Sunny shut her eyes, but the vision was in her mind. She felt her body seize up, ready to vomit what she’d eaten three hours ago. “Argh!” she shrieked. “Why’d you have to show us that?” Her eyes watered as she tried to hold back tears.

Sasha was shaking his head, as if trying to dislodge and discard the nasty image.

Orlu was frowning very, very deeply.

“I get it,” Chichi solemnly said. “That’s a warning.”

Grashcoatah grunted.

“Best to know how dangerous the place is,” Chichi continued. “It doesn’t look so scary from up here.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sunny whispered.

“Take us down,” Orlu said to Grashcoatah. “And . . . thanks for the warning.”

An image of Udide flashed into their heads. Grashcoatah knew what he knew because of his mother.

Grashcoatah descended slowly between two large houses onto a wide quiet road. They climbed down and looked around. The building they’d landed in front of that looked so much like a house appeared to be a small library, a sign with a large open black book sitting in front of it, flanked by green bushes heavy with black berries. There was not a soul walking up or down the roads, nor was there anyone coming out of any of the buildings, at least as far as Sunny could see.

“So quiet,” Chichi whispered.

“Shhh,” Sasha said. “Looks can be deceiving. Can’t you feel it? Someone’s around.”

Orlu’s hands came up and he held them before his face. Sunny felt her heart flip. Orlu’s natural gift was instinctively undoing harmful juju. His hands were like a radar, raising and preparing to dismantle before the bad juju attacked. Something was at work here.

Sunny looked at the road. It was packed red dirt. A strange contrast to the modern buildings that loomed all around her. She frowned as a memory tried to burrow its way up in her mind. She absentmindedly followed the others as they walked up the road. A warm breeze blasted as they passed a building made entirely of glass. Inside the building, what looked like human beings in traditional Hausa attire bustled about carrying papers and sitting in cubicles that housed computers and desks. The breeze materialized into one of these Hausa-looking people at the front door, but the man didn’t open the door; he simply slipped into the wall.

The wackiness of Osisi made Leopard Knocks look mundanely normal. Osisi was the Lagos of Leopardom in Nigeria. Sunny wanted to climb back on Grashcoatah and close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She was on the verge of something. It was the road. “There are no paved roads here,” she said to herself.

“Yes, I noticed that from above,” Orlu said.

She pointed at an enormous stocky tree with a bouquet of leaves at the top, biting her lip as whatever she tried to remember moved right to the tip of her tongue. “And that’s a baobab tree.”

Orlu nodded, saying nothing. Grashcoatah was beside her, looking closely at her face. Chichi and Sasha were in front of them giggling about something. Sunny didn’t want to speak. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to breathe. It was right there. Something. Something . . .