Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch Read Free Book Online Page A

said, “you’re welcome.”
    “I didn’t mean —”
    “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?” Kevin asked. “I would have told you that you couldn’t trust my dad. He’s a doctor, sure, but he’s government first. I mean, we’re friends. Aren’t we?”
    There was a noise off to her left. Crunching leaves. Glenn
    stopped.
    “Wow. Thanks for the lingering pause there, Morgan. It’s a real vote of confi—”
    “Shhh.”
    Kevin stopped where he was. Half a second later another set of footsteps came to a halt. Glenn looked out ahead but saw nothing.
    “What was that?” Kevin asked.
    Glenn turned back just as an enormous shadow glided behind
    Kevin. It moved from one tree to another and disappeared.
    “What? Did you see something?”
    Glenn swallowed hard.
    “No,” she said, wrestling with the stammer in her voice.
    “Nothing. Just … my imagination.” She took his arm, looking over her shoulder as she urged them forward. “Come on, this way’s east. It’ll take us right to your place.”
    Glenn told herself that what she had seen was a trick of the moonlight. Some hapless forest animal blundering through the woods just like they were, its shadow almost certainly making it seem bigger than it actually was. She remembered her own words to Kevin the day before. The mind’s tendency to find patterns where there were none.
    Glenn was as susceptible as anyone else.
    They passed under the red lights at the border and soon the forest broke. There was no sign of the drones. Kevin’s house was a little farther on, just over the rise of a tree-covered hill. Glenn and Kevin climbed it side by side, digging their feet into the snow and grasping tree branches to steady themselves.
    Once they crested the hill, Kevin’s house loomed in front of them.
    It was huge, more a mansion than a house: three stories with an expansive yard, the kind of estate that was only available close to the border where few people wanted to live. Most of the lights were on, filling the windows with a warm glow that spread out across the yard and the heavily manicured trees that flanked the front door. No sign of drones or agents or skiffs. It should have seemed absolutely normal, but Glenn felt a sinking in her stomach. It was eerily quiet.
    “What?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Something’s … I don’t know. I’m just being paranoid. Right?”
    Kevin looked down at the grim face of the house and swallowed.
    “Yeah. Definitely. Paranoid.”
    Glenn took a step forward but Kevin grabbed her wrist at the last second.
    “But maybe we go around the back,” he said. “Just in case.”
    They slipped into the house through a back door. Unfortunately, it felt the same inside as out, like the tense seconds before a bomb went off.
    “Where is everybody?” Glenn whispered.
    Kevin shrugged. “Mom should have been back by now.”
    They froze as somewhere in the house a door opened and closed.
    There was a pause and then the sound of voices, quiet and talking fast.
    Kevin nodded ahead and he and Glenn crept through the living room and into the darkness of the Kapoors’ bedroom, which was as dark and spare as the doctor’s office. At the far end there was a heavy oak door with a razor of light underlining it. The voices were coming from the other side.
    “Where does this door go?”
    “His office,” Kevin said.
    Once they reached the door, Kevin turned to her as if to ask,
    “You still up for this?” Glenn nodded and they knelt down and pressed their ears to the wood.
    There were at least two voices on the other side. Both men.
    “… and where are they now?” Dr. Kapoor asked. His voice was tense, clipped.
    “I can’t really —”
    “This is my son we’re talking about, Mr. Sturges. And the
    Morgan girl is no more than sixteen.”
    There was a slight pause before the man with Dr. Kapoor spoke.
    His voice was soft and breathy.
    “Of course, Dr. Kapoor. We understand. We hope, though, that you will understand that