As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy) Read Online Free Page A

to the churchyard, where she stopped and looked around for the boy. At the end of the park path, almost at Häme Street, she spotted the gray backpack swinging from his shoulder. Ignoring the cold air tearing at her lungs, Lumikki continued running, eventually slowing to a light jog and then a brisk walk to keep an appropriate distance. See but don’t be seen. Maintain line of sight.
    Her breathing, more like panting, went directly from vapor to icy glitter that stuck to her eyelashes and the locks of hair protruding from under her hat. In temperatures this far below zero, everyone’s hair looked prematurely gray.
    Lumikki had seen Tuukka enter the Coffee House, and she waited a few minutes before following him inside. By then, the boy was already deep in conversation with Elisa and Kasper.
    Now Lumikki was doing her best to remain invisible. Inconspicuous. Fortunately, she knew how to be someone else. Immediately upon entering, Lumikki had gone to the restroom, peeled off her outerwear and sweater, let down her hair, and arranged it in a side braid—a style she never normally wore. Instead of coffee, she ordered tea. She was browsing a women’s magazine, although normally she’d have grabbed the sports pages or
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magazine. She sat in a different way, held her hands in a different position, tilted her head like someone else.
    People thought they recognized each other from a distance based on clothing or hair. Superficially, that may have been true, but Lumikki knew that, in reality, recognizing another person was a much more complicated process influenced by hundreds or even thousands of different factors like height, posture, walk, bearing, body and face proportions, expressions, and even microexpressions that flitted by so fast they almost never registered consciously. That was why disguising yourself as someone else was so difficult. According to some people, it was actually impossible without significant plastic surgery and years of practice.
    Still, surprisingly small changes could trim away your most recognizable characteristics if you knew what to do. If someone had been consciously looking for Lumikki, knowing that she was in there, of course they would have recognized her. But if you just scanned the room expecting a crowd of strangers, Lumikki was just another slightly hippie-looking poet girl drinking chamomile tea. A girl with nothing conspicuously familiar about her.
    So Tuukka, Elisa, and Kasper took no notice of Lumikki, even though they were sitting almost right next to her. After all, they had more important concerns. They had a problem.
    “What should we do with it?” Elisa asked the boys.
    As soon as she’d entered the coffee shop, Lumikki had noticed how terrible Elisa looked. Her skin was normally fair, but now it looked almost gray. She had dark rings under her eyes and had been careless when she washed or wiped off her last layer of makeup. Her bleached blond hair clung unwashed to her head. Instead of being stylish and coordinated, herclothing looked like she’d thrown on whatever her hand happened to land on first. Elisa would never have been caught dead looking like this at school. The fact that she had the nerve even to come to the coffee shop in such a state was startling.
    Elisa was one of the most beautiful girls in school. She also acted the part, and her poise made everyone believe in her beauty even more strongly. Seeing her like this, exhausted and scared, you realized the beauty was a carefully constructed mask whose single most important factor was not the right color of lip gloss or professionally applied eye shadow, but a heavy dose of self-confidence and flirtatiousness. Elisa’s smile made boys’ hearts flutter and palms sweat.
    To this day, Lumikki had never figured out the true nature of Elisa and Tuukka’s relationship. Obviously, they had dated at some point, but now they seemed to be just friends. Maybe friends with benefits. Elisa toyed with the small male