Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

She glances at my brother, still snoring. “Just for a moment,” she says.

“He won’t wake,” I reassure her. “Just let me hold you.”

Sometimes, on nights like this when my brother is drunk and asleep, she will lie beside me for a while, letting me feel her body next to mine. I gently pull her close. Sometimes, she welcomes my touch, but tonight she is tense, afraid that my brother will wake up.

“I want to be alone with you,” I murmur. It is an old story; an impossible request.

“We are alone,” she whispers back.

But I know better. Though my brother sleeps, I can feel his heartbeat through the bond that joins us.

After a moment, Adelaide brushes her lips across my cheek in a ghost of a kiss and slips out of bed, moving to the other side to lie beside my brother. When he wakes in the morning, she will be by his side.

If this were my house, Sarah Ann would be sleeping by my side. Sarah Ann has grown up to become a strong-minded practical woman who has no time for poetry. She gives me warmth and comfort, and I feel affection for her, but it is nothing like the love I feel for Adelaide.

Adelaide doesn’t love my brother. I am sure of that. How could she love such a man? She is beautiful and sensitive; he is bitter and crude. I fall asleep at last, listening to Adelaide’s breathing and wishing that I could, just once, sleep with her at my side.

I wake in the night to a sudden silence and I lie in the darkness, staring at the ceiling. Something is wrong. Something has awakened me.

I can hear Adelaide’s soft breathing. Other than that, the room is quiet, so very quiet that it seems to me the silence itself has awakened me. Something is missing. For a moment, I don’t know what it is.

Then I know. A sound that had always been beside me is gone. I cannot feel my brother’s heartbeat, the rhythm that always beat a counterpoint to mine. I cannot hear him breathing.

I call his name softly, but there is no answer. I push myself up on an elbow so that I can twist my head to look down at my brother, an awkward position made even more awkward by my brother’s stillness.

The moonlight falls in a white stripe across his face. His eyes are open and staring. His mouth is agape. He is gone.

“Adelaide,” I call, my voice breaking. “Adelaide!”

She shifts, turning toward my voice. “What is it?” she murmurs, her voice thick with sleep. “What is the matter?”

I can feel the chill of his body next to mine. I don’t know how it is that she can’t hear the silence that fills the room, pressing down on us. I lie back down, so that my mouth is near my brother’s ear. Such a strange thing, to feel only one heart beating. “You are a fool,” I whisper to my brother. “You are an animal, a parasite without a soul.” He does not respond. He is gone.

“My brother is dead,” I say to Adelaide, and for a moment I can say no more.

I feel her sitting up in the bed, moving slowly. “Dead?” she murmurs, her voice fearful. She is sitting up now. “How could that be?” But she is drawing away from his lifeless body, even as she denies that he is dead.

“I’ll send one of the boys for Dr. Ruschenberger.”

I shake my head, knowing that the doctor would do no good. Already, I can feel the chill of my brother’s body sucking the warmth from mine. I can think of only one thing that can warm me.

“It is too late for doctors,” I say. “Come lie beside me.”

She hesitates.

“My brother is dead. You are a widow. Come lie beside me.”

At last, she gets out of the bed and walks around to my side. She lifts the blanket and slides into bed beside me. Her body is warm against mine. I put one arm around her neck. I cannot embrace her; my other arm is pinned in place by the weight of my brother. But her warm body presses down on me, chasing back the cold.

I want to make love to my brother’s wife, my brother’s widow, the beautiful Adelaide. “You are so beautiful,” I tell her. There are tears on her cheeks as I pull her on top of me, feeling her soft thighs part for me as they have parted for my brother. I have dreamed so many times of this moment and in my dreams I had always feared that my brother would wake up, aroused by my movement, by the surge of my love for Adelaide. But he cannot wake up. Though Adelaide is on top of me, I am alone. I close my eyes and remember that long ago wedding night when the beautiful young Adelaide came to our bed.

I feel young again. I feel that things have been set right at last. I am alone with Adelaide and she is mine. She cries out when I penetrate her—so high and sweet. She is hot and wet, squeezing me tight, taking me in. Such a warm place, so welcoming.

As I come, I feel the heat leave my body. The chill is spreading from my brother’s body. Though I press closer to Adelaide, I can feel the flesh that binds me to my brother tugging on me, pulling me down.