A/N: I wrote this a looooooooong time ago. I am not to be blamed by its sheer and utter oldness. I think it's pretty good. Please, enjoy. It gets better, promise.

Disclaimer: This is based exclusively off Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Whole paragraphs have been lifted from it. Inuyasha and co. are copyright to Rumiko Takashi, and were brought into this world purely for the sake of my friends and mine enjoyment. I am making no money off of this, and neither is the author. I just temporarily borrowed everything, save a few liberties I took with the plot.

Inuyasha growled as he stalked through the building. Warm. It was too damn warm in here. What the hell was Kaede thinking? He really needed to talk to her about the amount of coal used per day. It cost too much to keep this place at the current temperature. Honestly, what was his staff coming to these days?

He strode into his office, dumping his coat carelessly across a nearby shelf. He sat down and began sorting out all his paperwork. He had barely begun, however, when he was interrupted by one of his employees. What was her name again? Sara? Sally? What did it matter, anyway. She was chattering on about how it was Christmas time, a time of family friends, and giving, and all that . . . did she really think he cared? He had heard this line of thinking before, and knew exactly where she was headed.

" . . . and so, sir, I was wondering if I could take tomorrow off, to spend time with my husband and children, sir . . ."

He cut her off abruptly. "Tomorrow off? Whatever for? Do you wish to have an entire day's work docked off your payroll? Is that it?"

She bristled, and for a moment, Inuyasha hoped she would strike out at him, giving him an excuse to fire the annoying . . . woman. But she calmed herself and explained, "No, sir, it's just that, it's Christmas, and most employers normally give their workers tomorrow off, and I was hoping -"

"Hoping?" he snorted, interrupting her yet again. Honestly, the ideas these people came up with! He was beginning to suspect that it was all just a plot to waste his precious time. "Listen, whats-your-name . . ."

"Sango, sir," she said through clenched teeth. He ignored her. " . . . you don't seem to understand what you're asking. Tomorrow is a work day, just like any other day, and unless tomorrow is Sunday, which, last time I checked, it wasn't, you don't get to stay at home and laze about!"

"But – but, sir, it's Christmas!"

He snorted at her naiveté. "Christmas! All this fuss about some holiday! Feh! No, you may not take tomorrow off, and that's that. Go away now, or else you'll find yourself jobless."

The wench, whatever her name was, Sango, seethed visibly, frustrated. She left the room in a hurry, though. Whether it was because she was intimidated or too furious for words, he didn't know, nor did he really care. All he cared about was that she was finally gone, leaving him to work on in peace.

"Christmas," he muttered, disgusted. "Feh!"

Sango stalked out of the office in a frustrated and righteous rage. Who the hell did her boss think he was! To keep her from her family on Christmas!

Kaede, Inuyasha's secretary/assistant, looked up from her place by the fire, where she had been carefully adding coals to the boiler over the past several hours, raising the temperature to the point where you could actually bear to take off your coat, if you felt so inclined. She chuckled sadly at the expression on the woman's face. "Don't say I didn't warn you, Sango. Inuyasha's as cold as a winter morn with everything, an' Christmas in particular. Not your fault he is the way he is. He won't let any of us take the day off. It's not just you. We've all tried to change his mind, but . . ." the older woman trailed off and shrugged, tossing another coal into the fire.

Sango sighed, defeated, as her daughter entered the workshop, bringing her dinner.

"Good afternoon, Kaede!" Kagome, Sango's eldest, said cheerily. "And a very merry Christmas to you!"

Sango smiled at her daughter's good spirits. "Good afternoon, Kagome. But, I fear it shan't be such a merry Christmas this year." She scowled in the direction of her boss's office. "Master Yokai won't allow me Christmas off."

Kagome's eyes widened in distress. "Who – Inuyasha! Why ever not? It is the season of merriness and cheer – our family should be together! Our families used to be friends!"

Sango shrugged in resignation. Kagome, however, would not have it. "I think I'll have a word with Master Yokai," she said, eyes flashing. "I'll make him see reason, Mother, don't worry."

Kaede chuckled at Kagome's retreating back. "There's a courageous girl you've got there, Sango, no mistake."

Sango smiled wryly. "Yes; I'm not sure whether to worry for her or Inuyasha!"

Inuyasha looked up to find that, yet again, he found himself interrupted, this time by a young, dark-haired woman. She was quite pretty, he noted absently, more focused on his irritation on being interrupted once more.

"What?" he asked crossly. The young girl, unperturbed, smiled benignly at him.

"Good sir, I've come to ask, could perhaps my mother stay at home this Christmas? The young ones are quite hard to handle that day, and I could use the help."

He snorted. "And who might your mother be?" he inquired shortly.

"Sango Higurashi, sir. Please, sir, it would mean so much to me, and all my family," she pleaded, her brown eyes wide. Higurashi? No, it couldn't be her. Much too pretty.

He grunted, still displeased at her intrusion. But he knew well the nature of young women like this; stubborn as mules, she most likely wouldn't leave until he agreed to let her mother have Christmas off.

"Feh! Well, I suppose if you must have it, you must. Away with you, now, and leave me in peace!"

"Thank you, sir!" Kagome cried happily. "And a very merry Christmas to you!"

"Feh!" he growled as she closed the door, and didn't give the matter another moment's thought.

That same evening found Inuyasha Youkai trudging through the wintry streets of London, a discontented scowl on his face. No one stopped to smile at the sight of him, or wish him a Merry Christmas, for his visage was cruel and mean-spirited.

He turned a corner and approached his small mansion. The sign near the gate said "Youkai and Miko." Inuyasha's partner, Kikyo Miko, had been dead seven years. He'd never bothered to change the sign after her death. Some people, new to the district, still came calling and called him 'Mr. Miko', or Mr. Youkai. It didn't really matter which you called him; he answered to both.

Now, the brass knocker that sat on Inuyasha's door was quite unremarkable. It was really very plain, with merely a flat, chiseled base and a hinged handle with which to knock, no decoration of any sort to be found upon it.

So, it was highly unusual when, as Inuyasha went to open the door, it suddenly took on the appearance of Kikyo Miko's face. The once attractive visage of the Hanyou's former partner was twisted into a mask of agony.

Inuyasha stared at the knocker for a moment, startled. Then, he snorted, dismissing the apparition as a hallucination, brought on by long days of work. "Feh!" he muttered, and, so saying, swung open the door and stormed into his house.

The interior of his house was cold and grey, and very sparsely furnished. Inuyasha could have indeed afforded much more lavish accommodations than the ones he presently owned, but he was a miserable money-pincher. He did not mind the darkness that pervaded every corner of the dwelling, for darkness was cheap, and he liked it.

Tossing aside his black cloak onto a nearby chair, he climbed the stairs to his room, which was just as empty and gloomy as the rest of the house. His closet was off in a corner, barely filled with his clothes. His bed stood in the center of the room, grey and mournful like all Inuyasha owned. On the nightstand, there was a pitcher of water and a bowl of soup, left there by his maid, Miss Lark. He downed it in two gulps, the pitcher in three.

On the far left wall, there was an old bell connected to the downstairs hall that had once been used to summon servants. As there was only one in the house at present, Inuyasha hardly had need of it, and it had been sitting there collecting dust for years.

Inuyasha was startled from his moody contemplation of the grey walls by the sound of that bell starting to ring again. It rang, fast and loud, along with every other bell in the house, creating quite a din.

Apprehensively, Inuyasha rose from his bed and inspected the ringing bell. The rope was moving up and down, as if someone were pulling it, but no one was in the house, surely? Miss Lark had already left some time ago.

Then, through the constant clanging of the bells, he heard something else – a heavy clanking, coming from deep down below, as if someone was dragging a heavy chain over the empty barrels of a store-keepers cellar.

It grew steadily louder, first on the floor of the downstairs hall, then clanking up the great stairway, through the corridor towards his room.

Suddenly, through the door floated a ghost – a misty specter whose beauty was cold and imperious, despite the heavy chains draped about it, a spirit whose face Inuyasha knew very well indeed.

His old, deceased partner, Kikyo Miko, ghosted into the room, pale and translucent, but undoubtedly there. The same face, the very same. Kikyo's long, dark hair, her thick overcoat she never went without, except in the summertime, and she was so transparent that he could see the two buttons at the back of the cloak through her waist.

He'd heard that Kikyo had sometimes been so transparent you could see right through her, but he'd never believed it 'til now.

And yet, even now he did not believe it. Even though Kikyo's dark eyes were boring holes into him, chilling him to the bone, he was incredulous. Ghosts, exist? Feh!

"Feh!" he repeated aloud, as cold and caustic as ever. "What do you want with me?"

The ghost stared at him icily before replying, in a voice of wintry frost, "Much."

Inuyasha blinked, and attempted to appear unperturbed. "Who are you?"

"Ask me who I was," the spirit commanded.

"Who were you, then?" he inquired scornfully, trying to show his low opinion of the game, whatever it was.

"In life, I was your partner, Kikyo Miko," she responded tonelessly, giving no indication that she had noticed his scorn.

Inuyasha's ears were practically pinned to his head. He attempted to snort, "Feh!", but a glare from the spirit stopped him almost immediately. He began to realize, slowly, that the apparition was speaking the truth. The thought made him uneasy.

"Can you sit down?" he asked, trying to mask his apprehension.

"I can."

"Do it."

He hadn't been sure if a creature that transparent would be able to sit, but the ghost sat down on the single chair by the wardrobe as if it had been doing it for years.

The ghost turned its haunting face to him once more, scrutinizing him. "You don't believe in me," it said finally.

Inuyasha was beginning to become slightly frightened of this incarnation of his former, formidable partner. "No, I don't," he responded, mentally bracing himself for the explosion he felt was sure to follow.

But, instead, it merely countered, "What evidence would you have of my reality besides that of your senses?"

Inuyasha shrugged, still standing by the bed. "I don't know."

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because they can be fooled," he answered decisively. "True, my senses are better than most, but they can still be fooled by elaborate tricks, just as anyone else's."

He struggled to maintain his cool control of himself, forcing down his growing horror at the sight of his dead partner staring him in the face. But his horror overwhelmed him when the spirit calmly reached up and ripped off her lower jaw, exposing bone and tendon and muscle, before forcing it back on again. His eyes grew round, and he sat down on the bed abruptly. "Good Lord! Phantom, why do you trouble me?"

It answered calmly, ignoring his sudden fright. "It is required of every man and woman that the spirit within them should walk among their fellows, and travel far and wide; and if the spirit does not do this in life, it is doomed to do so in death. I cannot stay, I cannot rest, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our business, staying within the narrow confines of power and money; and weary wanderings lie before me!"

Inuyasha blinked, slowly absorbing what the spirit had told him. "Seven years dead. And traveling all this time? How fast do you travel?" he wondered.

"On the wings of the wind."

"You might have gotten over a great quantity of ground in seven years," he observed.

The spirit suddenly became agitated and angry, its face twisting in impotent fury. "Oh, blind, blind, you are so blind! Not to know the importance of goodness, and the passing of it to others! Nor to know the incessant labor of those dead, trying to pass goodness on when those we help can neither hear nor see us! Not to know that no amount of regret can make up for a wasted life! Yet I was like this one; I was once like you!"

"But – but you were always good at business - " Inuyasha faltered.

"Business!" the ghost screeched, now livid with rage. "Mankind was my business! The common welfare was my business – charity, forbearance, mercy, all were my business! The dealings of my, our, trade, were but a drop of water in the vast ocean of what my business was!"

Inuyasha was very dismayed to see the specter going on at this rate, and was beginning to be very nervous indeed, in the face of its anger at his ignorance.

The spirit suddenly calmed, though urgency replaced the fury in its face. "Hear me! My time is short."

"I will," Inuyasha promised, now thoroughly intimidated by the ghost.

"I am here tonight to warn you that you face my fate at death, if you continue as you have. But you have a chance and hope at escaping my fate, Inuyasha!"

Inuyasha shook his head, confused. "What chance is this?"

"You will be haunted by three Spirits."

Inuyasha inwardly balked at the thought of more ghosts. "If this is the chance, I think I'd rather not," he said hurriedly.

"Without their visits, you cannot hope to leave the path I walk," the specter told him sternly. "Expect the first tonight, when the bell tolls Ten. Expect the second when the bell tolls Eleven. And expect the last when the last stroke of midnight has sounded. You will see me no more; but for your own sake, remember what has passed between us!"

The ghost then rose, and backed slowly out of the room, its face never leaving his until it sank through the wood of the door, and the sound of the clanking chains faded and disappeared.

Inuyasha sat there for a moment, stunned in the wake of what had just happened. A cold breeze stirred across his face, however, waking him from his trance. The window leading to the streets below was now wide open.

Inuyasha crossed the room and shut the window, then went over to the door and inspected it. It was locked, as it had been just before the spirit had shown itself; the bolts and hinges were undisturbed.

Inuyasha tried once again to snort, and once again failed before he even started. He crossed the room to his bed, sat down heavily on it, and, without even bothering to undress, lay down and was asleep almost instantly.