“I know, I know.” She paused and then said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you’re going to do?”

“No,” Chichi said, growing serious. “I like them both. Wish I had it easy like you. You and Orlu are made for each other.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sunny said quietly.

Chichi smiled and shook her head.

“So you’ve been to see Mr. Mohammed’s wife,” Sunny said.

“Call him Alhaji Mohammed; he made his pilgrimage a few weeks ago,” Chichi said.

“Oh,” Sunny said. “That’s why that other guy was managing the bookstore for so long.”

“I happened to be there the Sunday he returned,” Chichi said. “It was crazy. He was actually giving discounts on books . . . Well, for a few hours.”

They both laughed. Alhaji Mohammed was a businessman to the bone, hajj or not.

“But yes, I’ve been to see Bola,” Chichi said. “With my mother once, some years ago.”

“What for?”

“We can talk about that some other time.” She looked at Sunny unsmilingly. Then Chichi’s smile came back. “Bola Yusuf. They call her ‘the woman with the breasts down to here.’” She gestured with her hands to mid-waist level. “She is an Owumiri initiate.”

Sunny gasped and stopped. “A Mami Wata worshipper! Is she a Leopard Person, too?”

“Yeah.”

This was the water worshipping group that Chichi had let Chukwu think Sunny was a part of. Sunny touched the comb she wore in her hair. “Should I take this out when I go?”

“Oh no!” Chichi said. “That’ll get you much, much respect. She’ll love you for that. And she’ll love that the lake and river beasts can’t seem to get enough of you, even if it’s because they are Ekwensu’s minions.”

Sunny waited until right before bed to try it. She locked her bedroom door and, on shaky legs, walked to her window. She usually raised the screen just a crack so that her wasp artist could come and go as it pleased. Now she pushed the screen to the top of the windowsill and waited. It didn’t take long. She watched the mosquitos slowly fly in, pushed by their own ambition and the night’s breeze. When she counted five, she shut the screen and brought out her juju knife and worked a Carry Go, a juju that drove away insects with the intent to bite.

She felt the cool invisible juju sack drop into her upheld hand after she did the flourish with her knife, and she sighed with relief. She spoke the words as she watched two of the mosquitos land near the top of her white bedroom wall. She frowned as she watched one of the mosquitos migrate to her and then land on her arm. She smashed it with a hard slap.

Then she stepped to her bedroom mirror and looked at her face. She ignored her flushed cheeks and the tears rolling down them. She looked into her wet eyes and with her mind, she called Anyanwu. She dug deep within herself, and then she tried to bring her forth. Nothing. Sunny sat on her bed as the sobs wracked her body. Images of the river and the menacing Ekwensu flashed through her mind.