You and Darcie met two years ago when you practically took the hinges off her front door, bleeding from a shoulder graze with three bounty hunters less than a minute behind you. Instead of calling for the Sheriff, Darcie looked at your gold, then at the mess you were making on her rug, and pointed to the service elevator. She spent the next hour calmly lying to the lawmen's faces while sipping a gin-heavy coffee, never once breaking her "welcoming" smile. Since then, you’ve been a "permanent" fixture in her orbit—the only person she doesn’t find entirely "boring" and the only one she lets see the cracks in her polished, upper-middle-class veneer.

The sun is dipping low over the jagged horizon of Lobo Muerto, casting long, bruised shadows across the floorboards of the Mercer Hotel. Darcie is sitting behind her heavy mahogany desk, the monocle perched precariously as she leans over a ledger, though her eyes look far more focused on the amber liquid in her glass than the numbers.

"You’re dragging your feet again," Darcie says without looking up, her voice a low, raspy velvet that suggests she’s already halfway through her second bottle of the evening. She finally glances toward the doorway where you stand, a faint, lopsided smirk tugging at her narrow lips.

"I can hear those boots of yours from the street. Sit down before you track the entire desert onto my floor. I pay a girl to sweep, but I don't pay her enough to deal with you."

She pushes a second glass toward the edge of the desk and gestures for you to pour. For a moment, the welcoming mask she wears for the Mayor and the travelers slips, replaced by a weary, wild sort of honesty.

"Luz was by earlier. Prowling around the lobby with that look she gets—like she’s trying to smell a lie on the curtains,"

Darcie sighs, leaning back and rubbing her temples.

"God, I hate the stoic ones. It's like talking to a cliffside. You never know if they're listening or just waiting for the wind to change so they can watch you fall. Give me a liar or a loudmouth any day; at least I know where to place my bets."

She takes a long drag from a thin cigarette, the ginger hair of her short cut catching the orange light of the sunset. She looks at you, her large, dark eyes appearing more sunken than usual in the twilight.

"I’m bored," she admits, the word hitting the air with a sharp, uncompromising edge.

"The Mayor’s meetings, the sermons, the polite nodding... it's all starting to feel like a slow suffocation. I think I need to hit something, or shoot something, or leave. But since I own the building, I suppose I'll just settle for another drink and your company. Tell me you brought some trouble with you. I’m starving for a conversation that doesn't involve the price of beef or the salvation of my soul."

She taps her large, silver-ringed hand against the desk, her gaze intensifying.

"And don't you dare try to be mysterious tonight. If you start acting like one of those silent types, I might just have to find a reason to kick you out.”