Free Barking by Tom Holt Page B

his bushy eyebrows shot up like house prices. ‘What did you say?’
    â€˜They’re not you,’ Duncan repeated, amazed at how calm he felt. There now, he was saying to himself, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
    For the first time - yes, dammit, for the first time since he’d known him, Luke seemed genuinely bewildered, as if he didn’t know what to do. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Yes, really. Bloody hell, Dunc, you make it sound like you don’t like me.’
    And Duncan smiled. ‘Don’t call me Dunc,’ he said pleasantly.
    â€˜What? Oh. You don’t like—’
    â€˜No.’
    Pause. Luke was watching him, like a cat at a mousehole. ‘I didn’t know that. You never said.’
    â€˜I did, actually. You never took any notice.’
    â€˜Didn’t I?’
    Duncan shook his head. ‘You never do. That’s your trouble, you hear things but you don’t listen .’
    â€˜Oh.’ Luke had his head slightly on one side. ‘Right, fine, I won’t do it again if it bothers you.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Is that it, then?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Whatever it was that was bugging you,’ Luke said. ‘The name thing. Was that why you said you don’t want to—?’
    â€˜Don’t be stupid.’ He saw Luke’s eyes grow very big and wide, and if he didn’t know better he’d have thought he heard a very low, faint growling noise. ‘It’s not just that. The name thing was just the tip of the iceberg. It’s—’
    â€˜It’s what?’
    Luke, he realised, genuinely didn’t know; which made it next to impossible to explain. It was like trying to tell a five-year-old about the causes of the Seven Years War in three sentences. ‘It’s everything,’ he said; and then he added, ‘Oh screw it, you wouldn’t understand.’
    Luke frowned. ‘It’s not just dusting, is it?’ he said. ‘You even talk like a girl these days. She must have—’
    â€˜Oh, for crying out loud.’ Then Duncan realised that he was sitting on the floor, in his own flat. It struck him as a really stupid thing to be doing, when he had a perfectly good chair, the only problem with which was that it was currently full of Luke Ferris. He stood up. ‘How did you get in here?’ he snapped.
    Luke shrugged. ‘Climbed,’ he replied.
    That made no sense. ‘Are you kidding? It’s the fifth floor.’
    Luke grinned. ‘Piece of cake,’ he said. ‘I went round the back and saw you’d left your kitchen window open; so I shinned up next door’s drainpipe to that little balcony thing, and jumped across onto your windowsill. Really, you should be more careful with your windows, there’s—’
    â€˜You jumped?’ In spite of everything else that was going on in his mind, Duncan was doing mental triangulation. From the third-floor balcony of the building next door to his kitchen windowsill: easily thirty feet. ‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘That’s not possible.’
    â€˜I’m good at jumping.’ Luke was nibbling at the TV remote again. ‘Don’t you remember at school—?’
    â€˜Look.’ Duncan pulled himself together. ‘Forget how you got in. All I’m interested in is how you’re getting out again. How quickly, actually.’
    â€˜Hm?’
    â€˜Leave.’
    Immediately, Luke put the TV remote back on the coffee table, but stayed in the chair. There was something about that; a point that Duncan felt he was missing, but was too annoyed to clarify. ‘Steady on,’ Luke said. ‘There’s no need to go working yourself up into a state. Calm down, get a grip, stop looming over me and tell me what’s bothering you. I mean,’ he added, sounding a bit like God forgiving the ninety-seven-billionth sin of Mankind