Drake stared at the lot owner.
He'd lived in Gotham for over a year. He'd seen things. He'd personally watched a man auction off what turned out to be someone else's liver. He'd thought he had calibrated expectations.
"Wait." He counted quietly. "So multiple people have died in this car."
"Johnny." He turned to the dealer. "We've been working together for months. You've never tried to move anything like this. What's actually going on with it?"
Johnny looked at the sedan the way you'd look at something that bit you once. Then he sighed the sigh of a man who'd been carrying this story and was tired of the weight.
"It's not moving anyway," he said. "Might as well."
"Car belonged to a Falcone lieutenant. Minor guy—small operation, nothing significant. He had an accident in it. GCPD impound, then it came back out through the usual channels." He paused. "Every owner after that had something happen to them. Worst case: four people, shotguns, inside the car, all at once. Same afternoon."
Drake made a quiet sound.
"I've bought it back three separate times from six different owners. Accidents. Shootings. One dealer thought he'd get clever, dumped it in a vacant lot across town—out of sight, out of mind." Johnny shook his head. "He was in Wayne Hospital by that evening. Morgue by midnight."
"Falcones decided they were done with it. Paid me two thousand to take it off their hands. I spent five hundred cleaning it up—new paint, new interior, I personally removed half a pound of bullets from the upholstery."
He looked at the car with the specific expression of someone who has stopped finding this interesting and started finding it personally threatening.
"Sold it. Got it back. Sold it again. Got it back. Last time it only came back with broken glass and a blown tire. Any worse and I'd be adding to the count." He spread his hands. "Nine lives on this thing. I'm not interested in being ten. If you know someone stupid enough or desperate enough to take it, they can have it. Free. I just want it off this lot."
Drake was already shaking his head with the conviction of a man who has done the math.
But Jude was nodding slowly, with the expression of someone who has also done the math and arrived at a different answer.
"No," Jude said. "At least three thousand."
"What." Drake turned to look at him. "There are nine corpses associated with this vehicle. You don't have nine lives!"
"Three thousand!" Johnny's head came up like a man who has just heard the sound of rescue. "Deal! No takebacks!!"
"No, what I mean is for you to pay me three thousand to take this car" Jude clarify.
Drake's jaw dropped.
"You're taking his murder car and making him give you three thousand dollars?"
"I'm taking on significant personal risk to solve his problem." Jude produced a candy cigarette from his jacket pocket and put it between his teeth. "Three thousand is a reasonable rate for that kind of service."
"Are you insane?"
"Do you want the deal or not?" Jude glanced at Johnny. "Decide fast. If you pass, and this car finds its next owner through someone else and come back to you, I'll charge five thousand instead."
Johnny went through several expressions in quick succession. Then he walked back into the trailer and returned with three thousand dollars in cash and a set of keys.
He held them out. "You better pray for yourself."
"Watch your mouth," Jude said, pocketing both. "If I die, the car comes back to you."
Johnny's entire demeanor shifted. "May you live long and prosper. May your days be many and your troubles light. May fortune smile upon you at every turn and may your enemies find better things to do—"
"I appreciate," Jude said, "how polite Gotham citizens become when properly motivated."
He walked toward the car.
Two hundred dollars and a tire shop later, the car had four functional wheels.
Jude settled into the driver's seat. Drake stood outside the window, looking in.
"You getting in? We're going the same direction."
"I'll take a taxi."
"Seriously."
Drake reached into Jude's jacket pocket, retrieved his phone, and held it up with one finger on the screen. "Wayne Hospital emergency line. One-touch dial. I've already set it up."
Jude took the phone back, shook his head, and reached into his other pocket.
Not for the car key. For something else—a silver key, slightly longer than normal, that caught the afternoon light in a way that keys didn't usually catch light. It sat warm in his palm.
He looked at it one more time before using it.
Disposable Holy Key — $300
Effect: Exorcism (one use)
Note: "Evil spirit, begone from this vessel!"
Spirit: "You leave first! Wait—didn't I have this exact argument with the last driver?"
Note 2: Whoever decided to format a holy relic as a car key is a genius and we do not ask follow-up questions.
He inserted the silver key into the ignition.
The shriek came from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously—the dashboard, the headrests, the door panels, the air inside the car. Thin and resentful and then, in the space of two seconds, gone. As if something that had been present in the vehicle had been specifically uninvited.
The silence afterward was a different kind of silence than the silence before.
"Well," Jude said. "That was something."
He turned on the air conditioning.
Warm air. Normal musty-upholstery smell. No copper. No red mist.
He pulled the silver key out. In his hand, it was already tarnishing—grey, then black, the metal going dull and corroded as he watched, spent.
He opened the system.
SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: Keeping Up With the Times
Still possessing people? How old-fashioned. Why haunt a person when you can haunt a car—always there, never leaves, nine victims and counting.
Mr. Evil Spirit was very talkative in this vehicle, on the lookout for number ten.
The local priest probably wouldn't exorcise a car. You, though. You adapt.
Status: COMPLETE
Reward: Trade captured spirit for protective amulet (9 charges)
He selected the trade.
The blackened key vanished.
A cross necklace settled into his palm. Iron, by the look of it, but warm instead of cold, which iron was not supposed to be. It gleamed with the particular steadiness of something that isn't light but behaves like it.
Protective Cross Necklace — $5,000 (market value)
Charges: 9/9
Effect: Protection from normal and supernatural harm
Jude slipped it over his head and tucked it under his shirt. Started the car with the regular key. Pulled out of the lot into traffic.
In the side mirror, Drake was still standing in the lot, watching him go, shaking his head with the slow persistence of a man running out of ways to express disbelief.
The math worked out cleanly.
Holy key: $300 from the system. Car: free, plus $3,000 cash received. New tires: $200. Protective cross: $5,000 in shop value, received at no cost.
Total position: $2,800 cash profit, one exorcised vehicle, one supernatural protection amulet with nine charges.
Not bad, Jude thought, for an afternoon's work.
He had no intention of selling the cross for asset points. In Gotham, luck was currency. Supernatural protection was infrastructure. You didn't liquidate infrastructure.
He merged onto the main road and headed for home.