The question, thinks Shaun, is are you the kind of man who blusters here? Or do you take the hit to pride, so neither you nor she gets hurt?

“Hurry up!” snaps the man with the 38-caliber.

“All right,” Shaun says carefully. “Don’t shoot. I’m getting out my wallet.”

Something flickers through the streetlight above them. Both men look up, and Shaun registers that Lissa is not in fact standing behind him: she’s inverted in the air, acrobatic, spinning to kick the mugger’s face with a pair of legs that God must have put together as proof of Her own existence.