Can an empty node be made to act like a Billboard

I’m working in 3D and wish to make a child node point constantly in a fixed world direction while the parent rotatates. I could explitly keep the child’s rotation opposite to the parent, but I’d prefer to avoid that if cocos2d-x has the concept of a tracking node. Billboards can track the camera position or the camera direction, so cocos2d-x has something like the required concept internally at least. Can anyone point out a way to do this?