Robb/Roberts provides her standard excellence in the in Death series. I actually bought this book by mistake. I read this months (years?) ago. However, it is the kind of book that needs to have multiple reads to get all the nuance. I read so fast that I sometimes miss things, which is why I re-read books. Oddly, I had not read the other short stories in the book. Kinsman by Krinard was wonderful. It started a little slowly, since there was so much foreign information to absorb. However, the information was presented pretty well in the context of the story. The short seemed much longer, in a good way, than it was. A lot was packed into a few pages. Immortality by Shayne was amazing. Although there could clearly be a series of longer books that tell them story up to the point where the short story starts and more could be written after the story ended, the short story is complete in itself. It is well presented as a stand-alone and is a wonderful story. The ending is fabulous. Magic Like Heat Across My Skin by Hamilton has all the sexual bits one expects from a Hamilton piece of writing and, in the short story, they work well enough. (Personally, I don't care for the sexual tenor of ALL of her books; it is a little like a sledgehammer. Nevertheless, she can tell a good story. I would just like more subtle sex.) The back story regarding the female protagonist's leadership of this clan of the wereleopards is well presented. My problem with the story is that it is presented as an adventure to rescue two wereleopards and all of the necessary facts are detailed about the wereleopards at issue. While we seem to move in that direction, the story suddenly takes a tangent regarding some unexplained point from the series the book is a part of. When that small subplot is supposedly resolved, by the character exclaiming that the mystery will never be resolved, the story ends. We never ever get to rescuing the wereleopards. However, we are told that we can learn the rest of the story if we buy the next book. I would assume that we would also need to buy the earlier books as well in order to know what in the world is really going on. Robb and, I presume, Shayne are writing stories that are part of a series. However, their stories can be read as stand-alone stories that have a clear, understandable beginning and a fully resolved endpoint. That more action may happen is clearly intimated, but we get to the end of the story that was initially presented. Hamilton's story feels more like a somewhat longer sneak peek at her series than an actual short story. Really, it is a set of vignettes from the series that would be unfulfilling to anyone who is not a reader of the series. So, the first three stories were excellent. I hated to penalize them by reducing the stars, when it was only Hamilton's story that was under par. As I said, Hamilton writes well, but this particular short story is not really a story that has a beginning with a rational ending.