Adam’s SUV lit up, and I rolled down the window to wave them ahead. I didn’t spend much time in Walla Walla. If I’d been alone, I could have found my way out to the highway, but why bother when Adam could lead the way? He flashed his lights and took point.

“How did you survive?” I asked her.

“Not very well.” She held her hand up and moved it. “It’s taken me years to get this far—and the first year I spent as a total bedridden invalid. But I am better now, getting better almost every day. A month ago, I would not have been able to stay on my feet as long as I did tonight.” She paused. “That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. You are human.”

“Half,” I said apologetically. “My father is . . . not human.” I wasn’t up to explaining my complicated parentage to her, likeable as I found her. Besides, I was pretty sure my bloodlines weren’t what she wanted to talk about. “I can change into a coyote, and I have a few other tricks up my sleeve.”

“But your husband is still far stronger than you,” she said.

I nodded. “He is.”

“How did you get him to stop treating you like a fragile thing that might blow away in a harsh wind and take you to bed?” she said.

Holy cow. The girlfriend talk. I tried to remember the last time I’d done the girlfriend talk. Char. It had been with Char, when I’d talked her out of the very handsome but not very bright young man who would make a lovely date for someone else. That was all the way back in college.

I smelled Margaret’s sudden embarrassment. “I had a much more tactful way to ask that,” she said. Then she let out a frustrated growl. “We’ve been living together for two and a half years, and the most passion I get is a kiss on the forehead. And I don’t have anyone but Thomas to ask about it. And I can’t ask Thomas.”

“Obviously not,” I said. The reason I hadn’t had the girlfriend talk with anyone in a long time is that I sucked at it. I could barely talk to Adam about our relationship, and I loved Adam.

“Right?” she said.