Kaneki knew Kuri had gotten to the gazebo before him. He couldn't see her, but he could smell her. He hoped a bath and some shampoo would help that stench, but he kinda doubted it. After all, she was, well, dead.

"Kuri, I know you're here somewhere." Kaneki called as quietly as he could. "Come on out. I have your clothes and some blood and the latest Takatsuki book." He added that last part as a blatant bribe.

"The blood!" A voice that might have been Kuri's if she had a really bad cold and had lost every last bit of her mind hissed from the bushes at the rear of the gazebo's base.

Kaneki walked around behind the gazebo peeking into the thick foliage. "Kuri?"

Eyes glowing a horrible rust red, she stumbled out of the bushes and lurched toward him. "Give me the blood!"

She looked out of control and out of her mind. Hurriedly Kaneki reached into his bag, jerked out the bag of blood, and handed it to her. "Hang on a sec, I have a pair of scissors in here somewhere and I'll—"

With a really disgusting snarl, Kuri tore open the little lip of the bag with her teeth, upended the bag, and gulped down the blood. When she'd squeezed the bag dry she dropped it on the ground. She was breathing like she'd just run a race when she finally looked up at him.

"Ain't pretty, is it?"

Kaneki smiled and tried my best to ignore how horrified he really was. "Well, my mother always said that correct grammar and good manners make one more attractive, so you might want to drop the 'ain't' and try saying 'please' next time."

"I need more blood."

"I got you four more packets. They're in the refrigerator at the place you're going to be staying. Do you want to change your clothes here, or wait till we get there and take a shower? It's just down the street."

"What are you talking about? Just give me my clothes and the blood."

Her eyes weren't such a bright red, but she still looked mean and mad. She was even thinner and paler than she had been the night before. Kaneki drew a deep breath. "This has to stop, Kuri."

"This is how it is with me now. This isn't going to change. I'm not going to change. I'll always be dead."

"You're not dead" was all he could think to say.

"I feel dead."

"Okay, well, you kinda look dead. I know when I look like crap I usually feel like crap, too. Maybe that's part of why you feel so bad." Kaneki reached into my bag and pulled out one of her crystal necklaces. "Check out what I brought you."

"Crystals can fix the world." Kuri breathed. "But…I'm not alive. That's what I keep trying to get you to understand."

"Kuri, I am not going to understand that because you're walking and talking. I don't think you're anything like dead—I think you're changed. Not like I changed, as in becoming a half-ghoul. You've made a different kind of Change, and I think it's harder than the one that happened to me. That's why you're going through all of this. Would you please give me a chance to help you? Can't you just try to believe everything might turn out okay?"

"I don't know how you can be so sure about that," she said.

Kaneki gave her the answer he felt deep in his soul, and knew the moment he'd said it that it was the right thing to say. "I'm sure about you being okay because I love you."

The hope that flashed in Kuri's red eyes was almost painful to look at. "You really haven't given up on me?"

"I haven't." Kaneki ignored her smell and gave her a firm hug, which she didn't return, but she also didn't jerk away from him or take a bite out of his neck, so he figured they were making progress. "Come on. The place I found for you to stay is just down the street."

Kaneki started walking, believing she would follow him, which she did after only a slight hesitation.

"Rize won't like this."

"Yes and you need to explain that to me." Kaneki said firmly.

"Well remember how I told you I was fed ghoul flesh as a child, and it gave me power over ghouls?"

Kaneki did remember. "Yes."

"Well that hasn't changed. Kano gave all the dead ghouls a mixture of his blood and Rize's blood. He said it's like he's our father and she's our mother." She shuddered. "But he put some of my transformed blood in the mixture for the others. That's why they obey me."

"So how did that revive you?"

"Well Rize is…a special ghoul. I'm sure you've noticed." Kuri gestured to his kagune. "Her restorative powers mixed with my own sacred powers did this. Kano said my blood was the key to the transformation." She made a face. "I hate that my blood is making more like me."

"You…don't look so good." Kaneki stopped, giving Kuri a once over. "What's wrong with you?"

"I need blood!" She wiped a shaky hand across her dirty face. "That little bag wasn't enough. You stopped me from feeding yesterday, so I haven't fed since the day before. It—it's bad when I don't feed." She tilted her head weirdly, like she was listening to a voice in the wind. "I can hear the blood whispering through their veins."

"Whose veins?" Kaneki was as intrigued as he was grossed out.

She made a sweeping gesture with her arm that was feral and graceful. "The humans sleeping around us." Her voice had dropped to a husky murmur. There was something in the tone of it that made him want to move closer to her, even though her eyes had flushed a bright scarlet again and she smelled so bad it made him want to gag. "One of them is awake." She pointed to the huge mansion to the right of where they'd stopped. "It's a girl . . . a teenager . . . she's by herself in her room . . ."

Kuri's voice was an alluring singsong. Kaneki's heart had started to beat hard against my chest. "How do you know that?" He whispered.

She turned her burning eyes on him. "There's so much I know. I know about your bloodlust. I can smell it. There's no reason you shouldn't give in to it. We could enter the house. Go to the girl's room and take her together. I'd share her with you, Ken."

For a moment Kaneki was lost in the obsession that heated Kuri's eyes, and in his own need. He hadn't eaten since Kano's lab. Completely mesmerized, he listened to Kuri spin a web of darkness that was catching him in its beautiful, sticky depths.

"I can show you how to get in the house. I can sense secret ways. You could get the girl to invite me in—I can't go into a person's home now unless they invite me first. But once I'm in . . ." Kuri laughed.

It was her laugh that snapped him out of it. Kuri used to have the best laugh ever. It was happy and young and innocently in love with life. Now what came out of her mouth was a mean, twisted echo of that old joy.

"The apartment is two houses down. There's blood in the fridge." Kaneki turned and started walking quickly down the street.

"It's not warm and it's not fresh." She sounded pissed, but she was following him again."

"It's fresh enough, and there's a microwave. You can nuke it."

She didn't say anything else, and they came to the mansion in just a few minutes. Kaneki led her around to the garage apartment, opened the outside door, and stepped in. Kaneki was halfway up the stairs when he realized Kuri wasn't behind me. Hurrying back down to the door he saw her standing outside in the darkness. All that was clearly visible of her was the red of her eyes.

"You have to invite me in," she said.

"Oh, sorry." What she'd said before hadn't really registered with him, and now he felt a jolt of shock at this further proof of Kuri's soul-deep difference. "Uh, come on in," I said quickly.

Kuri stepped forward and ran smack into an invisible barrier. She gave a painful yelp, which turned into a snarl. Her eyes glowed up at him. "Guess your plan won't work. I can't get in there."

"I thought you said you just had to be invited in."

"By someone who lives at the house. You don't live here."

Above me, Tsukiyama's coldly polite voice called out. "I live here. Come in."

Kuri stepped over the threshold with no problem at all. She started up the stairs and had almost reached Kaneki when Tsukiyama's voice must have registered on her. Kaneki saw her face change from expressionless to slit-eyed and dangerous.

"You brought me to HIS house!" Kuri was talking to Kaneki, but staring at Tsukiyama.

"Yes, and why is actually easy to explain." Kaneki considered grabbing her in case she started to bolt, and then he remembered how unnaturally strong she'd become, so he started to center himself instead, wondering if his kagune was strong enough.

"How could you explain it! You know I hate Gourmet." Then she did look at Kaneki. "I die and now she's your friend?"

Kaneki was opening his mouth to assure Kuri that Tsukiyama and he hadn't exactly buddied up when Tsukiyama's haughty voice interrupted him.

"Of course not. Alas, Kaneki and I are not friends. Your precious Anteiku clique is still intact. The only reason I'm involved at all is because I owe you both a debt. So come in or do not, it does not matter to me . . ." Her voice trailed off as he gracefully headed back into the apartment.

"Do you trust me?" Kaneki asked Kuri.

She looked at him for what seemed like a long time before she answered. "Yes."

"Then come on." Kaneki continued up the stairs with Kuri following reluctantly behind.

Tsukiyama was lounging on the couch pretending to watch MTV. When they entered the room he wrinkled up her nose and said, "What is that disdisgusting smell? It is like something died and—" He looked up and caught sight of Kuri. His eyes widened. "Never mind." He pointed to the rear of the apartment. "Bathroom's back there."

Kaneki handed Kuri his bag. "Here ya go. We'll talk when you come out."

"Blood first," Kuri said.

"Go on back and I'll bring a bag to you."

Kuri was glaring at Tsukiyama, who was staring at the TV. "Bring two," she practically hissed.

"Fine. I'll bring two."

Without another word, Kuri left the room. Kaneki watched her move down the short hall with a predatory, feral stride and felt a rush of arousal.

"Vile and disturbing," Tsukiyama ruined it. "You should have warned me."

"I tried. You thought you knew everything. Remember?" Kaneki shot back. Then he hurried into the little kitchen and got the bags of blood. "You also said you'd be nice."

Kaneki knocked on the closed bathroom door. Kuri didn't say anything, so he opened it slowly and peeked in. She was holding her jeans, T-shirt, and boots, and was just standing there, in the middle of the very nice bathroom, staring at the clothes. She was partially turned away from him, so he couldn't be sure, but he thought she might have been crying.

"I brought the blood," he said softly.

Kuri shook herself, rubbed a hand across her face, and then tossed the clothes and boots onto the top of the marble counter by the sink. She held out her hand for the bags. He gave them to her, along with the pair of scissors he'd grabbed from the kitchen.

"Do you need help finding anything?" Kaneki asked.

Kuri shook her head. Without looking at me she said, "Are you waiting around because you're curious about how I look naked or because you want a sip of the blood?"

"Neither." Kaneki kept my voice perfectly normal, refusing to get pissed at her when she was so clearly baiting him. "I'll be out in the living room. You can pitch your dirty clothes out in the hall and I'll throw them away for you." He shut the bathroom door firmly behind him.

Tsukiyama was shaking his head at Kaneki when he rejoined him. "And you believe you can save her?"

"Keep your voice down!" Kaneki whispered. Then he sat heavily on the opposite end of the couch. "And, no, I don't think I can save her. I think she is perfectly capable of saving herself; but I just can't leave her alone."

Tsukiyama shuddered. "She smells as bad as she looks."

"I'm as aware of that as she is."

"I was simply saying—."

"Say whatever, just don't say it to Kuri."

"Then for the record I want to make it clear that that the girl does not feel safe to me," Tsukiyama said, holding up his hand like he was taking an oath. "I have two words for her: time bomb. I think she'd even freak out Yoshimura."

"I really wish you'd stop," Kaneki said.

They heard the bathroom door open and close, so the conversation stalled. Kaneki grabbed a garbage bag from under the sink in the kitchen and crammed Kuri's disgusting clothes in it, tying it up and then opening the apartment door and tossing it down the stairs.

"Vile," Tsukiyama repeated.

Kaneki plopped down on the couch, ignored her and stared, unseeing, at the TV screen.

"Are we not going to talk about it." Tsukiyama jerked his chin in the direction of the bathroom.

"Kuri is a her, not an it."

"She smells like an it."

"And no. We're not going to talk about her until she joins us," Kaneki said firmly.