Eighties Night

Chapter 1 - The People You Meet

'Time for some Madness!'

Amber rolled her lips against each other, spreading the lipstick. It wasn't really her colour, but it was authentic.

Outside, the bandsaw rasp of a saxophone line cut across the dance floor.

'One Step BEYOND!'

The DJ's mic faded out under the music. Behind the real, vinyl-playing, record deck, he was probably Dad Dancing. Again. In the relative sanctity of the Ladies' loos, Amber could take stock, and a make-up check was as good an excuse as any. She checked her teeth for lipstick and considered her reflection, whilst two women laughed about something, possibly the DJ, in the cubicles behind her.

I am convinced it is the Disc Jockey.

Samantha spoke from her usual position inside Amber's head, just between and behind her ears: her voice was one thing a disco wasn't going to drown out. Self-styled succubus and marriage broker, censorious school teacher and passionate pianist, the spirit of Miss Samantha Gurnard could be heard in the middle of a rock concert - quite possibly commenting on the tightness of the singer's trousers.

'I'm not sure. The barman looked shifty. And as for those men... Can't you...?' Amber's thought trailed off. She knew the answer. Samantha did not 'do' men. Not in this sense, anyway.

NO, Dear. I am happy to investigate the women - if I may be honest, they should know better at their ages - but I draw the line at contact with a masculine psyche. So crudely minimalist. Let them be good at what they are good for.

Amber smiled ruefully to herself. 'You really are out of touch.'

You know I am correct.

'Oh come on. They're not that bad. They're lovely when you get to their sensitive sides.'

I know exactly how to find that, Dear. It stares one in the face—

'Only if he's on a stepladder. That's not what I mean - and you know it.'

Dear, please do not be crude.

'You're just jealous you didn't say it first.'

There was a mental sniff, proving that yes, Amber had beaten her to it.

Almost two years before, Amber had taken possession of a new flat and Samantha, long term inhabitant since before her death in a World War I Zeppelin air raid, had taken possession of Amber, as she had done with all the 'gells' she selected to share her rooms. As far as Amber could tell, Samantha chose a likely-looking young woman with suitable looks and brains, partied herself silly in their bodies and paid for the favour by setting up her unsuspecting - if tired - victims with a husband well off in some way or other, even if he wasn't rich; now she refused to leave until Amber was safely married. Fundamentally opposed to arranged marriages, Amber was having none of it and was resisting Samantha's better-than-average attempts at matchmaking, in part because, if she did get married, Samantha felt morally obliged to move on to a new host, as would have happened if Amber had not become aware of her passenger, and that would have left Amber without an excuse for an exciting life. She had only found out about her phantasmal flat mate when Samantha had attracted the attention of a demon, some unlucky Satanists and Her Majesty's (highly secret) Department of Spiritual Affairs, who had arrived just in time to help extinguish the resulting inferno; now they worked as 'Consultants' for HMDSA: it kept Amber and Samantha well within their oversight, and investigating wrinkles in the supernatural under-fabric of the British Isles beat the geeky world of System Administration hands down. 

'Come on. We're never going to find the killer in front of a mirror.'

Amber flicked a needless blusher brush over her cheeks, popped it back into her handbag, and straightened her hair bow.