I slid to the floor and pulled the first letter from its envelope.

Dear Desmina and Ava,

This is for both of you. I need you to read this carefully, and please do what I say. There is a dark spirit living inside of me, in the space between my left ribs and my collarbone. I have tried everything to get rid of him but now I will need to go to the shaman in the desert, who has experience with this kind of thing. Please send me $500 for the bus ticket, and for the shaman’s fee. If you cannot send the money, I think there are other ways I can barter with him. I have had visions through this spirit that worry me—

I shoved the letter back in the envelope and opened the next.

Ava,

The men I warned you about are getting closer. I have tried to come to you in your dreams but I wonder if it has been too long, if that portal between us is now shut. If you had sent me the money I asked for I could have rid myself of the spirit, but instead I must sometimes speak in his voice. Some days I don’t know which voice is his and which is mine, or if they are both the same, tangled together, twisted like vines. I see so many terrible things now—wars and violence, children whose bellies are bloated with hunger. The world is full of so much evil that rushes at me like arrows. They pierce me, Ava, these things that I see. My sister is angry with me, I think. She sent me away, after all, no matter what she tells you. Please send the money if you can.

The last letter was dated three years ago. Her handwriting was so messy and frantic that I could hardly make out any of the words. One of the others was written on a Big Mac wrapper. A faded grease stain darkened the middle. The reason was always shifting, but in every letter she asked for money. I almost laughed; in that way she wasn’t much different from Des. Sisters to the core. I had been a fool to think I could change my life by running away to somewhere new, that there was a different life waiting for me somewhere else. I was always telling customers about their fates, that they still could make choices when facing obstacles—but maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe fate did come for us all, slashing through our lives like a sharp knife.

At the bottom of the stack were more envelopes. The ones I had sent since I learned how to write. All of them were marked Return to Sender: Recipient Unknown. All of them had been opened. Des must have read each one.