As White as Snow Read Online Free Page A

arguments had been enough to construct a tenuous image that twisted and expanded in her child’s mind into this nightmare. That sounded like the most plausible explanation.
    Lumikki sucked in the night air with slow, deep breaths. The nightmare’s grip loosened. Prague at night smelled ofhope and broken promises. It smelled of history and dusty streets. It smelled sweet and savory all at once.
    Lumikki decided she’d try to sleep with the window open, in spite of the traffic and the sounds of the night. As she turned back toward the bed, fists suddenly began pounding on her door with such force she thought the door might come off its hinges.
    Lumikki snatched the sheet from the bed and wrapped it tight around her naked body. Then she grabbed the nearest thing that could serve as a weapon to protect herself. It was a half-empty water bottle. Her defenses left something to be desired. Every muscle tense, she stared at the door. If the intruder got the door open, she would be ready to kick it back in his face. The inward-opening door would work in her favor. The element of surprise even more.
    Lumikki stayed perfectly silent. That she knew how to do. She was a master at that.
    The fists trying to pound through the door came again, this time even harder.
    Lumikki hoped that a well-aimed blow with the water bottle could work too. First the door, then the bottle. That was her detailed plan of attack.
    Just then, from outside the door came the sounds of guys laughing and drunkenly trying to sing.
    “We like to party, party! We like to party, party! Come on, man! This is no time for sleep!”
    Lumikki’s shoulders relaxed. She let her hand holding the bottle fall. She realized before one of them did:
    “Oh shit! We got the wrong room. It’s 208, not 206.”
    As the merrymakers moved on to bang on the next door and repeat their chant, Lumikki crawled back into bed. Amazingly, the cacophony coming from the traffic and the hall made her eyelids droop shut immediately as a deep, dreamless sleep took her.
    The man was awake. He was often awake in the wee hours of the morning when everyone else in the house was asleep. A shepherd guarding his flock. That’s what they thought, anyway, and they weren’t completely wrong. They were his flock and he had been raising and shepherding them for years, more than twenty now. He had been patient and long-suffering. The man had told himself many times that if he could just wait long enough, he would be rewarded.
    The man paced from room to room with soft, soundless steps. The rooms smelled a little dusty and stuffy, and they were full of the breath and dreams of sleepers. He looked at the peaceful, slumbering faces. One mouth hung open a little, another clutched a pillow like a long-lost lover. They all looked small and fragile, even the men. They were like butterflies he could reach out and touch. He had the power to crush them, to pierce them with pins and make them part of his collection, to pluck their wings, to choke them with smoke or take away their oxygen.
    He held their lives in his hands.

FRIDAY, JUNE 17

Jiři Hašek squeezed two oranges into a glass and threw the juice back in a single gulp. The fresh, sweet flavor spread through his mouth, and he could almost feel the vitamins being absorbed into his bloodstream and giving him his morning pick-me-up. Looking out the window at the city waking up to its morning bustle, he could tell the day would be sweltering again. A thin, misty layer of cirrus clouds covered the sky, but it curbed the blazing sun about as much as a veil cooled the warmth of a bride’s gaze at her groom.
    Jiři smiled to himself, thinking how handsome he looked sitting in his penthouse apartment drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice. With his classically styled dark coiffure, straight-legged trousers, and white collared shirt, he was like something out of an advertisement. The embodiment of success and vitality.
    Jiři almost laughed out loud. He was only