“People will be too tired from celebrating to notice us,” Sunny said. “We leave at seven A.M.” She paused, looking at all of them. “Sound right?”

They all agreed.

“Does anyone need to read more of this?” Sasha asked, holding up the book.

Orlu frowned. “That book is dangerous.”

Sasha laughed. “I know. It’s awesome.”

Orlu sucked his teeth and shook his head in disgust.

“And if I’d never bought it, where would we be in all this?” Sasha said.

“You should give it to Sunny,” Orlu said.

Sasha shrugged and handed it over. “I’ve read it three times, anyway. Plus, it feels like holding a million scratchy spiders.” He tapped on the side of his head. “Got it all up here.”

“Me too,” Chichi added. They slapped and shook hands, snapping each other’s fingers.

“I wouldn’t keep it too close when you go to bed,” Sasha said.

Sunny took the book and asked, “Why?” She shivered at its roughness and immediately glanced around her room, searching for spiders hiding in the corners. She’d seen a large wall spider in the room downstairs. She was reminded of one of the first lines in Udide’s Book of Shadows: “Even in palaces, there are spiders.”

“Just trust me,” Sasha said.

“Oookay,” Sunny said, putting the book on one of her cabinets. “So, what do we tell my brother?”

“I’ll handle that,” Chichi said.

Sasha groaned and got up. “On that note, I’m out of here. I’m going to explore around this edifice of excessive extravagance. If my boys from the States saw this place, their eyes would pop out. I had a friend ask me just before I came here if Africans have schools! He was a Lamb, sure, but he was a black dude, like me. Black folks be so ignorant sometimes.”

“Overconsumption is a universal human trait,” Orlu pointed out. “And so is ignorance.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to admit, black Americans, no, blacks of the world are into self-hate more than any other group of people. I know what I had to deal with when I was in the Chi. If it weren’t for me being a Leopard, I’d have grown up as ignorant as anyone else. Leopard People read books by everybody and everything. We look outside and inside. But you have to be secure with yourself to do either . . .” He shook his head. “It’s too hard to explain. Sunny, you know some of what I mean.”

Sunny nodded. But her mind was not on the problems of the black African diaspora. She was thinking about what it was going to be like to meet with a giant sentient spider who was thousands, maybe millions, of years old while she was impaired by doubling.

Chukwu and Adebayo went out to the clubs to celebrate the New Year. The four of them opted to stay in. Sunny and Chichi cooked up an elaborate meal of fried plantain, jollof rice, egusi soup and garri, fried chicken, and pepper soup heavy with fish (there were no tainted peppers, which was a shame). There was so much food in the house that what they’d cooked up would probably not even be missed. The business of cooking took Sunny’s mind off what lay ahead, and she found herself laughing and joking with Chichi. When they finished, exhausted from cooking and wanting privacy, Chichi and Sunny sat down to eat before presenting the food to the others.