Rafferty replayed the last jump in her head dozens of times. She was still satisfied that it was a good plan, and that she'd nailed the jump, but if she hadn't been so busy congratulating herself, she might have thought to, you know, twist out of the way when she saw the gun.

She didn't understand why Alex had gone to such lengths to kill a bunch of weirdos from up north. Vincent said that Alex was always two steps ahead of everyone else. He said Alex must be planning something bigger. That only led Rafferty to wonder what terrible thing was going to happen because she screwed up.

Her attempt to patch things up with Blaspheme hadn't gone well. Blaspheme was adamant that Rafferty should have used her position as "new favorite" to make Max understand. Rafferty had meant to explain that she had just walked into the argument, and that if she had said anything she thought that Max would have felt ganged up on, and been even angrier at Blaspheme.

When she opened her mouth, though, what she actually said was that she wasn't Max's new favorite, but that if she were then maybe Blaspheme was just jealous because she considered herself Max's favorite. The discussion had gone downhill from there.

Ugh.

She was sure Blaspheme would get over it, but for now she didn't have anyone to help take her mind off things. Cody was still convalescing, and Sheridan had been plucked for an agricultural assignment.

At least she had her music.

Rafferty didn't have many things from Before, but her phonograph was her favorite. It was a big old thing, with a crank. Gus had infused it with Blue, so that it would play all the records that Rafferty liked. If she cranked the handle a dozen times, it could practically run forever.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

She resisted turning it on for a while, afraid that Blaspheme would complain about the noise, but she needing to stop this thinking about this stuff.

Besides, let her come and complain. At least we'd be talking.

She put on one of her records, and dropped the needle. Every time Rafferty heard that little crack and hiss, just before the music started, she was happy.

Gus said that by the time they started making the music that Rafferty like best, the people from Before had mostly moved on from big, vinyl records to other methods. Those methods didn't work anymore. But because of something called hipsters, some of the people from Before had gone back and put the music Rafferty loved on records like this. Hipsters, it seemed, loved the crackle and hiss as much as she did.

Thank goodness for hipsters.

Sure, they still made music now, but there weren't many instruments, and all the songs were the same. There was always a guy, and he met a girl, and like two hours later they were hopelessly in love, and, oh crap, now the guy is dead, and the girl is pining or maybe she's dead too, and in the very best of cases, they're like two trees or something that can love each other forever in silence.

Rafferty needed something with a beat.

Granted, she didn't really understand what the people from Before were singing about most of the time. Rafferty had only a faint grasp of what a train was, for example, and had absolutely no idea what a credit card might be, but this song got her up and moving. She let herself get lost in the rhythm, amazed, like she was every time, that a long dead singer could be heard again because a needle vibrated through a series of grooves.

Rafferty was just starting to relax when she heard a knock at the door. She marched over and opened it, ready to tell Blaspheme that she was going to play her music if she wanted to play her music, but if Blaspheme wanted to come in and talk, that would be fine.

It wasn't Blaspheme. It was Katrin, the B Hall superstar, and she was dressed in her white gear.

Like she was going out.

To hunt.

"So I have a question," Katrin said. "Do you always follow the rules?"