Page 31 of Elora and the Crow

“Gone where?” Jonah could hear the anxiety in his voice.

“The fae took him,” Alex said.

“Fuck!” The word exploded from his mouth. He staggered to the island, sitting on one of the stools as Alex joined him.

“How did it happen?” Jonah asked.

“He was playing a gig, and there were a couple of fae at the bar,” Alex said. “You know how they are about music and shit.”

“Yeah,” Jonah said.

While the fae in the city mostly behaved, they couldn’t resist the temptation to steal a human here or there. Usually, the human they stole was musically gifted because the fae loved music and dancing. Most of the time, they only kept the human for a few weeks before returning them.

“He’s been gone eight months?” Jonah said.

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t think to call the fucking cops?”

Alex flushed. “Hey, we did, man. Me and Rupert and Callie went to the cops after a month. They said they would look into it, but you know they don’t mess with the fae if they can help it.”

“Jesus Christ.” Jonah ran his hand through his hair. “They’re fucking useless.”

“Eh, everyone kind of is when it comes to the fae,” Alex said. “Especially with that mind control shit they do.”

“Emotion manipulation,” Jonah said.

Alex paused with the blender jug at his mouth. “What?”

“They can’t do mind control,” Jonah said. “But they can manipulate and amplify your emotions.”

“Yeah, okay, but there’s also the charming shit they do and the glamouring,” Alex said.

“They have shifters in law enforcement,” Jonah said. “Everyone knows the fae’s magic doesn’t work when a shifter is in animal form.”

Alex shrugged. “They just kept telling us they’d do a wellness check on him, but since it’d been so long, Caleb was probably with the fae of his own free will at that point.”

“Bullshit,” Jonah said.

“Yeah.” Alex lapsed into silence.

A new thought turned Jonah’s blood to ice. “Is he with the northern fae or the southern fae?”

They had two large fae communities in the city, and most humans and other paranormal referred to them as the northern and the southern, purely based on their geographical location in the city. But it wasn’t just geography that differentiated them. The southern fae were what people typically thought of when they pictured the fae. Both sexes were tall and slender with an ethereal type of beauty, and they seemed to float rather than walk.

The northern fae were completely different, although no less good looking. As large as most shifters, the men were rugged and muscular and most of them owned or worked for a popular boxing gym franchise with multiple locations across the state. The women were sturdy and athletic, with toned bodies and muscles that often rivaled the most dedicated of gym rats.

Regardless of whether they lived in the north or the south, both fae communities loved to fuck with the humans if given the chance, but the northern ones were unequivocally more dangerous.

“The northern,” Alex said before taking another slug of his protein drink.

“Fuck,” Jonah said.

“Right?” Alex said. “Now you know why we didn’t go looking for him ourselves. The northern fae are fucking beasts, man. I swear I saw one lift a three hundred pound dude over his head in a bar one night and chuck him across the room. Didn’t even break a sweat.”

He cocked his head. “You think they’re doing, like, steroids and shit at those gyms, or do they got like fae magic strength or something?”

Jonah ignored his question. “Are the northern fae still in that compound just outside of Parsons Woods?”

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