Sasha quickly used the excuse of packing his bag in the Jeep to walk away from Chukwu. Chichi came into the kitchen all grins.

“That is so wrong,” Sunny said.

“What?”

Sunny just shook her head. “You brought Udide’s Book of Shadows, right?”

“Right here,” she said, putting her backpack down. She brought forth the satchel slung over her right shoulder and took out a large brownish-black book. The pages were thick and yellowed with age and dirt. It carried the smell of burned paper that Sunny could smell from where she stood. The cover was etched with hundreds of slightly raised lines, like it was wrapped in the thin long legs of spiders. Sunny felt skittish just looking at it. She kept imagining the lines lifting from the cover, unfolding, and the book standing up. She shuddered.

“You want to see?” Chichi asked. “The writing is so neat, but really small. It’s like a computer wrote it!”

Sunny held up her hands and shook her head. “No, that’s okay.”

Chichi giggled and put it back in the satchel. “Sasha finding it . . . He really has a good eye, sha. I hear that it can only be seen when it wants to be seen. It’s got a mind of its own like that ring in Lord of the Rings. The book isn’t all evil, but it’s not all good, either. Sasha and I were studying it last night. Udide likes to speak in stories. The spell for how to find her is in there, but she tells it in third person as an adventure story about some stupid guy who doesn’t know how to mind his own business. He was some teenage Yoruba guy from a long line of wealthy kings near Lagos who thought he was entitled to know everything.”

Sunny chuckled. “I know a guy like that.”

“We all do,” Chichi said. “And he’s not always a Yoruba guy.”

“Yeah, but it’s always a guy,” Sunny said, grinning.

They both had a good laugh. “So anyway,” Chichi continued. “Udide hears most things and she especially hears all things that involve her.”

Sunny frowned at this. “So most likely, she knows we’re coming.”

Chichi nodded.

“I don’t like that,” Sunny said.

“Doesn’t matter what you like. It is what it is. So this guy’s nerve in trying to find Udide annoyed the hell out of Udide. Udide has always made it known that she has to allow people to find her. You cannot just decide to find her and find her.”

“So we have to ask her?” Sunny interrupted. “Do we make some offering or . . .”

“Just listen,” Chichi snapped. “Because of the guy’s arrogance, Udide decided to give him what he wanted. She showed him the way in a dream. Of course, him being an arrogant mumu, he thought the dream was all him. He immediately jumped out of bed and ran to his little brother’s room. He needed three blue marbles, and his little brother just happened to have plenty. Imagine that. He did as the dream instructed and sure enough, he found Udide in a cave beneath Lagos. But when he found her, the sheer sight of her . . .”