As he rose and stepped around the table to collect Nana Possible, the gentleman in the silver-gray tuxedo spoke very softly into the audio pickup concealed in his collar stud. "Order desk, code chablis; confirm."

"Confirmed," came the crisp female voice in his ear. "All security measures on line. System status is active, protocol is covert."

There was a half-second's pause, then: "You do realize you're blowing eight months' worth of your annual budget on this one event, right?"

"Nine," the man in the tuxedo said wryly. "And only if nothing actually happens."

"Point taken," the desk operator said. ""Still, we're not registering any meta-class energy signatures anywhere in the facility."

"Yet, you mean. Stand by," he added, as Nana took his right arm. Her conservatively cut jade-green evening gown took a good quarter century off her age (which he had carefully not asked). He still looked younger than she did, but only by a few scant years.

"Going over your lines?" Nana asked him as they headed for the stage.

"Something like that," he replied. "Just be ready in case you have to improvise."

The response came in stereo. "Expecting trouble, are we?" said Nana and the order desk operator, in accidentally perfect synchronization. The latter personage chortled into his ear over the audio link.

"Comes with the category," he told Nana, with a light twirl of the short black staff he carried in his left hand. A moment later, they arrived at the podium as the emcee's voice proclaimed over the sound system:

"And now, Nana Possible and the Gray Cardinal!"