They were all silent for a moment. A glint in the forest caught Sunny’s eye. “Hey,” she said, pointing. It was red, like a bunch of Christmas lights in the thick grass.

“Good eye, Sunny,” Orlu said. They all ran up to the peppers. The stems reached past Sunny’s waist, and the peppers on them were plump and plentiful. Up close they looked exactly like those chili pepper lights Sunny would see in Mexican restaurants back in the United States. The pepper bugs were easy to spot as they lumbered contently up and down the stems, batting and pressing on the peppers with their thick antennae.

“Damn, never seen these before,” Sasha said.

“That’s because you probably only take a path to Kehinde’s,” Orlu said. “Pepper bugs live off the beaten path.”

Sasha rolled his eyes. “Ugh, whatever.”

“So how do we get them?” Sunny asked. “If we were asked to do this, I assume it’s not going to be easy.”

“We have to get them in this pot,” Orlu said. “They’re hot, so they’d melt through a plastic jar.”

“Are they fast?” Chichi asked, looking at them with disgust.

“No.” He handed them each a metal spatula with a rubber handle. “Get them to walk onto it, put them in the pot, and put the lid on.”

Sunny crept up to one and almost immediately started sneezing. Not from juju powder, but from the strong peppery fumes that suddenly emitted from the insect. “Ugh,” she said, sneezing again.

“Jesus!” she heard Sasha exclaim a few feet away.

“Oh, sorry,” Orlu said. “I forgot to add that when they feel threatened, they ‘pepper up.’”

“Then how are we supposed to get them?” Chichi asked.

“Like this,” Orlu said, creeping up to one. “Slowly. Move smoothly.” He gently coaxed the glowing insect onto his spatula. It put a leg onto the flat metal and then took it off. Orlu nudged it a bit more and eventually the insect stepped on. Slowly, Orlu placed it in the pot, where it stepped off. He put the lid on. “There.” The pot began to grow red with heat. “That’s why Anatov gave me the oven mitts. When they realize they’ve been captured, they get really angry and heat up.”

Once she stopped sneezing, Sunny was able to catch her bug pretty easily. With much cursing and sneezing, Sasha managed to get his, too. Chichi, however, kept getting hit with fumes. By this time, the entire colony of pepper bugs was on to them. When she was blasted with fumes a fourth time after taking five minutes to creep up on one bug, she shouted, “I HATE ALL OF YOU STUPID BEASTS! GO AND DIE!”

Orlu took her hand. “Sorry, o,” he said, as she blew her nose into the tissue Sunny had given her. “Let me try something.”

He held up his hands and did that thing he naturally did that undid any negative juju. His hands bent, contorted, and twisted as he undid whatever juju the bugs had apparently worked. Then he said, “We mean no harm. We are just taking some of you to another place nearby to start a fresh pepper patch. I know you can fly. You can visit and cross-pollinate. If one of you wishes to be adventurous, come.”