‘What If…Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings?’ Excerpt Reveals this Universe's Pietro Maximoff

What if Wanda didn’t have to suffer her grief alone? In a distant corner of the Marvel Multiverse, Wanda Maximoff grew up in Queens as the adopted sister of Peter Parker. But where does her twin brother, Pietro Maximoff, fit into this unfamiliar picture?

In this exclusive excerpt from ‘What If… Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? A Scarlet Witch and Spider-Man Story’ by Seanan McGuire, a mysterious speedster called Pietro brings Wanda’s reality crumbling down. Uncovered secrets from Wanda's past force her to choose between the life she knows and the life she doesn’t…

What path will Wanda choose?

Read an exclusive excerpt from ‘What If… Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings’ below and follow Wanda as she searches for answers!

According to the pattern she's uncovered, the next likely target is a small single-family house in Forest Hills. There’s no one there when Wanda arrives, dropping out of the sky like a falling leaf. She lands lightly in the yard, noting the lack of cars in the driveway and the lack of light in the windows. The curtains are closed. It’s possible the residents are at work; it’s barely past noon, after all. But as she makes her way up the walk, she notices the piled-up newspapers by the door, and the small drift of missed delivery notices on the doorframe. The people who live here haven’t been home in at least a week.

That may explain why it’s an appealing enough target to attract this theoretical criminal. She leaves the porch and circles around the house, well aware of how exposed she is until she’s safely in the backyard. They have an apple tree. It’s clearly been cared for; these people are on vacation, not gone. The house is not abandoned. That makes her feel a little better, although still self-conscious as she moves to check the back door.

It’s locked. But the city already thinks she’s a villain, and the probability of a lock failing to hold when someone tries the knob is never zero; a little chaos forced into the tumblers and it clicks open without any sign that it’s been interfered with or manipulated.

She goes inside. She finds the living room. She settles on the couch to wait, sitting in deep shadow where anyone who comes through the front door won’t see her straightaway. If the owners return home unexpectedly, she can find out just how well that teleportation practice has really been going. Hopefully well enough that her master won’t need to come and bail her out of the local precinct when she’s already a villain in all the papers.

She reviews her charms and little memorized spells as she waits, taking this as an opportunity to go over the material she’s supposed to be studying today. She’ll have to go back to real classes soon, or she’s never going to catch up, and her financial aid won’t look kindly on her failing an entire semester, no matter what excuses Aunt May makes. But it’s harder and harder to think of a college degree as something worth pursuing when she’s working toward becoming a Mistress of the Mystic Arts, something that will leave her without the need for an ordinary job.

She mostly stays in school for the sake of Aunt May, and because her master encourages it. He was a surgeon before he became Sorcerer Supreme: He’d had what he insists on referring to as an “ordinary life,” something that would make sense on a résumé. He believes that experience was a valuable one, and says it helped to prepare him for some of the stranger aspects of the life he leads now. He wants Wanda to have the same chance.

Wanda wants to make them both happy, and so she stays, but she’s not sure she’ll stay all the way to the end. The diploma just doesn’t seem to matter the way it used to, and her priorities are shifting. Peter will stay. She has no question of that. Aunt May will get her college graduation, even if she doesn’t get two of them, and Wanda thinks she’ll be content with that.

One constant across the crimes she’s flagged as potentially associated with this mystery speedster: They happen in broad daylight. That’s part of what makes her believe there must be super-powers involved with the incidents—there are never any witnesses. Surely there would be witnesses to some of the crimes if they were happening at a normal speed.

She’s pondering that when the front doorknob rattles. Just for a moment, but the door doesn’t open, and she’s still sitting in the corner, waiting for the potential intruder to try again when the jinxed back door slams open and a breeze rushes through the room, a runaway wind blowing out of nowhere. It spins circles around the living room, and with every pass, another small element of the room is gone—a silver candlestick, an antique-looking little clock.

“Stop!” shouts Wanda, rising. The wind doesn’t stop, and she hears the buzzing, barely audible but absolutely present. She doesn’t have a lot of time. She knew this would happen fast, because that’s what speedsters do, but she was anticipating slightly more time than this.

In an act of desperation, she resorts to the first trick she learned with her powers: She flicks her fingers out, like she’s shaking off a cobweb, and a gleaming red shield springs up all around the outside of the room. The wind continues to circle, and she knows she’s trapped her target: Now it’s just a matter of time.

“You can’t get out, not even if you knock me down,” she says. “The shield stays until I intentionally release it.”

The wind stops, becoming a man. He’s about her age, and his skin is the same shade as hers, pale enough to be believably a tan Caucasian, dark enough for some people to ask questions about how he got so much sun. His hair, in contrast, is whiter than she’s ever seen on someone so young. He and Storm could go to the same salon. He’s wearing goggles, and he blinks as he moves them out of the way, pushing them back on his forehead in order to stare at her.

“Wanda?” he asks, and she recognizes her name, and she recognizes his accent—Latverian—but she doesn’t recognize anything else about him, not even as he moves toward her, dropping his stolen trinkets as he spreads his arms, not like he’s preparing to grapple her, but like he’s expecting a loving welcome.

“I should have known you’d be the one to find me,” he says, and although she doesn’t move, he keeps advancing, interpreting her shock for invitation as he wraps his arms around her. “I should have known you’d be looking for me just the way I’ve been looking for you. I thought that was you with the strange man with the sword, but you didn’t say anything, and I didn’t want to risk your secret identity. That’s what you call it here, isn’t it? A secret identity? Such a charming euphemism.”

Wanda stares at him, struck briefly silent by his ramblings—and by his uninvited embrace, which isn’t tight enough to be painful, but is a lot tighter than she expects from a stranger. He lets her go and steps back, puzzlement overtaking his features. “Are you angry that I didn’t speak up in the moment? I thought the gift of my intervention would be enough to prove my good intentions.”

“I’m sorry,” says Wanda, tongue feeling thick and clumsy. “I have no idea who you are.”

The stranger rears back like he’s been struck, shock and hurt washing across his face, only to be replaced by a sullen anger that looks far too comfortable there: It fits the lines of his features like he was made to scowl at the world, not smile. “Of course you don’t know me,” he says, voice gone sharp and cold. “Of course they denied you even that.”

“They?” she asks. “They who?”

“The imperialist bastards who stole you from your rightful place beside me!” he replies. “We were meant to grow up together, two halves of the same whole, cleaving to each other and never to be parted! Those American swine ripped you from our poor weeping mother’s arms! They stole you from your family, from your country, from me!” His voice breaks on the last word, anguish clearly unfeigned.

Wanda takes a half step toward him, seized by the urge to offer comfort. She has no idea who this stranger is, although she’s forming the beginnings of an understanding—one that’s sour and bitter in her heart, but still, makes sense of the situation. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know who you are,” she says. “Can you tell me your name, please?”

“Pietro,” he says. “Pietro von Doom.”

From Penguin Random House,  ‘What If… Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings? A Scarlet Witch and Spider-Man Story’ is available now wherever books are sold!

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