“Wha—” She looked at her friends, tears filling her eyes.

“Sunny, what is it?” Chichi screeched, grabbing her hands. “Are you all right?”

“She’s . . . she’s not there,” Sunny said. “I can’t bring her forth. My spirit face . . . I can’t . . . What’s happening? Anyanwu, where are you?” Her toes ached and she felt the world swim around her; the spot between her eyes where the bead had hit her felt warm and itchy.

“Here,” Orlu said, putting an arm around her waist. “Lean on me.”

“You can’t call your spirit face?” Sasha asked. “How can that be?” He looked at Chichi and blinked. “Oh, I can’t even imagine that.”

Chichi nodded but frowned for him to shut up, and this made Sunny panic even more. She couldn’t cross the bridge without Anyanwu. Who was she without Anyanwu? Where had Anyanwu gone?

“She has to be with you somehow,” Chichi said. “Your spirit face isn’t just a face. It’s you, your spirit memory, you spirit future, your chi. You’d be dead if she weren’t there. You’re probably just in shock. You need some jollof rice and stew and Fanta. Come on, we don’t have to go to Leopard Knocks today. I know a nice Lamb restaurant where we can get some good food.”

Uzoma’s Chinese Restaurant was small and almost full to capacity. They managed to get a table near the back of the restaurant.

“Sasha and I come here all the time,” Chichi said, trying to sound cheerful. “Though the food is terrible.”

“I ordered the egg rolls here once, and they were just a boiled egg stuffed in a hard roll,” Sasha said, putting an arm around Chichi.

Sunny attempted and failed a smile.

“You all right?” Orlu asked.

“No,” she muttered. She felt dehydrated and ready to fall asleep right there at the table.

The four of them looked at one another with wide eyes and solemn faces. None of the people in the busy open-air restaurant could have imagined what they’d recently been through.

“I feel like an alien,” Sunny said. “I don’t belong anywhere.” She was dry, warm, and smelled good, thanks to Chichi. She was wearing her favorite jeans and a white T-shirt, and they were dry. Unlike those of all the other Africans in the restaurant, her thick, bushy Afro was blonde with a comb given to her by Mami Wata herself. Her skin was pale yellow pink, and her eyes were hazel. She’d just seen Ekwensu succeed in coming into the physical world, and she couldn’t find Anyanwu.

“You belong with us,” Orlu said. “You’re a Leopard Person.”

“Ekwensu is back,” she whispered. “She will kill everything. But first she’ll kill me. You sure you want me with you?”

“You don’t know for sure what you saw,” Orlu said. “You can do things with time, sometimes. You don’t know if that was the future or . . . what.”