“They spring up,” Cassandra had said. “They spring up and stick out—like a shelf. I like it when that happens. It makes you feel so powerful, Mina. It’s great.”

What was she doing wrong? Mina tried to blink back the tears. She knew what was wrong. Star did not love her; he was not even attracted to her; she was stupid and plain and clumsy; she did not inspire want.

“Star,” she whispered when she could bear it no longer. “Star, is something wrong? Isn’t this what you want?”

He rose up in the bed in one fast, fluid movement. He drew back his arm and hit her hard across the face. He hit her with the flat of his hand and his full strength. The blow was so powerful, it knocked her back against the wall and off the bed.

She crouched on the floor, too afraid to cry, and then Star caught hold of her and dragged her up. He was shaking with rage and his eyes had that glittery look she was coming to dread.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, shaking her. “Nothing—you’ve got that? You think I want sex?” He shook her again. “You think I want to fuck? Well, I don’t. I don’t want any of that—that’s what ordinary men want.”

Mina began crying then. The tears choked her, and her head hurt, and she was desperate to make him understand.

“But I love you, Star,” she whispered. “I love you so much. I thought you might want to make love to me. If you wanted to, I would…”

“Have you? Ever?” He shook her a third time, and when she said no, he suddenly embraced her very tight, locked her in his arms and rocked her back and forth.

“That’s good,” he said. “That’s good, Mina. You have to understand—we’re special. This is special. We’re not like everyone else. We commune, Mina. We fuck with our eyes, with our minds, with our souls, Mina. That’s what we do. That’s what I want.”

Mina stopped crying and stared at him. She looked at his face, which was extraordinary, burning with conviction, and she thought what he said was extraordinary, the most strange and wonderful thing any man could say—and then a horrible little doubt crept in at the back of her mind: had he ever said that before, to anyone else?

Almost at once, though, that doubt slipped away. Star was so kind and so tender to her after that. He took her in his arms and kissed her face, and told her she was the best and the sweetest thing that had ever happened to him in his life; he told her she was his salvation, and Mina believed the blaze in his eyes and his voice. Since then there had been no outbursts of rage, just the occasional hints, like the rumblings of a volcano, the suggestion that even when controlled, some terrible fury she did not understand seethed beneath.

He has been hurt, she thought now, edging back into the darkness of the church doorway, so badly hurt that nothing could soothe him for long, not the strokings and whisperings of his name, not even the game he liked to play with that gun catalogue, though his expertise there could always restore his humor for an hour at least.