All at once, everything bubbles up inside me. My grief over losing my parents and Liam’s disappearance, my fear at being thrust into the world alone and confused, my anger at the secrets that have been kept from me, and most of all, the pain of leaving Ravenfall.

With Roy outside our room on a perimeter check and no one else there to tell me I’m being immature, or to look at me with pity I can’t take, I finally cry. My body shakes and my breath catches, and I press my palms to my eyes, but I can’t stop.

For so long, I’ve needed to be strong. First for my parents, so as not to burden them with even more. Then for myself, to get answers about my past and find Liam. But as my nose grows stuffy and my throat begins to ache, I wonder if holding everything in ever really made me strong, or if it just made me hurt all the more.

By the time I stop crying, I feel emptied out, like a pumpkin scooped of its guts. In the place of all those emotions is a single one: determination.

Firmness of purpose, I think as I roll out of bed and fish the journal out of my bag.

Even when my parents were here, I’d never been good at sitting around doing nothing. Now, with people I care about in danger because of me, there has to be something I can do.

Fin’s people found me because of the link between us. If I leave the motel, I can draw him out and defeat him a whole day before Samhain. Then the Ballinkays won’t be in danger.

But first, I need to figure out what’s wrong with my magic.

The journal feels strange in my hands, dead and cold. When I try to pry it open, it doesn’t budge, as if someone glued all the pages together. This must be why I couldn’t summon the Saint Knives at the shop: the journal has locked me out.

“Okay,” I say aloud, forcing myself to stay calm. “If it’s locked, then I need a key.”

I think back to the words Elaine had me say when I first bonded with the journal, and repeat them the best I can now, the Irish awkward on my tongue.

Nothing happens.

“Come on!” I knock the journal against the bed, the motion making my chest twinge with pain. My hand goes to the wound on reflex and comes away with blood; it’s leaking through the bandage.