Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue confuses people. She’s Nigerian but was born in the United States and now lives in Nigeria, and she’s Black but is albino. She doesn’t feel like she fits in anywhere. But she does know one thing for sure, since she saw a vision in a candle flame last night: the end of the world is coming. As she watched the world end in the candle, the flame caught her hair on fire, and now she has a short, blond Afro.
School is awful for Sunny after she has to cut her hair. Her classmates dislike and tease her anyway, but now everyone calls her ugly. To make things worse, she’s the only one who scores highly on a writing assignment, and the teacher tells Sunny to lash her classmates’ hands to punish them for their poor writing. Sunny refuses to hit her classmates, but after school, a girl named Jibaku leads several kids to beat Sunny up. A boy named Orlu rescues Sunny, and they walk home together when they realize they have a lot in common. They begin walking together regularly, and Sunny gets to know Orlu’s other friend, a girl named Chichi who doesn’t attend school. Sunny feels like she has friends again, and she feels safer walking with Orlu—a ritual killer named Black Hat Otokoto is on the loose, and his victims are all children.
A few months after Sunny begins walking with Orlu, Orlu has to go somewhere after school. Chichi still meets Sunny and invites her to her house, which is a crude mud hut next door to Orlu’s house. Chichi cryptically says that she believes there’s more to Sunny than meets the eye. When Orlu gets home and joins the girls, he shocks Sunny by performing juju to create a “trust knot.” Sunny can’t physically tell anyone what Orlu and Chichi tell her: that they’re magical Leopard People, that Orlu can undo bad juju instinctively, and that Chichi remembers everything she sees.
The next day, Saturday, Chichi and Orlu take Sunny to meet a man named Anatov. He pulls out a big knife and draws a symbol in the air with it. Sunny is instantly pulled into the earth, and she emerges back in Anatov’s hut a moment later dressed in a raffia dress. Metal things—chittim, or Leopard currency—fall around Sunny. She’s now been inducted into Leopard society as a free agent, or a person without a Leopard parent—though Anatov suggests that Sunny’s mysterious maternal grandmother may have been a Leopard Person. After Anatov introduces the three kids to Sasha, an American boy who’s going to be living with Orlu, he sends the four to Leopard Knocks, the nearby Leopard settlement, to “explain things” to Sunny. To cross into Leopard Knocks, one must cross a rushing river via a slippery bridge that exists in the spirit world, and this requires a person to call forth their spirit face, which looks like a ceremonial mask. Chichi helps Sunny do this, but she explains that one’s spirit face is private: it’s like being naked. Sunny gets most of the way across before she slips and almost falls. In Leopard Knocks, Chichi buys Sunny a book called Fast Facts for Free Agents.
Anatov expects Sunny to return to his hut with Chichi, Orlu, and Sasha in two weeks for lessons. After studying Fast Facts for Free Agents, Sunny learns how to sneak out of her house: she’ll have to work a juju that requires a special kind of sheep’s head—an ebett—but Sunny can’t find one at the market, so she makes do with a normal sheep head. At the lesson, Anatov explains that Sunny made the juju work without the ebett’s head because she’s albino. Being albino means that she already has one foot in the wilderness (the spirit world), so she should naturally be able to make herself invisible, manipulate time, and receive premonitions. Anatov then sends the four to visit a scholar named Kehinde, who lives in the dangerous Night Runner Forest. By working together, the four kids make it there alive.
At their next lesson, Anatov sends the four to visit another scholar named Taiwo. He also instructs them to purchases books at the Leopard Knocks bookstore. Sunny chooses a book written in a pictographic language called Nsibidi, which she can see wiggling—this means she can learn to read it. At Taiwo’s hut, the four must show respect to Taiwo’s Miri Bird, Nancy, who only then carries them to Taiwo’s hut perched high in a palm tree. Then, Taiwo informs the four that they’re an Oha coven, and that in three months, it’ll be their job to take on Black Hat Otokoto.
Over the next few months, Sunny studies hard and is relatively happy. But one day, after getting the news that Otokoto horrifically mutilated a young boy, Sunny loses her temper with Jibaku after school. Sunny shows Jibaku her spirit face to terrify her—and minutes later, a car arrives to take Sunny to Sugar Cream, the Head Librarian of the Obi Library who also oversees punishments. Sunny is angry and upset, but she’s not sorry. Sugar Cream warns her not to misbehave again and shares that she was considering taking Sunny on as a mentor. However, after Sunny’s bad behavior, she insists she’ll need to think about it. Sugar Cream also mentions that Sunny’s grandmother, Ozoemena, was Black Hat Otokoto’s mentor. He killed her to steal her powers.
After his next lesson with the four kids, Anatov announces that he’s going to take them all to the Zuma festival in a few weeks. Sunny and Chichi lie to Sunny’s mother that they’ll be having a sleepover at Chichi’s house, so on the day of the trip, Sunny boards a funky train with her friends. The first place Anatov takes them in Abuja is to Junk Man’s market stall, where Sunny purchases her juju knife. They then attend the wrestling finals. The fight is bloody—and the loser, Miknikstic, dies and becomes a guardian angel. Sunny and Sasha later play in the student soccer match, and though their team loses, the players earn more chittim than those on the winning team do—presumably for working so well as a team.
The student social takes place later that night. Sunny and Orlu have noticed Chichi and Sasha acting weird and exchanging insults with a boy named Yao all day, but the feud comes to a head at the social. Yao and Chichi exchange some juju charms, and then Yao agrees to not challenge Chichi again if Chichi can call a masquerade. Chichi calls the masquerade, which drops its cloth wrappings as it dances to reveal a body of stinging insects. Orlu convinces the masquerade to stop stinging the terrified students and to return to the wilderness. Anatov is enraged when he finds out what Chichi did. As soon as the group returns to Leopard Knocks, he takes Chichi to Sugar Cream to be caned. The Leopard Knocks newspaper also reports that Otokoto stole an important book from the Obi Library while the festival was taking place.
The dry season arrives, but the weather is unusual: it rains heavily for six days straight, closing schools and workplaces. On the seventh day of rain, Sunny comes downstairs for breakfast to discover Anatov in the kitchen with her mother. Sunny’s mother cries and runs out of the room, and Anatov tells Sunny to get her things: it’s time to take on Black Hat Otokoto. He drops Sunny on the steps of the Obi Library with Sasha, Orlu, and Chichi, and soon after, the four appear in front of several scholars. The scholars explain that Otokoto is corrupt and greedy, and he plans to bring the evil masquerade Ekwensu from the wilderness to bring about the end of the world. This, Sunny learns, is what she saw in the candle. It’s the four kids’ job to stop Otokoto and to rescue the two toddlers he kidnapped.
Sunny, Orlu, Sasha, and Chichi approach a gas station that Otokoto owns. After Orlu battles some invisible beings guarding the place, an unusual obi (thatched building) appears, with Otokoto and two lifeless toddlers inside. As Chichi and Sasha battle Otokoto and some nefarious bush souls, Sunny and Orlu carry the toddlers out of the obi. Orlu insists he can heal the toddlers and sends Sunny back into the fray. Sunny doesn’t know what to do as Sasha passes out and as Chichi’s attempts to beat Otokoto fail. Finally, Otokoto slits his own throat—the final sacrifice to bring Ekwensu through. Ekwensu emerges through a termite mound to stand 100 feet tall and 50 feet wide. She’s made of palm leaves, and as she dances and spins, she laughs and tears up trees and mud. Sunny calls forth her spirit face and suddenly realizes who she is—and how powerful she is. In a language she doesn’t even know, she tells Ekwensu to go away. Orlu is also able to bring the toddlers back to life.
When Sunny returns home, her father greets her at the door—and slaps her and accuses her of sleeping with lots of men, just like her grandmother did. Sunny’s mother defends Sunny. In the kitchen, Sunny’s mother explains that Ozoemena was odd and kept secrets, but that she wasn’t seeing men when she went out at night. She encourages Sunny to see that her father is just sexist and doesn’t understand. She also gives Sunny a box from Ozoemena. When Sunny opens the box in her bedroom, she discovers a letter from her grandmother welcoming Sunny to the Leopard world, along with a photograph of her.
