She's just being herself and it makes her some magical rare creature in his world view. Loki's usually really good at operating with things that he doesn't entirely understand and he very naturally falls into patterns where he uses people. So it just all fell out to where he's realizing he likes what she does more than he likes the idea of using her as his own personal plot device.

He's also becoming really territorial here in the game. He's stuck in a randomly shifting population that generally is neutral towards him at the absolute best, and his plans are still all in flux. So he'll shank anything that risks what little he has gathered for himself.

Also, finding out that he could just ask for help rather than create careful scenarios to manipulate people into things could be really fun. Alarming and baffling, but fun.