This takes place sometime between Frostbite and Shadow Kiss. Thank you to VegaIsTheBrightestStarInLyra for pointing out some errors!
The mortuary was a soft orange color, Janine noticed. The walls and ceiling were, at least. Everything else was black – the people, furniture, the currently-open coffin.
The room was packed with mostly local dhampirs, so none of her group was noticed for a few moments in which they stood in the entryway and surveyed the scene. But then Janine's sister swooped down to them.
"Oh, Janine!" she cried, "It so good to finally see you again! I've missed you so much!"
Janine awkwardly patted her sister's back, knowing that her sister didn't really miss her – they two sisters had only been too glad for an excuse to lose contact with each other after Janine had graduated and left home.
"It'll be okay," she heard herself saying.
"Oh, is this your daughter?" Her sister's hand reached out to touch Lissa's shoulder, but twitched to Rose's at the last minute when she saw that Lissa was a Moroi. Janine could see Rose biting the inside of her cheek, but she didn't know if her daughter was trying not to laugh or holding back a rude remark. It didn't matter much – Janine knew her sister would interpret it as trying not to cry (even though Rose had probably never heard of her grandmother before now) and leave Rose alone.
Predictably, she turned back to Janine. "Do you have any pictures?" she asked, motioning to a billboard filled with pictures of their mother.
Janine nodded and handed over a few pictures that she hoped were unique. Her sister gladly took them and scuttled away.
"I can't believe her," Rose muttered. The comment was for Lissa's ears only, so Janine just listened, not saying anything. She had already warned Rose to be nice once and didn't want to do it again.
"That was... God," Lissa said, shaking her head, at a loss for words.
"Come on," Janine said, spotting a few nieces approaching. "Let's go find our seats."
Janine and Rose sat down in the section marked "Reserved for Family" while Lissa grabbed an aisle seat a few rows back. Guardian Belikov – Dimitri, Rose always called him – took the seat right behind Lissa.
Unfortunately, the nieces followed them. One of them sat on the edge of Rose's chair, put her arms around Rose's neck, and started to sob, practically sliding into Rose's lap. "Oh, I miss her so much," she cried. "She was the best grandma ever!"
This was reason one why Janine had been glad to lose contact with everyone – complete lack of personal space. Janine hadn't heard of the term "personal bubble" until she had gone to school.
"Jesus," Rose muttered after her cousin had left to go sob on someone else. She looked at Janine. "This explains some things," she said. Janine nodded, glad Rose understood, and then looked up front. Attendants were busy rearranging flowers so that they could close the coffin for the service. One of them came up to the podium to assure everyone that there would be time for a short viewing after the service.
The service was rather short and – at least to Janine – kind of funny. According to the minister, there were six children with two names and two grandchildren with six names. But at least he got the part about the great-grandchildren right.
"And now, an attendant will be passing around a microphone for anyone who wants to say any last words."
Janine's sister was the first to take it. Her piece was horrible – unrehearsed, she stumbled over the words and ended up crying all over the man who tried to take the microphone from her. A niece went next. She was much better than her mother – it was obvious she had practiced even though she was reading off of a piece of paper, and she warned the audience before she started that she had a backup incase she started crying. Her piece was about books and how her grandmother had inspired her to read more. Then she sat down and someone thrust the microphone into Janine's hands.
"My mother was very..." Janine found herself saying. Then her mind went blank. She hadn't planned on saying anything. "Persistent," she finished, pulling a word off the top of her head. Janine's memories of her mother being persistent were more annoying than pleasant, but nobody else knew that. She quickly passed the microphone to a man who had worked with her mother in the same office building and sat down.
When the time came, Janine found herself following Rose to the open coffin.
"Her lipstick looks horrible," Rose whispered. "Aren't they supposed to make it look natural?" Janine took a look and agreed. The sparkling cotton-candy pink was much too obvious, much too there.
"The hands are kind of messed up," Lissa whispered, coming up behind Rose. "Look." Then she realized that Janine was there and blushed, ducking her head. "I'm sorry," she said. Janine shrugged.
"You're just saying what everybody's thinking out loud."
It was true – the body's hands were supposed to be resting on each other on the stomach, but one of the hands – the right – looked wrong. The wrist was poking up, as if someone had come along after they had posed the body and had tried to hold the hand. Like the lipstick, it looked unnatural.
Rose looked behind then at the small line. "We should go," she said.
Guardian Belikov had been standing against the wall, watching everything. Now he came forward. "People are starting to leave," he said.
"Let's go," Janine said, speeding up her pace. She didn't want to socialize.
A few nephews showed up for the graveside service. Like Rose, they didn't care much about their grandmother (at least they knew who she was, though), so after the service Rose, Lissa, and the boys leaned against the back of Janine's rental car and people-watched, pointing out who looked like a mobster because their black suit and who looked like a celebrity. Originally, the four teenagers had been sitting on tombstones – or, in Lissa's case, leaning on one – but then a woman had yelled at them for being disrespectful to the dead so they moved over to the car.
Janine ended up next to Guardian Belikov near her sister's car.
"I feel kind of bad, Rose having to go to another funeral right after her friend's," Janine said. "She didn't even know this woman."
"She said yes so she could legitimately miss a few days of school," Belikov said.
"Then why's Lissa here?" Janine asked. "Why did they let her come?"
He almost smiled. "She's a very... persuasive person when she wants to be," he hinted. "And I think she came because she wants to make sure Rose is really okay about Mason."
"Oh."
Janine watched as the four teenagers walked over to another relative's grave.
"... swear that I left it here," she heard one of the boys say.
"Is it that over there?" the other boy asked, pointing at another grave. This one was decorated with a Christmas bear.
The teenagers went back to the car and huddled up, not planning Operation Steal Back the Christmas Bear as quietly as they should have. From what Janine could hear, it involved ninja rolls and the synchronizing of watches nobody owned. When Lissa came around to collect them, Janine and Dimitri both handed their watches over freely. Then Janine directed Lissa to a few people who would also lend their watches.
"I hope Rose doesn't act like this at my funeral," Janine said as her daughter ninja rolled behind a tombstone, oblivious to the dirt and grass stains that she was getting on her black dress.
"She won't," Dimitri said with a note of absolute conviction in his voice. "She likes you more than you think."
"Really?" Janine said, looking up at him suspiciously.
"She respects you, at least," he amended. "She still remembers that black eye you gave her."
Janine winced. "I am sorry about that," she said.
"She knows."
Janine's sister came over to them. "Are you coming to the potluck?" she asked.
"No," Janine said. "We should get back to the hotel – most of my party's not used to the time change yet." Idly, Janine wondered where Rose and Lissa found the power to pull Operation Steal Back the Christmas Bear off as energetically as Rose's cousins. Janine wasn't dead on her feet, exactly – unlike Lissa and Rose, Janine simply had to get up extremely early rather than stay up late – but running around those two was out of the question. It was probably a teenager thing.
After the teenagers had replaced Christmas bear at the right grave and Rose and Lissa were in the back seat, already leaning against each other and dozing, Janine looked back over the cemetery. A figure was making its way across the lumpy grass towards her, his two companions following at a respectful distance.
Janine turned to Dimitri, who was sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for her to get into the car. "Do you think that you could take them back to the hotel by yourself?" she asked.
"What is it?" he asked, turning his head to look in the direction she had been gazing.
"It's nothing," Janine said quickly. "I just want to talk to him for a minute. I can take a taxi home." Mentally, she looked through her purse, trying to remember if she had enough pounds. Not that she'd be paying.
"Okay," Dimitri said, keeping his curiosity invisible.
Janine straightened up, stepped back, and then watched the car drive away. Then she turned to the figure and smiled up at him. "Hello, Abe," she said.