Bill was joking

"Fucking hell, Adam!" Bill laughed, slapping him on the back. "I was only joking mate. Nice to know you think my wife's fuckable though."

Kishore and Nick joined Bill in his laughter whilst Adam stood there dumbfounded.

"Oh," Adam said, almost in a whisper. "Of course I knew that! I was just playing along with you. I'd never be unfaithful to Helen." Adam gulped as he spoke the last sentence. He wouldn't have let it get that far, would he?

"Good to hear," Bill said with a grin.

"Sorry lads, you need to drink up and leave," came Zoe's voice, breaking the slightly awkward moment. "We're closing now, didn't you hear last orders?"

Adam's heart skipped a beat as he realised what he had done, or rather what he hadn't done. The whole point of him coming to the pub was to find Helen and who she had possessed. He had totally lost track of this and had just played pool with Bill and his mates. Helen was going to kill him!

"I'd better get going home, lads," Adam said, moving to exit the pub. "I'll see you another time."

Adam rushed home from the pub. He desperately hoped that Helen had returned to her body, but wasn't scouring the spellbook for a way to end him. To his pleasant surprise he found her tucked up in bed reading a light novel. It was as if she had never found the spellbook and they'd never made the agreement to play the possession game in the pub.

"You're home late!" Helen chirped. She set down her book after sliding in a bookmark.

"Helen, I am so, so sorry about tonight," Adam began to explain, trying his best to sound relatively sober. "It's Bill, you know the one from my work? He accosted me, he's such a bad influence. I tried to get away to look for you like we agreed, but he kept on dragging me back to play pool. We'll have to try it again some other time. I'm so sorry."

Adam looked desperately at Helen, hoping she would accept his rambling apology. Her expression was unreadable and he began to worry that he was going to be spending a night on the sofa.

"You're a muppet, Adam," Helen said, her expression suddenly breaking out into a huge smirk.

"What do you mean?" Adam was flabbergasted. Why wasn't she upset with him?

"You spent all that time playing pool with Bill and chatting about women, you didn't think to find out what his favourite colour was."

"What?" Adam's brain was slowly figuring things out. How did Helen know they were talking about women? "No fucking way! You were Bill?"

"That took you long enough to work out, babe!" Helen was almost giddy with her amusement at her boyfriend's slow-wittedness.

"I was only joking about agreeing to shag his wife you know? I was just playing along and calling his bluff!"

"What about if I was controlling her?" Helen asked, raising her eyebrow.

Adam's brain whirled wildly trying to process if this this was some sort of trap. "Well that'd be different," he answered carefully.

"Indeed it would," Helen said impishly. "Anyway, that's enough excitement for one evening. Why don't you come to bed?"