Kiss Me Before the Coffin Closes

Thursday

Briar spent three days telling herself she wasn't going back.

She told her landlord she wasn't going back when he asked why she'd come home early Tuesday looking pale. She told her best friend Sable the same thing over coffee on Wednesday, and Sable had raised an eyebrow in the particular way that meant she didn't believe a word of it.

"You said the coffin moved," Sable said, stirring her drink without looking up. "On its own. And your answer to that is to go back Thursday."

"It's a job. I need the money."

"You don't need the money that badly."

Briar didn't answer that, because Sable was right, and they both knew it. The truth sat somewhere she didn't want to look at directly, a small hot thread of curiosity that had nothing to do with rent or her portfolio or professional obligations. She wanted to know what she'd felt under her palm. She wanted to know why Stefan Ashworth's face had gone the color of old paper the second the lid moved. She wanted to know what her grandmother had spent six years working around and never once mentioned by name.

That last part bothered her more than the rest combined. Eleanor Calloway had kept careful records of every piece she'd ever touched, notebooks full of measurements, condition notes, and small private observations about clients too polite to complain into a formal file themselves. In six years of records, the coffin appeared exactly twice, both times as a single line with no elaboration. Present in the room. No further action required. Nothing more, nothing less, in six straight years of otherwise thorough notes. Her grandmother hadn't been a woman who left things unexplained by accident.

So on Thursday morning, Briar drove back to the Ashgrave Rooms with her equipment bag on the passenger seat and her hands too tight on the wheel the entire way there.

The same man in the dark suit met her at the entrance, and this time he didn't say anything at all, just led her down the candlelit hallway and left her at the doors to the nave.

Stefan was already inside, standing several feet from the coffin with his hands clasped behind his back, dressed in another version of the same severe black he seemed to favor. He looked like he hadn't slept, though something about the way he held himself suggested sleep wasn't really the issue.

"You came back," he said.

"You told me Thursday."

"I half expected you to send someone else in your place."

"I don't have anyone else." She set her bag down near the platform, keeping several feet of distance from the coffin this time, more out of caution than respect. "Are you going to tell me what happened Monday, or am I supposed to pretend I imagined it?"

He was quiet long enough that she thought he might actually try the second option.

"There are things about this piece I'm not able to explain fully," he said finally. "Not because I don't trust you. Because explaining them properly would take longer than either of us has right now, and because some of it isn't mine to tell."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he agreed. "It isn't."

She studied him, arms crossed, waiting for him to fill the silence the way most people did when she pushed back like this. He didn't. He simply waited with her, calm in a way that unsettled her more than his silence should have.

"My grandmother worked here for six years," she said. "She never once mentioned a coffin that moves on its own. She never mentioned your family beyond a name in a notebook. Why would she keep something like that from me?"

"Because she was protecting you." His voice had gone quieter, rougher at the edges. "The way I'm trying to."

"I don't need protection. I need information."

"Everyone believes that right up until the information gets them killed."

The words landed harder than she expected, and something in his expression shifted the moment they left his mouth, like he'd said more than he intended to. She took a step closer despite herself, drawn by the c***k in his composure rather than pushed away by it.

"Has that happened before?" she asked quietly. "Someone getting hurt because of this?"

He didn't answer right away, and in the silence, she watched his jaw tighten and release, tighten and release, a small betrayal of whatever control he was fighting to hold onto.

"Yes," he said finally.

"Who?"

"Someone I loved very much, a long time ago." He looked past her, toward the coffin, and his expression carried a grief so old it had gone quiet, worn smooth the way grief does when you've carried it long enough. "I won't let it happen to you."

"You don't know me well enough to promise that."

"I know enough." He held her gaze when he said it, and something about the certainty in his voice made her chest tighten in a way she didn't have a name for yet.

Before she could ask what that meant, footsteps echoed from the far end of the nave, quick and purposeful, breaking whatever fragile thread had stretched between them. A younger man swept through the archway, dressed sharper than Stefan, his expression carrying none of the older man's restraint.

"Stefan." The newcomer's eyes cut to Briar, assessing her in a single glance before dismissing her entirely. "We need to talk. Now. The board is asking questions about the coffin's condition report, and I'd rather they hear it from us before they hear it from someone else."

Stefan's whole posture changed, shoulders squaring, warmth draining out of his voice as fast as it had appeared. "Julian. This isn't the time."

"It's exactly the time." Julian's gaze flicked to Briar again, sharper this time, taking in the equipment bag, the closeness of her stance to his cousin, the way neither of them had stepped back from the other yet. "Especially if she's the reason it woke up."