Crow ducked into one of the side rooms and shoved Zoe and Minnie toward the back wall, which was their way out.

“What is that?” Minnie asked, feeling the pulsing mana in the air.

“Mana Alarm,” Crow said while laying a formation he’d already prepared once finding Kafe was present.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving a gift for my old friend.”

“You know people here?”

“A person, Kafele. I gave that bastard a chance, but in turn, he betrayed me.”

“You know their youngest prodigy?” Zoe asked. “How?”

“Now isn’t the time for that, but we’ll talk later about why you never mentioned him.”

Zoe and Minnie looked at each other with guilt written on their face. Crow didn’t have time to bother with it, as he was still using specialized chalk to draw out a peculiar formation.

“Give me Mana Crystals,” Crow said, holding his hand toward Minnie. He already saw the pile in one room but ignored them because they were all lower quality.

“Can’t talk to me like that,” Minnie muttered but handed over the crystals.

Crow tried to calm down because he knew triggering the trap wasn’t their fault. If anyone was to blame, it was him. Overconfidence did him in because he felt there were no subtle tricks, but he was wrong. The last pair of rooms had restrictions that looked crude on the surface, but it wasn’t until he peeled off the top layer that he realized he’d fucked up.

Looking at the cunning trap, he knew Kafe had something to do with it. Exposing the underlying formations was like trying to skin a beast alive, only to find out it’d been playing possum. Thankfully, he left the girls back in a safe room and had his phasing ability, or he’d have been trapped.

However, their trap worked against them, giving him time to leave his signature card—a formation to fuck with them. Placing the crystals at each critical point along his chalk-drawn formation, he waited until he verified everything.

“This… is a summoning circle?” Zoe asked. “What is that chalk?”

“Beast blood mixed with ashes from hazelwood, crushed beast bone, and Oil of the Dead,” Crow explained. Oil of the Dead was not something he liked to use because it came from the boiled fat of a corpse. “It isn’t human oil, so don’t freak out. It’s from the same beast the blood and bone came from.”

“Spirit Summoning Chalk!” Zoe nearly shouted. “Where did you get that?”

“I made it.”

“C-can you give me some?”

“Huh?” Crow finally looked up from his work.

“We have quite a few rituals that use a medium like that chalk. It is really beneficial to our coven.”

“I wasn’t joking. There are no human parts used in this…” Crow knew that many Witch rituals that used this sort of thing were based on human sacrifice. He wasn’t comfortable with this.

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“Dummy,” Minnie mumbled.

“What she said,” Zoe pointed at her friend while frowning at Crow. “I’ll forgive your ignorance, but all our rituals originated using beast reagents. It was perverted later by using humans. It is a shortcut to power; consequently, those Witches taint their natural bloodlines.”

“In other words,” Minnie filled in. “They lose their Seer abilities, but they master curses that can attack fate and karma.”

“You can’t do that?”

“We can, but only against those who’ve sewn enough negative karma with us to prevent backlash. And… we don’t use human sacrifice.”

“Interesting,” Crow said and summoned a dozen thick pieces of chalk. Zoe took them, surprised that he gave them over so quickly and without bargaining. “Don’t look at me like that. Do you think I’d screw over family? Also, if you need more of that, let me know. I’ll teach you how to make it, but you’ll probably need a handful of your people with an affinity for fire. I can make it on my own because my flames are special.”

“Nnn,” Zoe nodded with a smile on her face.

“Get close to each other and stay against the Mana Wall,” Crow ordered them while sending his mana into the formation to activate it. This was something he’d only read about, so he wasn’t sure what would happen. He was willing to test it out here because he felt sure it couldn’t escape the vault through the Mana Walls.

Stepping back, he grabbed both women by the waist and waited. He could feel the other formation ending, and the Mana Alarm had stopped. Staring at his summons, he suddenly felt uneasy, so he stepped back into the Mana Wall but didn’t leave just yet. His academic mind wanted to see what he’d summoned and hoped it was enough to cause havoc.

Kafe stormed into the room, followed by his two compatriots, only to stop and stare, horrified at the thing rising out of the spirit-summoning ring.

“Is that a… horse?” The man beside him asked.

It looked equine, but Crow saw the singular eye on its head and shuddered. The spirit beast was more like a demon. It had no skin, so its flesh was red, and all the muscles and tendons were easily visible.

“You summoned a nuckelavee?” Zoe whispered in awe. “Is that even a spirit? I thought those were Daemons.”

“It’s a spirit,” Minnie said, unable to take her eyes off the scene. “He definitely used a spirit summoning, but that is disgusting.”

“Wait, it’s not by itself,” Zoe pointed at the figure appearing beside the horse.

“Attack!” Kafe roared. “Activate the beacon. Get the elders here, now!”

“Is that a Bean Sidhe?” The elder alongside Kafe asked, seeing the weeping spirit appear.

“That can’t be right,” Kafe said, staring at the fat goth woman floating alongside the nuckelavee. The big ghostly woman turned toward Crow, who was hiding in the wall, a frown on her face.

“Husssband?” She asked. Zoe and Minnie turned toward Crow with weird looks on their face.

“Time to go,” Crow fled, not caring about what happened next. Never again. He promised himself repeatedly he’d never use that summoning formation ever again.

By the time they met up with Leila, all hell had broken loose inside the Hex Vodun area of the sect. Even elders from other branches were flying over to assist. Crow hadn’t realized that the nuckelavee was somehow contracted by the goth banshee and was considered a monstrous beast, so it could adjust its size. Initially, it couldn’t break out of the vault, but when the goth banshee mounted it, the beast glowed with bluish-white light and became more spirit than demon.

Empowered, it destroyed the vault to escape, only to get surrounded by powerful beings hidden deep within the sect. All four culprits had absconded by the time those events occurred, so no one spotted them. However, hearing everything as it was going down, they were all shocked.

“We never talk about this,” Crow ordered.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Minnie shouted when they were back at the coven. All thirteen women surrounded him, and he couldn’t escape. “You know that spirit, don’t you? Why did she call you husband?”

“Misunderstanding!” Crow growled. “She is not my wife.”

Once everyone heard the story of Crow and the banshee, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. Every one of them laughed so hard that the tears wouldn’t stop rolling. Even Lily got in on it, although only he could hear her.

“Let’s divide the loot!” Minnie clapped.

“Not here,” Crow said. “When we go to the temple, we’ll do it there.”

“Why?”

“I can set up some formations to block any spying and tracking. There is a chance they imbued some of this stuff with tracking formations.”

“Paranoid?” Minnie rolled her eyes.

“Experienced.”

“Well, husband. While we wait for things to settle down, why don’t you teach me your methods?”

“Are you talking about robbing or…?” Crow grinned.

“Both!” Zoe and Minnie exclaimed at the same time. There was no shame in it, but a few of the lesser experienced sisters were blushing at how shameless their High Priestess had become.