After we got back home I showered off, got dressed in clean clothes and we set off to Debs' home, in the flat above her dress agency. Maise had already rung ahead to confirm, though it was never really in doubt we'd be going.

Debs met us at the door in a sparkly top and black trousers, dressed for a party. She hugged us both and invited us in.

"I'm so glad you came," she said. "Congratulations on graduating!"

Debs' living room was playfully decorated in sparkly velvet throws and patterned cushions over a black pleather couch, with a raspberry pink feature wall painted on one side. There were prints of vintage fashion advertisements hanging around the walls, along with a display of Pathé posters for the old Perils of Pauline serials. On a wooden bookcase sat a library of art and fashion books, with a number of kinkier volumes of the Erik Kroll variety mixed in. Above these were shelves of DVDs consisting mostly of musicals and films from the silent era.

We talked about our old lives, free to do so now we were all fully aware. Debs loved hearing the full story of our first kiss and the crazy films Chris, Maise and I used to make together. We didn't go into too much detail but mentioned how we'd died – Maise and Chris in a hate-fuelled street attack I'd been powerless to prevent and myself the random pedestrian victim of a reckless car driver. To be honest, we just wanted to move on from the anger and bitterness of that, the Mortal Masquerade had allowed us to reclaim our mortality on our own terms, rising us above the petty and clumsy evils of the mortal world.

It turned out that Debs was herself the victim of a violent end.

As a young fashion graduate she had begun her career as a costume designer for independent art theatre productions in the early 1980s, before marrying an Etonian yuppie who gradually set about removing her from all artistic endeavours. She was allowed to run her own dress agency on a strictly commercial level, but not in any way that would stand out beyond the level of a market-safe item in his business portfolio.

Debs had always had a kinky side and took part in what she called art-bondage photography in her early twenties. She believed this had been one of the things that had attracted her husband's advances and they'd played adventurously in the bedroom while engaged, but once he had her in the keeper net the relationship quickly turned abusive.

"It was all domination and no passion", she said. "He started dictating everything – what I wore, what we did, what I was allowed to say, and not in a playful way. I tolerated it for far too long, about fifteen years, but eventually I refused to let him near me because I couldn't trust him anymore, and I certainly didn't love him.

"One time he decided he wanted to relight the fire and set up some scene or other in the bedroom, but I told him I wasn't interested. He was furious, breaking up the house, calling me all kinds of names, telling me I was a worthless piece of shit without him. I locked myself in the bathroom and threatened to call the police. After he left, I sat up awake all night in that bathroom, terrified of opening the door in case he was still there.

"Later he came back all sweet and sorry, and like an idiot I listened to what he had to say. There were flowers, chocolates, tears... he went on and on about the pressures of his work, how he'd coped with cocaine and alcohol but now desperately wanted to be free from them, he wanted us to be back how we were, yada, yada. I must have wanted to believe him because I gave him another chance. I was the caring housewife helping him become a better person, I got him off the booze and drugs (or thought I did) and eventually let him back into my bed. Where he strangled me to death."

Wow, that story ran into a wall hard.

"I don't know whether he meant to kill me," Debs carried on. "He was a careless and clumsy asshole so he might have been trying a sex game that went wrong. Maybe he was getting revenge for when I kicked him out – he was very vindictive and power-obsessed. Maybe he'd found someone else and wanted rid of me. I hadn't thought him actually capable of murder at the time, but looking back he definitely was".

This was a hard story for Debs to tell, but she clearly wanted to tell it. We moved in to hug her as she continued.

"What I hate most about the whole thing is that I let him do it," she said softly. "What does it say about me, that I didn't fight him off? I wanted my husband back, on some level I must have liked submitting to him, but surely not to the monster he became. There was no consensuality at that point, he'd long since taken that from me."

Debs looked up at us. There were tears in her eyes running through her makeup.

"The next thing I remember after that, I was alone, he was gone. I didn't even remember what had happened, it was like I'd reset to the point just before he came back and I'd put him out of my mind. I refound my confidence, started getting creative with my dressmaking again and started to go out and meet people. Then, one day, Uncle Morbid came into my shop. He hired me to do some costume work for Morior Studios, somehow I figured out what really went on there and before long the Mortal Masquerade was my new family."

Debs' tears were drying with new resolve as she neared the end of her story.

"When I hit total recall, it was like a weight being lifted. I'm glad that bastard killed me, just so I could end up here and out of his clutches. I hope he's rotting in Hell right now. And every time I do a deathplay, every time I play dead on my own terms, it takes a little bit more power away from Mister Smalldick Murderer McTwat."

A bell sounded from the kitchen. Debs perked up at the sound of it.

"Dinner's ready," she said cheerfully, sucking in the last of her tears.

—

Over dinner I told Debs all about Chris and I's day with Wilco and his people-eating garden projects.

"I'm glad you've finally met Wilco, he's a sweetie," she said. "He's a bit of a backroom boy – he doesn't really do avatar deathplays himself, but he puts all that expression into his projects and has a real knack for creating scenes. I'd heard rumours he was working on some people-eating monsters, I can't wait to see them. From the inside, of course."

The conversation turned to the upcoming Masquerades. Coming up in a couple of weeks I had time off from angel duties so I could attend under a new avatar with Maise by my side. This would actually be my first chance at building an avatar over time – Sofia, the persona I'd adopted for my debut at the Masquerade was a one-shot deal created for immediate sacrifice. Maise was also in need of a new avatar, having killed off her last one in the final showdown with Debs' Aunt Betsy. This was a great opportunity for us to do something as a couple.

I'd given some thought to the type of characters we could portray, perhaps inspired by my travels around the Jungle with Wilco my thoughts had turned to the theme of Victorian explorers embarking on a Jules Verne-esque journey. I'd already mentioned it to Maise and she loved the idea, but we didn't yet know any of the specifics of the characters, including their gender.

I'd thought I'd be finally taking on a male avatar this time. Day to day I am a tomboy with an aversion to girlie attire – Chris had joked about it being easier to get me into a hydraulic car crusher than a skirt – but somehow I'd always ended up in a frock when it came time to roleplay as an avatar. I had no interest in being anyone's damsel in distress, even when getting killed in deathplays I felt it more as an act of defiance than submission, an expression of courage rather than fragile tragedy. But then Debs told me something I wasn't aware of.

"You know, the women in 19th century adventure yarns weren't all helpless damsels," she told me. "Ironically they got a lot more helpless post-suffrage, when the idea of strong women became more than just a cute fantasy for the literary patriarchy. But until then, the idea of a plucky young woman seeking out romance and adventure was a popular trope and they'd often be the ones to save the day, even if the men were ultimately the ones with power. And that's not to mention the travel journals of real life explorers like Mary Kingsley and Isabella Bird."

After dinner we watched Pearl White and Helen Holmes performing crazy stunts in old silent movies and saw photos of Mary Kingsley's travels through Africa. Debs told us about the popular folk tale of young women disguising themselves as boys to go to sea, and Jeanne Baret, the 18th century French sailor who did exactly that.

All of this gave Maise and I plenty of inspiration for our pair of adventuring avatars, who were now definitely going to be women. I could have taken the Jeanne Baret approach with my character, but Pearl White and Helen Holmes had demonstrated you could still be a tomboy in a long skirt, so we took our inspiration instead from a photo of Mary Kingsley travelling up the Nile in full Victorian dress. Debs and Maise had lots of ideas for period costumes, between us we came up with the characters of Larkin & Adelia, a pair of nineteenth century lady adventurers seeking peril and adventure in the games of the Mortal Masquerade. I would be Larkin, which Debs picked as an old Irish name meaning strong and fierce, while Maise would take on the more feminine role of Adelia.

There was one more piece of creative business Debs wanted to discuss. Under her last avatar role as Aunt Betsy she had amassed enough game victories to earn a top level swansong, our name for particularly elaborate deathplays chosen by the spirit concerned. Now she'd thought of an idea and wanted to know if it could be done.

"When I was in the supermarket earlier, I had them slice a fresh loaf of bread for me," Debs explained. "The machine they used had a row of little breadknives mounted like sawblades, the bread then slid down through them on a conveyor belt. I realised that what I was looking at was a lot like what you did with the jigsaw when Maise quartered you, would it be possible to set up a whole load of blades like that and run me through it like a loaf of bread?"

It was definitely an interesting idea and I could see the principles of how we could make it work. I told her I'd talk to Uncle Morbid about it on her behalf.

"Or, better still," Debs added, "put me through the slicer in a loaf of bread."