Since NASA (sort-of) confirmed the discovery of Earth’s new moon, regular zodiacs have been temporarily suspended for Spooky Season. Because traditional signs don’t account for shapeshifters, galactic inns, or kaijus with fashion hobbies, this October we’re astrologically operating under House Andrews rules.
Move over, Mercury, it’s the Horde’s turn to be in retrograde! Welcome to the Ilona Andrews Zodiac*:
Kate Daniels – Capricorn
You head the zodiac because you’re the one pulling us all after you.
After long years of holding the world together by sarcasm, grit and pain threshold alone, you’ve learned to set some ward boundaries. And then the world has the nerve to turn around and tell you not to take the Babylonian towers at the edges of your land personally?! But you’re literally a person!
So, now you’re in your ‘we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it’ era of protecting your peace, one eye roll at a time. The rest of us will just learn to keep up.
Adaline Moore – Aquarius
You’ve made a life out of surviving the unsurvivable.
Betrayals and incompetence from those around don’t stop you. If someone ghosts you, you respect the dead and move on, winning battles and making allies on the way up. The Adas of the world put the ‘Here be monsters’ on our maps of the unexplored.
When it’s your turn to get mood poisoning, you like to take your pet beast for a wander around the local heavily-wooded area. Becoming the thing that terrifies the townspeople is free.
Maud Demille – Pisces
Welcome to the high melting point of ionic compounds!
You suffer like they’re handing out prizes for it, and would rather live on metaphorical Karhari than ask for help. Once you accept that your empathy for people can be returned, and you deserve to be helped and loved back, you shine like no other. On and off space stations.
Don’t look now, but there might be a whole planet of loyal vampires who have your back.
Arabella Baylor – Aries
You feel and love more deeply than most, but you can also be a weapon of mass disrespect when you choose to.
People underestimate you at their peril, and you’re not above leaning into their biases as a public service. Who else will teach them the lessons they so clearly need, like: “silly doesn’t mean stupid”; “chatter was given to me so I can better conceal my thoughts”; and, crucially, “mess with the honk, you get the bonk”.
The world can be a lot when you’re a volcano doing its best to hold explosions in check with nothing but sheer will and a well-tailored outfit. Everything will be ok. And you have people you can love in the meantime.
Hugh d’Ambray – Taurus
You’d rather die on your white unicorn horse than get off it.
Mortals love to spread rumors about your past; you consider it fanfiction. Even if they don’t recognize it, you know the path from iron-fisted warlord to iron-willed protector took a lot of introspection. Preceptor in the streets, up all night pondering corporeal existence in the sheets, y’all!
Keep healing, digging safe moats, and proving that redemption, once chosen, doesn’t need anyone’s permission. You hear that, megalomaniac wizards everywhere?
Catalina – Gemini
The living embodiment of your duality: enchanted voice, deadly gift; anxious heart, brilliant mind.
You got such a head for knowin’. When you roll up to your first rodeo, no one’s able to tell, because you’ve researched rodeos a bunch beforehand. But if they ask you a question about your personal life, you’re apt to freeze. It’s frustrating when everyone mistakes that shyness for fragility.
You don’t need to choose between the two halves, Siren and Harpy. You were always meant to be both the melody and the scream.
Julie Lennart-Olsen – Cancer
If love demands a limb, you sharpen the Stymphalian-blade knife yourself.
There’s no personal sacrifice too high when the people you care for need it. Your accomplishments can seem like a curse: seeing everyone’s true colours, remembering everything, and building blood armor out of the pain. Even when you think no one recognises you behind that thick carapace of disguise, remember that you are known and you are loved.
They call you defiant and bratty. You didn’t choose this honor; it was awarded to you in combat. Wait … why does that medal look suspiciously like a metal rose?
Curran – Leo
Let’s be honest, who else could do this job? Not Jim, that’s for sure.
You definitely could have waited to be king, but the spotlight finds your First nature wherever you go. This is the sign of solar gravity; people can’t help being pulled into your orbit. The Beast Lord who built an impenetrable Keep out of discipline and sheer decibels!
That’s not to say your life is all hakuna matata: the only fairies you’ve come across lay dead at the feet of the Sharatum who looked you dead in the Alpha headlights and said, “Here, kitty, kitty”. But you’d roar it no other way.
George Camarine – Virgo
You’re playing chess while everyone else is still trying to figure out the rules to Candy Land.
In the endless pursuit of order and solutions to the great cosmic problems, you sometimes forget that the people you love aren’t pieces on the board – they get to move themselves. Yes, we know you’re better at thinking ahead and across parallel realities. Allow some surprise in your life! Even your leisure time comes with footnotes, and your actual hobby is usually researching the hobby.
We sometimes giggle when you keep tripping on that rug you sweep things under. It does you good to be reminded that you’re still human, and not just the algorithm that holds the universe together.
Dina Demille – Libra
You’ve turned diplomacy and balance into an art form, and simply being in your presence is regulating for those battling chaos.
Equal parts empathy, boundary-setting, and creative problem disintegration, the space around you is a haven because you are one. Calm in the storm, kind to the lost, and willing to sweep up a galaxy’s worth of messes, your shoulders would rival Atlas’. You are the supreme back-haver of all support systems, and deep down you don’t even understand why everyone is on their own journey? That’s a horrible idea, we should all be forming supportive Hordes to see us through!
Sure, you do sometimes take risks and fall in love with werewolf poets here and there. But who amongst us hasn’t counted their philosophical chickens before they scholared?
Roman the Black Volhv – Scorpio
We’re not the villain. We’re the warning.
Someone has to commune with the mysteries of the void, and take over the responsibility of meeting the divine in its terrible aspect. Look for us where the shadows hang out, for a reminder that endless glow, without contrast or rest, is just another kind of destruction. We’re the keepers of the necessary dark.
When conditions are met, we can be very nice. Most people are still trying to figure out what those conditions are, so in the meantime, we’ll be misunderstood. Send help. And snacks. (Snacks first.)
Orro – Ophiuchus the Phoenix (the secret 13th sign)
Because any star-studded event needs a Red Cleaver chef! Yay, astral jokes!
The sign of dramatic reinvention, emotional artistry, and setting things on FIRE! when people fail to appreciate your genius. You rise from your Shakespearean-level despair and your dramatic woods every few months, covered in flour and glory, and produce something that makes the galaxy weep. The melodrama is a necessary step.
Those born under Orro are passionate, perfectionist, and possess a heart as big as a mango cupcake is delicious. Don’t disturb the masters at work.
Nevada Baylor – Sagittarius
Truth is your compass, and you never miss north.
You’re the first responder in a crisis: calm, steady, and leading when the world is caught in a wildfire. The steady center that holds the zodiac family together, you’re the ego that mediates between Arabella’s brilliant id and Catalina’s relentless superego. You see through lies the way others see through glass, but sometimes you have to hide the full reach of your power, because freedom means everything to you.
Keep chasing the horizon. The blaze bends for those who know where they’re aiming.
*Before anyone asks: no, I didn’t pull the character charts or call an astrologer. These are vibe-based matches, not canon-compliant book birthdays. I don’t like to pay attention to detail. That’s the thing the devil is in!
This was great.