Hi, kids. Work has been ba-NAH-nuhs and I've been writing this and my other current story in the middle of the night at the 24 hour coffee shop after I get off work because it's the only time I get that isn't spent at work or at home. Anyhooter, here's the second chapter of this one. Be thankful it's not my SVU Alex/Olivia story. That one sometimes doesn't get updated for a month (or more). Sadface.

Lauren came to slowly and tried to figure out where she was. Opening her eyes slowly, she saw that she was in what appeared to be a tree house. A tropical tree of some sort, maybe. And the smell of tobacco smoke hung heavy in the air. She was laid out rather comfortably on a cushion and she didn't feel any pain, which was the opposite of what she was expecting when a seven foot tall, hairy, bearded man smoking a pipe materialised in her kitchen. The last thing she remembered was fighting with Bo and heading back home to make tea and wait for the Succubus to apologise.

"Hello?" she called out in a voice that was a lot more timid than she would have liked. The realisation that she had been kidnapped and her captors might kill her was sinking in and her voice reacted before her fuzzy mind could.

The man who had taken her from her apartment entered through a hanging cloth partition that separated the space they were in from the rest of the space. "You are awake, human," he declared as he stood imposingly over her.

"Who are you? Why am I here?" Lauren blurted quickly.

"I am Dakila, Kapre king of the Lualhati. You are the doctor for Light Fae."

Lauren nodded slowly, not sure where this conversation was going. "Yes. I am."

"My daughter is sick. The tribe's healers do not know the cause. Your work in Africa is well known so you will heal my daughter," Dakila stated.

"And what if I can't?"

"Then you will die," he answered coolly.

As the gravity of the situation set in, Lauren's blood ran cold. She had two options: she could try to heal this girl, succeed, and live, or she could try to heal this girl, fail, and die. Either way, she would use her vast knowledge to try to find a cure to what was ailing this man's daughter. Her life depended on it. "You're a Kapre?"

Dakila nodded once. "Yes.

Lauren knew that Kapre were tree Fae. They smoke tobacco pipes to get humans attention, and are known to wear a belt that renders them invisible to humans, which certainly explained how he just showed up out of thin air in her kitchen and why the room suddenly smelled like her grandfather's study while she was steeping her tea. "Is your daughter a Kapre too?"

"Yes."

"OK, then. I don't know much about Kapre physiology, but I'll do my best to make your daughter better."

"I will take you to her." Dakila motioned for Lauren to stand up, and she followed him out of the room and down the ladder to the ground. "That is her tree," Dakila pointed to a nearby and mango tree with a smaller version of the tree house they had just left built about thirty feet up. Lauren noticed the tree was much younger than the other one, figuring that the stilts supporting the structure nestled in the crook of branches coming off the trunk were because the tree wasn't quite strong enough to handle the weight on its own.

Dakila climbed the ladder first and headed to his daughter's bedside. Lauren took in the surroundings as she came to stand in the middle of the room. The walls were covered in detailed charcoal drawings of people, flowers, trees, animals, and landscapes. This young girl was obviously talented. In the corner of the room was a bed with a canopy and tucked under a brightly coloured quilt was a girl who looked to be about 14 years old who was very tall like her father, less hairy, and definitely showing signs of jaundice.

"I have brought the finest Fae doctor to heal you," Dakila spoke softly to the girl as he sat in the wooden chair next to the head of the bed.

Lauren stepped forward. "My name's Lauren. What's yours?"

"Dalisay," came the weak reply.

Taking another step forward, Lauren was now standing next to the bed as well. She knelt down and put her hand on Dalisay's arm. "That's a very pretty name."

"It means 'pure'," Dalisay said a little more strongly.

"My name means 'laurel plant'. Not nearly as poetic, I'm afraid," Lauren smiled.

Dalisay returned the smile. "I like it anyway."

Dakila stood and looked down at Lauren. "I will leave you to your task." And with that he descended the ladder and left Lauren and Dalisay alone.

"Your father tells me you've been very sick," Lauren said as she moved to sit next to the girl.

Nodding, Dalisay turned to face the doctor. "Yes. It was not so bad for a long time, but it is very bad now."

"Can you tell me what hurts?" Lauren figured she'd start with a few simple questions to get an idea of where to begin.

"Mostly my stomach, but also I also have headaches and I get very dizzy sometimes."

Lauren was mentally ticking off symptom boxes to try to narrow the possibilities. Unfortunately her lack of specific knowledge of Kapre anatomy and the fact that those symptoms are indicative of any number of ailments ranging from something treatable with aspirin all the way to non-treatable and fatal. She hoped for both their sakes that it was at least something that wasn't fatal.

"Bo, my darling! How'd it go with Doctor Hotpants? I sincerely hope you two made up and then made out and you're calling to tell me not to wait up-"

"Kenz, she wasn't there. I think something bad happened to her, but I don't know for sure. I just have this feeling," Bo cut her off.

"We'll find her, OK? I'll do anything I can to help."

"Good, because I'm gonna be at the house in a few minutes and the first thing you can do is be ready to go because we're going to Lauren's to look for clues."

"Aye aye, bestie!"

True to her word, Bo pulled up next to the house and honked to let Kenzi know she'd arrived. Seconds later the human came barrelling out the door and jumped into the passenger's seat.

"So what do we know so far? What makes you think something happened to her that wasn't, say, being incredibly upset, dropping her mug, and then going for a walk to calm her nerves?"

Bo took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel tighter. "Why does everyone keep asking me that?!"

Kenzi put a hand on Bo's arm. "Hey, I totally believe you, but I'm just trying to follow your thought process on this."

"Sorry. I just left the Dal and Trick pretty much blew me off. He told me she probably just went out to regroup and that lovers fight and that I'll feel silly for getting worked up when she comes home."

"Not gonna lie...I kind of feel like hitting your gramps. He should at least humour you even if he thinks you're overreacting," Kenzi offered.

"That's kind of what I thought," Bo admitted sadly. She sighed. "If Lauren really did just go for a walk to clear her head, then I'll admit I jumped to conclusions. But with all the wacky things we've seen, it's hard not to go all 'worst case scenario', you know?"

Kenzi nodded knowingly. "I totes know."

A few minutes later they were pulling up alongside Lauren's place in the Ash's compound and heading down the hallway to her door. Bo unlocked it and ushered Kenzi inside before closing and locking the door once more.

"Ick. Smells like my Uncle Yuriy in here! Doesn't the doc know smoking's bad for your health?"

Bo took Kenzi by the hand and pulled her to where the mug lay broken on the kitchen floor. "That was my first clue that something wasn't right. And then there's this." She pointed to the porcelain shards and drying tea puddle on the floor.

"OK, I'm with you so far," Kenzi offered. "What else ya got?"

Pulling her over to the sofa, Bo pointed out that Lauren's phone was gently wedged between the sofa cushions. "That," Bo answered definitively as she released Kenzi's hand.

"I gotta say that your evidence is very compelling. The broken mug by itself isn't much. I mean, if we counted all the dishes I've dropped and broken, well, that might take a while and we're on a time crunch. The tobacco smell is the most out of character for your girl, but the fact that her phone's here and she isn't is the biggest red flag for me 'cos, like, even though Hale's not exactly an ash-hole who keeps her on a short leash, Lauren does kind of sort of technically belong to him and if he needs her for some doctor-y thing, he's gonna get her on the horn," Kenzi analyzed.

"Right!" Bo exclaimed before he eyes brimmed with tears. "I'm not reading too much into this. She's been abducted." She swiped at the tears that were beginning to track down her cheek. "How do we find her, Kenzi?"

"By Googling the shit out of stuff and seeing what we can discover." Bo gave her an admonishing look. "What? You can find all kinds of crazy stuff by just searching Google."