Sunny sat up straighter, deeply interested. There was juju for that? Leopards were allowed to perform juju on Lambs? She looked at Chichi, who looked equally surprised.

“One can perform juju on Lambs and around them,” he said. “We know this happens, sure. We can’t live around these people and not be able to do this. However, you must take precautions. And those precautions are not so easy. And people are lazy.” He switched to English, speaking with his African American accent. “They don’t like to cover they asses. And if you mess up . . . well, y’all know the consequences.”

He sat in his mahogany throne-like chair with its plush red seat. “Lord knows that Lambs can be damn annoying, with their silly materialism, hatred of education, and love of remaining stupid. They’re obsessed with getting things fast, fast, fast, with the least amount of work, books, no instruction. It’s universal.” He chuckled. “Who can blame Leopards for wanting to throw some juju at them once in a while.”

He went on to show them several jujus they could do. Empty Hands required a bit of common all-purpose juju powder and allowed one to punch someone without looking like one had done anything. Grace was a juju that you could do with only your juju knife; it allowed one to slip out of a situation unnoticed. Ujo only required a juju knife, too. This bit of juju filled a Lamb person with irrational crippling fear. It could be thrown from a distance of several feet, allowing the thrower to remain undetected.

Both Sasha and Chichi were especially good at performing this one. “I’m glad no Lambs are around,” Anatov said, after watching both of them. “You’ll both have to learn how to perform Ujo in strength grades . . . unless you want the Lambs you work it on to run off screaming and vomiting with hysterical fear every single time you use it on them.”

“Use Ujo sparingly,” Anatov stressed to all of them. “Even a weak version of it can eventually cause brain damage when used on the same person more than once.”

Of all the things Anatov showed them this day, Sunny’s favorite was Wahala Dey. This was another juju knife spell that caused small things to randomly go wrong. One’s pants would fall down, one would slip or trip, make a wrong turn, drop one’s plate of food, one’s computer would suddenly crash. It only worked on Lambs, and it was an excellent way to slip out of a bad situation or just ruin someone’s day.

All four of them picked up on the jujus with only mild difficulty, and Anatov was pleased. “I hope this will keep all of you from any further trips to the Obi Library basement or, in your case, Sunny, worse.” She felt her cheeks grow red. “And, Sasha, if you had known some of these, I doubt you’d have been sent here to Nigeria by your parents for being such a fool.”