“Na wao,” Chichi said, running a hand over a bench as they passed it. “I have never seen this place empty.”

“I’ll bet this is when the ghosts come to do business,” Sasha said.

“I think the ghosts do business all the time,” Chichi said. “They’re not afraid of the living. Our world is nothing but a lesser version of this Osisi place we are trying to get to.”

“True that,” Sasha said. “Back in the States, I’ve got an uncle in Atlanta who says there’s a place near a local farmers’ market where once a year at midnight a spirit market opens and the only people who can go are old folks. If you’re not old and you go, you come back all mentally messed up or mute or something.”

“They have those here, too,” Orlu said. “There’s one in Ikare that my great-grandfather has been to twice.”

“What does he buy there?” Sasha asked.

Sunny tuned out their chatter. She felt ill. The marbles were cool in her sweaty hand, but this didn’t help. She didn’t like spiders, for one thing. But that wasn’t the worst of it. What if they succeeded in convincing Udide to weave them this flying grasscutter creature? What if the grasscutter took them to Osisi? What was waiting for her there?

Everyone agreed that it was a wilderling that had shown her the vision in the candle. But everyone also agreed that there was no way to tell if that wilderling was friend or foe. The wilderling’s intentions in showing her the future were unclear. Was this the same with the dreams? What if this was all a trap?!

Her slick hands fumbled with the marbles. “What am I doing here?” she whispered. “Why am I doing this? I could just go home.”

But she continued to lead the way, looking side to side as they walked through the empty market. She felt Anyanwu close and intimate, and this was comforting. They came to a large group of stalls covered by sheets of corrugated tin to make one big roof. It was cool in the shade. They stopped, quiet. The breeze blew and a small bird flew by cheeping. It flew through a ray of light, leaving a wake of dust. Sunny sneezed hard.

“There’s . . .” Orlu stepped forward and held up his hands.

“Is there something to undo?” Chichi asked him.

“No,” he said. “But . . . this part of the market . . . Leopard People sell here.”

Sunny nodded, rubbing her nose. “Juju powder, I’ll bet.”

They walked on for another few minutes beneath the tin roof. “This place just goes on and on,” Sunny said, her voice nasally from her stuffed nose. “It didn’t look this big from the outside.”

Sasha chuckled and shook his head. “Of course it didn’t. This is a dark market. They can’t be seen from the outside.”

“Dark market?”

“Leopard market,” he said. “They’re common. The ones in the U.S. are actual buildings that move to a different place every month. They’re nothing like the ones here. The prices are set and things are just . . . sterile.”