Jaycee's Blog - Fri, May 7

She finally talked. Once she got her sense back, I confronted her with what she'd just gone through with a pinch of faerie dust. I held up pouch (full of salt) and asked her what she thought would happen to her if I dosed her with all that.

It was a bluff, but it worked. She couldn't know I had almost no faerie dust left, and clearly she knew what the stuff could do.

So she spilled what she knew, which turned out to be less than I hoped, but enough to understand what's going on.

This "Coterie" that the notebook mentioned is an underground organization that collects arcane secrets, artifacts, and creatures for the purpose of manipulating people and event from behind the scenes. Think of a sex scandal in the last century? Coterie. Sex tape of the rich and famous? Coterie. Porn industry? Coterie.

Jeovah Girl's real name is Olivia Tremblay. She's officially a worker for the Church of Scientology, but also a scout for the Coterie, like the young man who was with her when they visited my place weeks ago. They are handsomely compensated for putting themselves at risk visiting the homes of people they suspect to have dealings with the arcane world. Obviously, after they visited me in March, they marked me as a target, and the rest is history. The Coterie was notified and sent a task force specially trained and equipped to capture arcane threats (like faeries).

Olivia wasn't able to get into details about the task force. They operate from another location than the Church of Scientology, and they don't mingle with "mundanes" like herself. She made it sound like their tactics involved using other arcane creatures and some protective talismans, but mostly they seem to rely on the element of surprise. I'm deducing that they don't have a lot of power and largely operate in the shadows.

As for Attitude and Minx, she says they (and probably several other captives) are being held in special warded cages and used to "charge up" the E-meters that Scientology uses to scan people. It turns out (or at least so she says) that E-meters don't measure anything; they lower an individual's will and critical sense, leading to greater credulity and a willingness to follow suggestions. That includes confessions, requests for large donations, working for free, and so on.

My first thought to rescue the faeries through direct infiltration of the local church, but Olivia's enthusiasm for that idea got me suspicious. Maybe she was playing me and sending me into a trap. A quick threat of faerie dust, and she confessed. The faerie room is well guarded and we won't get in.

That, unfortunately, is as helpful as she was going to be. I've got the beginning of a plan, but I need to talk to Brooke about it. We have to do something quickly before her unexplained disappearance raises suspicions.

--Jaycee