When Earth is conquered by the sinister Greys and the alien who killed Evie's husband returns seeking her help, she must find a way to enact her revenge and fight the growing feelings for the creature who is an exact replica of the man she loved.
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The hangover took a hammer to my skull and drove the nail right between my eyes.
Groaning, I turned onto my back. The floor was cold and unforgiving beneath me. I'd fallen asleep curled up against the door or passed out might have been a better way to describe it, because I couldn't remember much beyond sobbing pathetically into my lap after Tom had gone. If he'd returned during the night and tried to get in, no doubt my booze-saturated body had acted like the best doorstop known to man.
My stomach churned at the thought he might not have come back. He probably hadn't. Why would he? Who would willingly waltz back into my wasp's nest of venom and hatred?
And why did I care anyway?
Bile billowed upwards into my throat and I held it there, my hand over my mouth, desperately trying to keep it at bay. When I realised it would wait no longer, I scrambled to my feet, yanked the door open and staggered up the dark corridor towards the toilets.
Best efforts aside, the toilets still elicited a stench that did my nausea no favours and I threw myself into the first cubicle, holding myself up against the cubicle walls as I retched until I thought my innards were going to be vomited out with the wine. Before flushing out the bowl, I made sure to pee, grimacing and trying to breathe only out of my mouth. I hated using the toilets at the best of times, and this really wasn't the best of times.
Vik usually kept bottles of water in the cubicles to flush out the toilets, but with the lack of rainwater during the sticky unbearable shroud of summer, the difficulty in finding alternative water supplies and the logistical nightmare of lugging the filled bottles down into the tunnels, we were having to use it sparingly. The bottle kept by the side of this toilet was filled with a cloudy brown liquid that did nothing to ease my queasiness, but I tried not to look at it as I unscrewed the lid and poured it into the bowl. After all, it couldn't be much worse than what I'd already thrown up in there.
At the basin, I rinsed my mouth with water from one of the smaller, safe-to-drink bottles that we'd brought back from Tom and Lena's stash in Spencer House and squeezed a tiny pea-sized blob of toothpaste onto my finger and rubbed it liberally over my teeth. Quickly fastening the latch on the main door, I returned to the basin and used the liquid soap and some of the bottled water to clean myself up. It was the best thing we had to a shower and while it might help to rinse off any dirt and grime of the city, the shame of what I'd done the night before still lingered all over my skin.
In the mirror, I hardly recognised the person staring back at me. Little thread veins had burst on my cheeks where I'd strained to be sick. Dark shadows encircled my eyes. I looked pale and thin and just pure tired of everything. It made me think of her – Old World Evie – the one who'd hidden away, the one who'd been scared of her own shadow, the one who'd gotten used to the excessive drinking and morning-after despair.
