"Helping people's what I do." Maybe she was in trouble, he thought. Not that he intended to get involved, but he could at least listen before he called the guys in the white coats. "Is that why you're here?" Gently, he nudged her gun hand aside so he wouldn't end up with a bullet in the belly. "You need help?"

"I am a stranger here, and require a guide." She reached out, squeezed his biceps. "You are strong. But slow." With no little regret, she returned the Glock. "Can you make more of the gun?"

"Maybe." She'd threatened him with a knife, with a sword. She'd knocked him on his ass and disarmed him.

Damn if he didn't respect her for it.

In any case, she'd made his first morning as a thirty-year-old man interesting. He hadn't become a PI because he liked the boring.

Added to that, there was something… something about her that pulled at him. Her looks were enough to knock a man flat. But it wasn't that—or not only that. You couldn't find the answers, he reminded himself, unless you asked the questions.

"I'm going to put my pants on," he told her. "I want you to step back and keep your hands away from that sword."

She stepped back. "I have no wish to harm you, or any of your people. You have my word as a slayer."

"Good to know." When she was at a safe distance, he tugged on his jeans, then snugged the gun in the waistband. "Now, I'm going to make coffee, and we'll talk about all this."

"Coffee. This is a stimulant consumed in liquid form."

"There you go. In the kitchen," he added, gesturing toward the door.

She strode out ahead of him. Whatever shape he might have been in, Harper thought, however baffled he might be, a man who didn't admire and appreciate that view was a sorry specimen.

Still, he glanced at the front door of his apartment as he passed. It was locked, bolted, chained.

So she'd locked up after she'd come in, he decided. He looked back to see her stop and gape out the living room window. Like a kid might, he mused, at her first eyeful of Disneyland.

So high, she thought in wonder. She had never been in a hut where the ground was so far below and so many people swarmed beneath. Their costumes were strange to her, strange and fascinating. But fascination turned to awe when she watched a cab zip to the curb, saw the woman leap out.

"She rose out of the belly of the yellow beast! How is this done?"

"You pay the fare, they let you out. Where the hell are you from?"

"I am from A'Dair. In my world, we have no beasts with round legs. I don't—wait." She closed her eyes, searched through the knowledge Rhee had given her. "Cars!" Those brilliant eyes opened again, smiled into his. "They are machines called cars and are for transportation. That is wonderful."