Welcome to Fae Cafe (High Court of the Coffee Bean, #1)

by Jennifer Kropf

There are ten golden rules you must follow if you want to survive an encounter with a fae: Don’t ask for its name. If it asks you what your name is, lie. Avoid looking directly into its eyes. Don’t invite it to your book club. Don’t engage in a snowball fight. Never let it burn its mouth on coffee. Don’t ask it where it’s from. Don’t tell it where you live. Never mention its Queene. Don’t try to kill it with an ordinary human gun. If you fail to do any of these things, enslave it immediately.

They were just cookies. It’s not like they meant anything. It’s not like they were a warm, sweet hug, or a word of comfort, or an entire lifetime’s worth of guidance and love like the sort Grandma Lewis always gave away for free. Except that her grandmother’s cookies were exactly all of those things.

“Hey!” Shayne slammed a hand down to protect the shallow pile of trinkets he stole—one for each new place he went: coins, rocks, and other useless human items he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off of.

Shayne is my fav.

“What are you wearing?” The Prince made a face at Shayne’s human cooking apron. “I’m cleaning,” Shayne said. “Well, I’m sort of cleaning. Honestly, I just flit around from corner to corner until Mor and Dranian do everything.”

And since that means you can’t go back to where you came from”—she glanced at the bookshelf behind the counter and pulled three novels from her collection: all popular fae fantasy books— “you might as well get reading. You should really know how humans perceive a fae if you’re going to live among us.” She walked around and smacked a book against each of the fae’s chests.

🫣😅

“Don’t mistake me for a hero like the fairy folk in one of your books, Katherine. I’m the devil in most people’s stories. The last, terrible monster they see.”

Kate looked from Mor to the glass display of tarts and cakes, then back to Mor. “Did you just say there are enchantments in the baking?” “Yes. Those two mixed the batter with magic to ensure that every human who tries it is compelled to come back. The coffee is enchanted, too,” he said. “The bad news is that no one really came back here because they liked your coffee, Human. The good news is you have hundreds of lifetime customers,” Mor said, and Kate’s jaw dropped. Her gaze darted to Shayne’s writing in the window that said, COME TRY THE BUTTER TARTS. WE GUARANTEE YOU’LL COME BACK FOR MORE IF YOU DO.

🤣

She spotted her phone resting on a bistro table. The Fae Café social media pages were open. Twelve new posts had been published since yesterday—posts Kate hadn’t done herself. She picked up her phone and scrolled through the photos. One was of Mor staring at the camera with a death glare like he didn’t want his photo taken. The caption below said: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HIGH COURT OF THE COFFEE BEAN MEET MOR: A HANDSOME, COLD-BLOODED FAE ASSASSIN IN A CUTE BURGUNDY APRON, READY TO STAB YOUR ENEMIES AND POUR YOU A TASTY LATTE AT YOUR BECKONING. Kate squeaked a laugh and scrolled to the next photo of Shayne modelling beside a whipped drink. She read the caption aloud, “Come to Fae Café where the coffee is hot, and the fairies are even hotter.”

😭😭