Free Nine Lives Last Forever by Rebecca M. Hale

spiral staircase stretched above the faux ceiling, circling its way up into a steeple mounted on the top of the dome. The winding staircase terminated within the steeple at a small attic. I stared at the model, trying to imagine the view from the magical little room perched at the top of the dome.
    “Have you been up there yet?” I asked, pointing to the model.
    “No,” Monty sighed ruefully. “They’re awfully restrictive about that area—afraid someone might fall out, I guess.” He winked at me. “I’ve been bugging Sam to get me in. He’s one of the few people with a key.”
    We left the South Light Court and walked back out into the rotunda. I was hoping to extract Dilla’s package from Monty’s suit pocket and start my trip back to the Green Vase, but Monty wasn’t yet finished with his tour. He began ticking off facts on his long, skinny fingers.
    “Let’s see, the floor design spreading out from the staircase—that’s done in pink Tennessee marble. And those big gray walls surrounding us, they’re all Colorado limestone.”
    Monty pointed at a Hispanic couple walking across the main floor of the rotunda. The woman was dressed in an elaborate white wedding gown, decorated with yards and yards of pearl-shaped beads. The man wore a black tuxedo, accented with a cummerbund brightly striped in reds, greens, and yellows. A couple of attendants followed, each of them dressed in formal attire, one of them carrying a fiddle.
    “That’ll be a marriage queuing up,” Monty said, glancing at his watch. “Come on, we should have enough time to check out the Ceremonial Rotunda before they get started. It’s right at the top of the marble stairs.” Monty grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the steps.
    “All right,” I replied wearily. “But then, I really need to get back to the shop.”
    Monty continued to pepper me with trivia while we climbed up the steps to the second floor. “Did you know?” he asked as we stepped into a smaller, more intimate cove formed in between the second and third floors. “This is where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe got hitched. They call this the Ceremonial Rotunda.”
    A bronze bust had been placed at the edge of the cove. The head and shoulders of a man with a prominent nose, wide elephant ears, and a broad humorous smile had been positioned so that he overlooked the designated location for City Hall’s marriage ceremonies.
    I had noticed several similar monuments on my earlier walk around City Hall, but I had been so taken with the decorations on the walls and ceiling, I hadn’t stopped to familiarize myself with any of the memorialized figures.
    Monty sidled up to the bust and wrapped his right arm around its bronze shoulders. “This guy,” Monty said, his voice dropping reverently, “is a legend in San Francisco politics. Most of these busts are monuments dedicated to former Mayors. But this one is for a former Supervisor, Harvey Milk.”
    Monty stepped back from the bust to let me examine it more closely. Thirty years after his death, Harvey Milk was still famous throughout San Francisco, not only for his politics—he was the city’s first openly gay elected official—but for the tragic way in which he died. Harvey Milk and the Mayor of his time, George Moscone, were assassinated in City Hall by one of the other Supervisors. The horrifying event had shaken the city to its core.
    A relief had been carved into the marble monument beneath the bust. The scene depicted a line of citizens marching through the streets of San Francisco holding candles in the air, commemorating the outpouring of grief that swept the city streets following the shootings.
    Monty paced into the center of the rotunda while I bent down to study the base of the Milk monument. He was preparing to launch into the next topic of his lecture as I straightened and turned to face him.
    But right at that moment, a strange feeling swept over me—an unsettled sensation, as if something were