm, I guess Matthew has had doctor training.  That was one of the many sparkles on his hat.  I guess that makes it a little better, though it would be nice if they’d at least take her to a hospital for a more thorough checking-out.  I mean, she was thrown through the air and slammed around and all sorts of stuff.  She could very well have internal injuries and hairline fractures, not just cuts to be bandaged. 

Satu told me you’d been in my rooms—that you were using your blood to drug me. Why, Matthew? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I was afraid of losing you.

WHAT?  Really?  That’s your excuse?  You wanted something, and you knew that Diana would have denied it to you, so you intentionally drugged her to get what you want?

Really?  And I’m supposed to think of this bunghole as romantic?  Seriously?!?!

I just…I really have no words.  There’s nothing to say.  He’s got such a complete and total disregard for Diana as a person that he sees nothing wrong in treating her like an object, like something that he just has to obtain in some way, and he’s perfectly fine with subverting her wishes and autonomy in order to do it.

And Diana just shrugs off that comment and moves on to talking about something else.

Given what we now know about the whole blood thing, that’s incredibly creepy.  It seriously reads as if he’s got some sort of control over her mind (he does) and he’s using that to just make her not care about all the times he tramples over her rights and her personhood.  “Oh, that bothers you?  Well, now it doesn’t; change the subject.”  Every single time something is brought up that she could legit have a problem with, she changes the subject.  Every single time. 

I’m sure it’s just because the author is a hack who did it by accident, but come on, that doesn’t make it better.  That just means this author is so bad that she accidently wrote in mind control.  And rape, because let’s face it, mind-controlled people can’t consent.

Oh, and it turns out Diana’s back is just full solid of cuts, burns, and bruises.  All of it.  Yeah, try telling me that doesn’t need professional medical attention, you stupid, stupid book.

Uhg, this is all still going.  They’re just dragging on and on and on about how they bandage up Diana and are so nice to her.  This is the result of all that torture: just a litany of injuries.  She’s got no fear, no reaction, no nothing that would make any of this meaningful.  It’s honestly amazing how fixing her up after torture can feel like a meaningless aside just by how bland and padded the writing is.

Had my mother’s ghost really been in the oubliette, or was that a recollection of our time together before Africa? Or was it my mind’s attempt to cope with stress by fracturing off into an imaginary world? I frowned.

I dunno either, but this doesn’t do much to fix the problems earlier. 

Diana tells him everything that happened, and Matthew basically asks her if she wants to break up.  I guess this is why I don’t rage over the ‘marriage’ thing.  It’s just not a real thing.  He goes on as if he’s stuck loving her forever and ever, but it’s made clear that she’s not.  So being ‘married’ is just an arbitrary thing they started saying, with no weight or binding behind it.

I mean, it’s still stupid, but mostly because they’re giving so much gravitas to what is basically the same as playing house.

Oh, and the mind control.  Can’t forget that.

Also there’s some BS about how Diana’s mother foresaw Matthew and he’s got some nebulous importance to ‘us,’ but we don’t know much about that yet.

Then they decide to go see Diana’s aunts, and they bundle her up in the helicopter again to take her to the airport.  Because, I mean, it’s not like she’s got major injures and an overtaxed system that would make travel highly stressful and likely give her terrible complications or anything.  Psh, she’s got bandages, that fixes everything!