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

hands and gave an anguished sigh.
    “Fuck. This morning, when I woke up, I was so hoping this was all just a bad dream.”
    “No one saw you, did they?” Kasper asked Tuukka.
    “No.”
    “And no one had gone in the darkroom?” Kasper asked.
    “And just left all that there? I seriously doubt it.”
    But there was tension in Tuukka’s laugh. Suddenly, he stood up.
    “This meeting is over. You can leave now.”
    “I’m still drinking my chai,” Elisa said.
    “If I was you, I wouldn’t hang around town looking like that any longer than I had to,” Tuukka said. “And I mean that with all the love in the world, baby.”
    “Yeah. You’re one to talk,” Elisa threw back, but she did get up.
    Lumikki waited until the trio had left. Then she tried to gulp down the rest of her tea. God. Did people really drinkthis stuff voluntarily? She ended up leaving the dregs of the overpriced dishwater in her cup. When a safe amount of time had passed, she bundled up and stepped back out into the biting cold. She’d have time to think on the way home.

A bitter, electric cold wind was blowing across the stone bridge over the rapids that ran through the middle of the city. Lumikki hurried her steps, processing what she had heard. Tuukka, Elisa, and Kasper had somehow ended up with the money last night. How, Lumikki didn’t know. Whose money was it? Did they even know? Maybe not. Probably not. They seemed even more confused than usual about what had happened the night before.
    The money had obviously been bloody already, and the three of them had come up with the genius idea of washing it in the school darkroom. That was the hardest part to understand. Who would ever think to go to school in the middle of the night to clean a pile of dirty money?
    At least we were only drinking.
    Suddenly, the words of the perfume mafia echoed in Lumikki’s head. So people must have been doing more than just drinking at the party last night. Some of them, at least. Maybe Elisa, Tuukka, and Kasper. That might explain why they’d come up with such a ridiculous solution. And it would also explain why they couldn’t tell anyone about what happened.
    A policeman’s daughter. A principal’s son. The scenario was so classic it made Lumikki shake her head. Kids from good families desperate to be rebellious? Playing dangerous games with drugs and alcohol and who knew what else because they couldn’t get enough excitement from anything else? Or did they just want to get really messed up?
    People were sliding all over the place at the intersection by the train station. No amount of gravel the city spread around was enough to ensure traction in a place where thousands of pairs of feet polished the ice every day. Lumikki let her combat boots slap harder on the ground.
    The situation had gotten significantly more complicated. She didn’t want to go talk to the principal now. Or the police. She didn’t want to get involved at all, even though the trio weren’t her friends in any way. They didn’t mean anything to her, but she definitely didn’t want to end up in the middle of the shit storm that was sure to blow up if she snitched.
    An anonymous tip to the police? That was definitely an option. Would they take it seriously? Probably, if someone had reported thirty thousand euros missing. And if they didn’t take her seriously, it wouldn’t be her problem anymore. She would have done her duty.
    As she approached Tammela, Lumikki felt a strange surge of emotion. Her apartment wasn’t really home, no question there, but maybe she’d started to warm up to the neighborhood? The thought amused her. Black sausage and milk at Tammela Square. The cheers of soccer fans from the Tammela Stadium. Basic stuff all the locals did. Nostalgia for the few wooden buildings left from old Tammela and admiration for the red brick buildings of the former Aaltonen Shoe Factory. That didn’t sound at all like Lumikki Andersson, who avoided all that mushy stuff. Still,