A couple of teenage cashiers blinked at him, and an elderly woman perusing the vitamins turned to gawk at him through her spectacles. I sighed, then nodded to the nearest cashier, a too-skinny, too-blonde girl who looked as though she were impatient for her cigarette break. "Uh, hi," I said. "Did you see me come in here a minute ago?"

"Or a pregnant woman," Michael said. "About this high." He stuck his hand out flat about at the level of his own ear.

The female cashier traded a look with her counterpart. "Seen you, mister?"

I nodded. "Another guy, like me. Tall, skinny, all in black-jacket like mine, but all black clothes underneath."

The girl licked her lips and gave us a calculating look. "Maybe I have," she said. "What's in it for me?"

Michael rolled forward a step, a growl bubbling up out of his throat. I grabbed at his shoulder and leaned back. "Whoah, whoah, Michael," I yelped. "Slow down, man."

"There isn't time to slow down," Michael muttered. "You detect. I'm looking." With that, he turned and strode off deeper into the store, casually carrying the sword in his left hand, his right upon the weapon's grip. "Charity!"

I muttered something unflattering under my breath, then turned back to the cashier. I fumbled in my pockets for my billfold, and managed to produce a sorry trio of wrinkled fives. I held them up and said, "Okay. My evil twin or else a pregnant woman. You seen either one?"

The girl looked at the bills and then back at me and rolled her eyes. Then she leaned out from her counter and plucked them from my hands. "Yeah," she said. "She went down aisle five a few minutes ago. Back toward the freezer section."

"Yeah?" I asked. "Then what?"

She smiled. "What? Is this your brother or something, running around with your woman? Am I going to see this on Larry Fowler tomorrow?"

I narrowed my eyes. "It's complicated," I said. "What else did you see?"

She shrugged. "She paid for some stuff, and went to that van out there. It wouldn't start. I saw you-or the guy that looks like you, come up to her and start talking to her. She looked pretty pissed at him, but she walked off with him. I didn't think anything of it."

My stomach gave a little lurch. "Walked off?" I said. "Which way?"

The cashier shrugged. "Look, mister, she just looked like she was getting a ride somewhere. She wasn't fighting or nothing."

"Which way!" I thundered. The cashier blinked, and her jaded exterior wobbled for a moment. She pointed down the street-toward Graceland.