Read Online The Devil You Know by Louise Bagshawe - Free Book Online Page A

punk chicks and biker chicks and then you had the L.A. babes - dudettes, as KNAC called them - girls with sprayed-on black pants, low-slung studded belts, fingerless lace gloves, and platinum-blonde hair teased up to the sky. The ones who couldn’t get implants got padded, push-up bras. Every chick had lip liner, red talons, and tons of attitude.
    Poppy loved it. She couldn’t wait. She wondered who was playing tonight. Even the shittiest gig offered possibility; getting drunk, hanging out, flirting with the boys. Even better, flirting with the band. Poppy’s wet dreams all involved Jon Bon Jovi and Rick Savage, and sometimes even Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys. It was cooler to like Slayer, but Poppy didn’t care. Really hard metal made her ears bleed. But it was still cool to go to those gigs, too; you were part of the heavy metal brotherhood, and you got to piss off: Debbie Gibson fans. Which had to be a good thing in anybody’s book.
    The cab screeched to a halt outside the club. Poppy stepped out
    and shook her long, carefully highlighted honey-blonde hair. ‘Hey, baby.’ ‘What’s up, sugar?’ ‘Lookin’ fine …’
    Poppy pretended not to hear the calls of appreciation as she walked into the crowd, but she bit back a tiny smile. Somebody saw
    it, and a storm of wolf-whistles followed her up the queue to get in. The bouncer on the door saw it and beckoned to her.
    Poppy raised one delicately arched brow and put her manicured nails over her boobs, which were looking even bigger in the pushup bra she had crammed them in to, her low-cut top revealing generous amounts of cleavage. She pressed her hand to them, as if to say, Me?
    ‘Yeah, you, sweetcakes.’
    The bouncer looked her up and down, taking in the glorious tits, the pale eyes and tanned skin, the expensive highlights, the black miniskirt, the high-heeled ankle boots and fishnet stockings. Together with that pretty face and soft teenage skin, she was a little slice of metal heaven. She looked like she belonged in a Cinderella video.
    The girl walked towards him in a confident way. Usually girls would come up deferentially, desperate for a pass or a ticket or.just to
     
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    avoid being thrown out. Not this kid. He didn’t have respect for her,
    of course; wasn’t his way with girls; he just liked the looks of her. ‘You’re on the list,’ he said.
    Poppy rewarded him with a stunning smile, displaying perfectly white, straight teeth that were the result of eighteen months with the
    best orthodontist in Bel Air.
    ‘Hey, thanks,’ she said.
    ‘Hey, luck that, man.’ One of the Hell’s Angel biker dudes at the front of the queue growled with fury. ‘You didn’t even check her name. You don’t even know her name.’
    The bouncer stared him down. He worked out on Muscle Beach
    and he could take any drunk-ass biker.
    ‘Her name’s Baby,’ he said.
    Poppy started to pull out her fake ID.
    ‘You don’t need that.’ He winked at her, and Poppy smiled back. This was what made her feel sexy and alive, little tributes to her beauty like this. One of the dirty, unmade-up biker chicks started to call her a bitch. Poppy tossed her hair and walked into the club.
    Some people - her parents included - would call it crazy and dangerous for a girl to be out on the Sunset Strip alone. Especiay a Bel Air Jewish princess like Poppy. But they were wrong, Poljay thought. It was all about the care and feeding of men’s egos. On .(!e, Poppy had been in the front row at a Bad Brains gig and the moth pit was so intense she thought she might get crushed. She’d turned a sweet smile on the guys behind her, and they had put their arms either side of her on the stage lip, creating a little pocket of protected space for her.
    The club was packed. Condensation literally dripped off the walls; kids packed in together, sweat on foreheads, jackets consigned to the cloakroom. The girls did better than the dudes; they could peel off layers of clothing. Maybe it was