Sunny had read a recipe for tainted pepper soup in her Fast Facts for Free Agents book but really, truthfully, honestly, she couldn’t live up to Sugar Cream’s challenge of making it. When making tainted pepper soup, if you made the tiniest mistake (like using table salt instead of sea salt), it resulted in some scary consequence like the soup becoming poisonous or exploding. This had discouraged Sunny from ever attempting to make it.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to admit her inability to make the soup. Not to Sugar Cream, whom she’d had to prove herself to by defeating one of the most powerful criminals the Leopard community had seen in centuries. Sunny was a mere free agent, a Leopard Person raised among Lambs and therefore ignorant of so much. Still, her chi who showed itself as her spirit face was Anyanwu, someone great in the wilderness. But really, what did it matter if you had been a big badass in the spirit world? Now was now, and she was Sunny Nwazue. She still had to prove to the Head Librarian that she was worthy of having her as a mentor.

So instead, Sunny said she’d leave the Obi Library grounds, despite the fact that it was just after midnight, to go pick three tainted chili peppers from the patch that grew down the dirt road. Sugar Cream had only rolled her eyes and promised to have all the other ingredients for the soup on her office desk when Sunny returned. Including some freshly cut goat meat.

Sunny left her purse and glasses behind. She was especially glad to leave her glasses. They were made of green feather-light plastic, and she still wasn’t used to them. Over the last year, though being a Leopard Person had lessened her sensitivity to light, it hadn’t done a thing for her eyesight. She’d always had better eyes than most with albinism, but that didn’t mean they were great.

After her eye exam last month, her doctor had finally said what Sunny knew he’d eventually say: “Let’s get you some glasses.” They were the type that grew shaded in the sunlight, and she hated them. She liked seeing true sunshine, though it hurt her eyes. Nevertheless, lately her eyes’ inability to keep out sunlight had begun to make the world look so washed out that she could barely see any detail. She’d even tried wearing a baseball cap for a week, hoping the bill would shade her eyes. It didn’t help at all, so glasses it was. But whenever she could, she took them off. And this was the best thing about the night.

“I hope the goat meat is hard for her to get at this hour,” Sunny muttered to herself as she stomped out the Obi Library’s entrance onto the narrow dirt road.

Not a minute later, she felt a mosquito bite her ankle. “Oh, come on,” she muttered. She walked faster. The night was hot and cloying, a perfect companion to her foul mood. It was rainy season, and the clouds had dropped an hour’s worth of rain the day before. The ground had expanded, and the trees and plants were breathing. Insects buzzed excitedly, and she heard small bats chirping as they fed on them. Back the other way, toward the entrance of Leopard Knocks, business was in full swing. It was the hour when both the quieter and noisier transactions were made. Even from where she was, she could hear a few of the noisier ones, including two Igbo men loudly discussing the limitations and the unreasonable cost of luck charms.