I snatched it off the ground because it was better than nothing. It was probably a coincidence that I remembered the essential oil that Zack had shoved into my pocket as soon as I touched the walking stick. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw at a glance that Zack had gotten it right, grabbed the Rest Well and not any of the other oils that I’d bought. The Rest Well had been mostly St. John’s wort.

While I was doing that, Adam rose to his feet, but he was clearly dazed. The troll growled at him, but when the troll went on the attack, he came after me.

I wrenched the cap open. I was clueless how to use it; all that I knew about it was that placing the real plant around the windows and doors of a home was supposed to keep the fae out—like garlic is supposed to work for vampires. It didn’t help that I remembered that garlic doesn’t work on vampires despite the stories.

For lack of any better idea, or any more time to fuss, I swept my hand out from left to right, scattering the liquid in front of me in a rough semicircle. Adam was running again and gaining on the troll. But the troll would reach me before Adam caught him.

I dropped the bottle and prepared to be hurt. I held the walking stick as I’d have held a spear in class with my sensei, though the metal-shod end had not changed, as it sometimes did, from decorative embellishment into a blade. A bad sign, I thought.

But Adam’s presence meant that I wasn’t alone. For some suicidal reason, that left me in the Zen state that I only managed at the end of a very hard workout with Adam or Sensei Johanson.

I narrowed my eyes at the troll and thought, Bring it. The troll, so close I could feel his breath, stepped on the pavement where I’d dropped the essential oils and staggered back as if he’d hit a wall.

Adam didn’t wait for an engraved invitation. He leaped up the troll, in almost the same way that Darryl had, except that when he reached the troll’s shoulders, Adam extended his claws and brought his front feet, good shoulder and bad, together in a great swinging motion and dug deep into either side of the troll’s head. The troll cried out and reached back, and just as he had with Darryl, he grabbed Adam and pulled.