Working Title WIP:
CONVENIENCE WITCH
Throughout all of time and across the globe, people have had inconvenient emergencies: sprained an ankle, need milk for baby, forgot to get a birthday card. In every location lucky enough to have one, there's a Convenience Witch.
Oh, the Witch won't have a sign up, but everyone knows there's that one shop in the neighborhood where you can get ANYTHING you need. Mostly, you need a pack of gum or a morning doughnut, but when the chips are down, the shop and its Witch will never disappoint!
Lupe Reyes got her first job working for Tia Gastelum in the bodega that summer. If Lupe'd been older, maybe she would have noticed just how conveniently Tia Gastelum's tiny New York Grocery-&-Go always had what its customers needed. If Lupe hadn't been so eager to please, she might have asked more questions before agreeing to 'look in the back' for misplaced inventory. There wasn't much room behind the last shelves after all. If Lupe wasn't so stubborn, she probably wouldn't have pulled so hard on that crate of detergent. But she did and the front of it snapped open and she's face to face with a glowing, rippling, talking mirror spooling out menu options for something called the Interdimensional Switch Witch Emergency Exchange Network.
"T-tia?! What's? What's?" Lupe scrambled back from the not-really-a-crate crate, jostling her elbows against the canned tuna and boxes of powdered potatoes stacked to either side. The glow off the roiling mercury cast the claustrophobic aisle in waves of greens and blues.
The voice just kept rattling through the options, "... three for Expedited Special Order, four for Temporary Witch Substitute, five for Complaints And Concerns..." In the distance, the door chimed and the front grate rattled down its tracks. The lights in the front of the store clacked off.
There wasn't room to turn around, but Lupe shuffled back away from the vertical sheet of molten metal as fast as she could. Tia Gastelum's warm grandmother belly against her back stopped her without warning. "It's fine, mija. You're safe. I'm en Network."
My piece of YA fiction kicks off in a NYC bodega but ricochets Lupe, a young Witch-In-Training, across time and across the globe within the Interdimensional Switch Witch Emergency Exchange Network (iSWEEN). From an apotek in medieval Iceland full of dried herbs and Scandinavian trade goods to a 20th century Sari Sari Store in the Philippines selling candy and cigarettes out front the family home, Lupe's got her work cut out for her! Our Witch-To-Be will need to polish her observational skills, perfect her inventory memory, and learn to read between the lines with customers who all desperately need ... something. After all, a Witch's greatest powers come from their heart and mind together.
P.S. Remember, you can always trust the cat.
