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Piper stole another quick look around to make sure she was alone before fishing the paper bag out of her large purse. She didn’t give herself a chance to look at it, or weigh it in her hands, or anything else other than cram it back behind the pipe. If she hesitated now, she’d be caught for sure.
A moment later, the heroin in place, she slid the cabinet door shut. Now she gave herself a moment to stare at the smooth wood of the cabinet that sat below the bar. She found herself lost in that stare, finding it difficult to get up and leave, and she had to shake her shoulders to jar herself into motion.
All right. It was done. It was done, right or wrong, and now all she had to do was walk out of there and it would all be over.
Piper stood up slowly, still lost in her thoughts, when an ear-splitting scream tore into her ears and pierced her brain like an icepick. Lightning bolts of panic shot through her body at the sudden sound, and she screamed herself almost as a reflex.
At her scream, the original screamer screamed again. Piper saw her now, a pleasant looking Hispanic woman clutching at her chest with her eyes wide.
“Oh!” the woman finally said, flapping her hands at her face as if she were trying to fan it. “Oh, you scared me!”
“I scared you?” Piper said, her own nerves slowly simmering down back to normal. “You scared the crap out of me with that scream!”
“Oh, sorry, sorry. I do that. I get startled easily. Devil keeps telling me I need to stop scaring everyone like that.”
Now that she was done having a heart attack, recognition slowly seeped into Piper’s brain.
“Nikki,” Piper said. “You’re Nikki. I remember you now. Devil’s girlfriend.”
“That’s right. You’re Pippen, right?”
Yep. This was Devil’s girlfriend, all right.
“Piper,” she corrected.
“Piper, Piper,” Nikki said. “Wow, you’re here early, hunh?”
Piper kept her face as neutral as possible.
“Oh, you know,” she said carefully. “Just making sure everything is ready for later.”
“See, that’s why everyone likes you here. So professional. Like Pony.”
Nikki said that last part with a little smile, and Piper could tell it was a lead in to a conversation she didn’t want to have, so she steered it in another direction.
“So, what are you doing here, Nikki?” she said.
“Benny.”
“What?”
“Benny,” Nikki said. “The little guy who lives in the room they have upstairs here.”
“Oh, yeah,” Piper said. “I’ve seen that guy. That’s his name? Benny?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve always wondered about him. What’s his deal, anyway?”
“Huh,” Nikki said, shaking her head. “That’s a long story.”
“I’ve heard Devil talk about him.”
Nikki held both hands up, as if to say,here it comes.
“He used to live in the woods and he has, like, some mental issues but he makes lots of gadgets and stuff and is really good at the internet so Devil introduced him to a stripper… or I think maybe she’s a porn star… and brought him to live here.”
Piper blinked twice and said, “What?”
