When the fight was over, Grashcoatah had many ropes of webbing hanging from his fur, but there was no time to pull or cut it off. There was a great flash from within Ekwensu’s house, and everything went dead silent. “I’ll bet people all over Osisi felt it!” Chichi said. Then Ekwensu’s house began to crumble. With Sunny seemingly inside it, it crumbled to dust. To nothing. Nothing but a palm tree.

Sunny told her friends everything . . . Everything except the part about meeting Chukwu. That was hers. None of them asked where her Mami Wata comb was, and she was thankful. Let them assume that it had been knocked off when she fell from Ekwensu. Or something like that. It was better this way.

“So are you still . . . doubled?” Chichi asked.

Sunny nodded. “But I’m . . . we’re okay with it.”

The three of them looked at her skeptically.

As they flew out of Osisi minutes later, glad to leave the place behind, Sunny used her knife to crack open the coconut the masquerade had handed to her. She gave it to Chichi. “Drink,” Sunny said. Chichi happily obliged and said it was delicious. Moments later, the wound on her chest grew warm and itchy. When it began to flake off along with the ant stiches, revealing new skin underneath, Chichi wept. “It hurt a lot more than I said it did,” she whispered, wiping her tears. “I wasn’t sure if I could take the pain much longer.” Sunny broke the coconut fully open, and they shared the sweet, buttery meat. Even Grashcoatah ate a piece, though he preferred to eat the crunchy shell.

31

AND SO IT WAS DECIDED

As soon as Lagos came into sight, Sunny checked her phone. It was evening and in the darkness the screen of her phone glowed like a star. It had one bar of energy left. When she saw the date and the time, she laughed. She leaned back, her hand pressed to her chest. She shut her eyes. Only a few hours had passed since they’d flown away from her irrationally terrified brother.

Her relief only lasted a few seconds. She sat up. “If no one else is going to ask, I will,” she said. “What are we going to do?”

“Let them whoop our asses and throw us in one of the other library basements where you haven’t killed whatever is lurking in there,” Sasha said.

Sunny gasped, whispering, “Oh God, we’re all going to die.”

Sasha shrugged. “What else can we do? Go on the run? I ain’t. I’ve got an education to obtain. I’d rather just face the music . . . whatever it is.”

“But what about Grashcoatah?” Sunny said. “Maybe he should have stayed in Osisi. There are more of his kind there, anyway.”

“I thought about that,” Orlu said. “But he’d never really be safe. They’ll still eventually find him.” He patted Grashcoatah’s back, and Grashcoatah grunted. “We’ve already talked it over.”