Magda held her arm out for him. Merritt closed a big hand around her wrist and held it in a firm grip.

“Be still, now,” he said. “I don’t want you to jerk or I might cut too deep.”

Magda took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to steady her racing heart. It wasn’t the blade she feared as much as the unknown of the ordeal that was to follow. She glanced around, briefly wondering if she would ever see the world of life again. She met Merritt’s gaze.

“I’m ready. Do it.”

Without preamble he drew the blade across the inside of her forearm, close to her wrist. She felt the razor-sharp edge bite into her flesh as he dragged it across her arm, carefully controlling how deeply he cut. It sent a shock of pain through her. Blood immediately began gushing down her arm. He had cut deeper than she had expected. She felt faint. She fought the feeling. She knew that she had to remain conscious.

Magda watched the blood flood down her arm, her wrist, down over her palm, to finally engulf and run off her fingers. She was shocked to see how much blood there was.

“Hurry, now,” Merritt said, “before you lose too much blood.”

Feeling like she was watching herself in a dream, Magda took a couple of steps away to begin drawing the outer circle, the one representing the beginning of the world of the dead.

“No,” Merritt said, holding her shoulders as he guided her back, “I need you to start in the center. You need to draw the star first.”

She looked up at the shadow of his face. “But I thought—”

“I know what you thought and ordinarily you would be right, but it can’t be drawn the way you were taught. This is for something entirely different than the Grace is usually used for. We’re altering the elements involved.” He nodded his encouragement. “Draw the star first.”

Magda had been taught that a Grace was always started with the outer circle, then moved inward through the square to the inner circle to the central eight-pointed star, and then finally the rays of the gift were drawn from the star to cross that inner circle, the square, and finally across the outer circle out into the underworld. She had always been told that the Grace was never to be drawn in any other way, not even casually. The Grace was a serious device that carried great importance as well as powerful magic if done by the right people, and especially if done by them in blood.

Worried about the implications, Magda nonetheless did as Merritt asked, letting the blood drip in a steady line across the sandy ground he had smoothed out. She was careful to go slow enough that the lines of blood were unbroken.